Good Morning,
What a great 2nd week. The class has been fantastic and what better way to end week 2 than with a hike at Mad River. It's a great way to get all of the school out and doing something together as well as team building within our class groups. We are certainly lucky to live in an area that has access to such beautiful sights.
We had our first week of math this week too. The 2nd graders all go to Mr. Hubbard's room for math and all of the 1st graders come to my room. This week the 1st graders worked on learning how to play partner games and be efficient to get the most out of playing the games. I also talked to them about wanting to eliminate number reversals and making sure they use the right starting point when writing their numbers. This week we worked on the numbers 0,1,2,3,4 & 5.
Zearn math was also introduced this week. "Zearn Math is a curriculum developed originally through Engage NY which created Common Core Standards. It personalizes teaching and math content with are aligned to Common Core standards and grade level. It is developed to each individual grade level assigned by the teacher. Each student is working toward bettering their mathematical knowledge, not working toward a grade score. The program is designed to help students’ math fluency. Since the program is strictly designed within Common Core standards, it meets K-5 requirements of:
- Making Sense of Problems- students are able to view their strengths and through following a module path, if understanding is struggling, students can be moved to different level difficulty to master.
- Reasoning abstractly and Quantitively- students are given the ability to make symbolic representations of numbers, compute them and reference them to what is happening.
- Students are able to critique the reasoning of others by participating in Sprint simulations where students race against each other to solve problems within a certain period of time.
- Students are also able to construct mathematical arguments by use of symbols, graphs, diagrams to understand the conceptualization of the math problems being presented.
The students also completed their "All About Me" posters and their self portraits. The posters are displayed in the hallway outside our classroom. It's always great to see the kids so excited to see their work hanging up. The self portraits are actually an assessment piece. I use a book called Yardsticks, to look at developmental progressions and this is one piece that lets me see where each student is at. These are now displayed in the classroom.
This week Mike Leichlighter, our new superintendent, paid a visit to our school. He joined us for a bit of out math class. It was great to see him connecting with our students, getting to know our school community, and learning what Waitsfield is all about. Dr. Mike will be visiting each school frequently and truly loves seeing everyone's work in action.
That is all for now. I hope you have a fantastic weekend.
Peace,
Tommy
