The last few weeks, the third graders have been busy creating special gifts for the second grade class. Last week, we read the books "Each Orange Had 8 Slices: A Counting Book" by Paul Giganti, Jr. and illustrated by Donald Crews. In this book, Giganti shares short vignettes that involve multiplication. For example, in the eponymous piece, the text reads, "On my way to lunch I ate 2 juicy oranges. Each orange had 8 slices. Each slide had 2 small seeds. How many juicy oranges were there? How many slices were there? How many seeds were there in all?" With these stories, students can then use multiplication to figure out the answers to these questions.
Since we have been working with multiplication, we thought it would be a great opportunity for the students to create similar stories for the second graders to solve.
To do this, the students created a rough draft of a story that followed the same pattern as the examples from the book. After making sure they included multiplication elements and the three different questions to help guide others to the answer, the students then created a final draft complete with a picture.
These will be given to the second graders for them to engage with as a bit of a challenge. While we have not been able to do many multi-age activities, this felt like a good way that we could share with another group of students.
