With these funds I will provide unifix cubes for students to use during math instruction.  Our teachers have worked hard to get professional development in Cognitively Guided Instruction for use during our Story Problems block.  During this time, students will solve and discuss one challenging problem per day.  The idea in CGI is not only to get a correct answer, but to also see that there are many solutions.  This builds love of learning, critical thinking, and flexibility.  Last year, we successfully started CGI in many of our classrooms, but because students did not have sufficient access to cubes, they weren't able to use concrete strategies as often as they wanted.  This meant that teachers had to give smaller numbers in problems or mastery was lower because kids didn't have the tools they need.  

Unifix Cubes are helpful because they snap together in groups of 10, which helps kids understand the base 10 system.  They are also beneficial because they only connect in one direction, so they aren't tempting to use as a toy.  They are clearly a math tool.  Unifix Cubes will provide students access to problems that they wouldn't have using just pencil and paper because they can use the cubes as a concrete representation of the numbers in the problems.  Using these cubes, even kindergarteners can solve multiplication and division stories!  The challenge is that each student needs 120 cubes so they can use them fluently in addition and multiplication problems where the solution can get pretty large.  If we buy Unifix Cubes in bulk, each set of 5,000 costs $360.  That's about 7 cents per cube.  In order to purchase enough cubes for all of our children in K - 2nd, we need 9 sets of cubes, which will cost $3,240.  These tools will last a very long time and will set students up for deeper understanding of the concepts they are learning in class.

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