Can you believe it we are back to school?  I am so excited to start back with many familiar faces and so many new faces.  It is the time of year teachers often reflect back to years past to try and remember what went great an what went, well, not so great.  Every year is a new beginning for us to make a difference.  I order to help me get started off on the right foot I often start by reading an article about kids that was given to me several years ago, “Never Say Anything a Kid Can Say!”, by Steven C. Reinhart.  It is a great reminder at the beginning of the year as to how our classroom should sound.  Below is the link to the article, I highly suggest you take a look.

 

https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=sites&srcid=ZGVmYXVsdGRvbWFpbnxzaHByb2ZyZXN8Z3g6MjdlYjc0OWM2MzNiMDkwNA

As part of my goal for this year I have been researching reading in relationship to math.  I must say that many of my searches have been well, what I consider to be fruitless, until this weekend that is.  I found a chapter from a book that I found very interesting. It has a different perspective on reading in math.  I have linked it below because it is defiantly something that makes you think.  I hope you enjoy it.

http://www.ascd.org/publications/books/105137/chapters/Reading-in-the-Mathematics-Classroom.aspx

Where has the time gone?   It seems like just yesterday I was going to start working with 5^th graders and well now, my time is up.  Starting next week I am going to get to work with the 3^rd and 4^th graders.  I am very excited to work with my 4th graders again.  It‘s also going to be fun getting to know the 3^rd graders.  I know them by face from greeting them every morning in the front hall, but now I will get to truly know them by working with them.  Let the new chapter begin.

Wow, this month has flown by and once again has so many things gone on.  Math and reading with both 1^st and 4thgrades and lots of reading with 2^nd grade.  My second graders had the chance to finish another novel and then we read some of my favorites, the stories of Frog and Toad.  The kids quickly realized why I chose that as our next book.  I have now added working with some 5^th graders.  It’s been very exciting working with them.  I worked with many of them for the past few years, but did not get to work with them this year until now.  It’s amazing to see how much they have grown since I last worked with them at the end of 4^th grade.  It’s even more amazing to look back at where they were when I first started to work with them in 1^st grade and well now, they are only about 15 weeks away from leaving us and heading to 6^th grade.  Where has the time gone!

Winter break has come and gone and the kids are back into the swing of things.  My second graders are so excited to have finished their novel and we’ve had many great conversations about it.  The first graders ventured in to telling time on a clock.  It’s a very abstract idea, but they got the hang of it.  Of course they are still a little baffled as to how I could tell time on my watch even thought it had no numbers on it.  Last, but not least, the fourth graders who are so strong with their multiplication and divisions it’s wonderful.  They now are moving into the world of fractions and seem to be handling it very well.  Once again I can’t wait to see what next month will bring.

Today was such an exciting day at Christie. I got to participate in Christie City. This was a truly authentic learning experience for our 4th graders. They got to work in shops, earn pay checks and spend their hard earned money. The kids had a lot of fun and definitely learned some good / hard lessons. They learned that if you spend all of your money you can't just go to the bank and ask for more. The employees at the bank realized that work is hard and that you can't just stop because you want to. It was a wonderful experience for everyone. A big shout out to the 4th grade team for helping to make it happen, and a HUGE shout out to Mrs. Amini for putting in hours of extra work at night and weekends to bring this amazing experience to Christie for our students. I really do work with the best people on earth. I hope everyone has a great break; it is well deserved for everyone, students and teachers alike.

I am so proud of my second graders and how far they have come in the last few weeks.  They started subtraction needing to use base ten blocks to solve 24 - 9 = ? and now they can solve problems like this 345 – 263 = ? without blocks.  They have realized that numbers can be written in many different ways and that helped them to realize that subtraction isn’t so scary.  For example

 

  345

 -263

            Both of these are ways to represent 345, but the second one makes it easier to solve.

             345

 

300      40      5          3 hundreds, 4 tens, 5 ones

200    140       5         2 hundreds, 14 tens, 5 ones

 

It is a great way to use place value to transition them to the standard algorithm without them losing the number sense related to what they are doing.

 

 

  345

 -263