Who knew that snap words could inspire challenging math thinking?
It happened as students reviewed our growing stack of snap word flashcards. When students practice reading these words in a snap, they may say them in low voices or high voices or sleepy voices, and so on. They especially like to sing the words to the tune of the ABC Song.
However, we have not yet added enough words to sing through the whole song, and students wondered how many words we will need to do so. Students already knew that there are 26 letters in the alphabet, so we will need at least that many. Then we sang the song and counted 15 more words at the end of the song.
So what is the sum of 26 + 15? Students solved this problem in various ways, and then shared their thinking:
Next, we counted how many words we already have and used that information to calculate how many more cards we need to be able to get through the whole song. What is the difference between 32 and 41?
Math is everywhere!