Making Progress!

We had some interesting conversations about shapes last week.  I was still working on getting my math interviews done so I needed everyone to be independently busy while also learning.  You might think that by the time someone is 7 or 8 years old they know what they need to know about shapes and using blocks, but it’s just not so.  I think wooden blocks aren’t as popular as they once were, so kids don’t necessarily have them to use at home (where they have spent a lot of time in the last 2 year) and I also think it’s because when kids are playing for fun, they don’t have metacognitive conversations with themselves about what they are learning – they just have fun. After they had all rotated through the different types of blocks, I started asking questions and they didn’t have much to say.  But after I asked questions, let them play again and then asked the questions again, there was a lot to be said – two chart paper pages full in fact! 

One child pointed out that we can build castles and other stuff by stacking.  At first everyone thought that spheres and pyramids can’t stack, but after some consideration they realized that pyramids can be on the top of a stack, just not the bottom and spheres can go on top of things, but they need other things to keep them in place, like a cube to lean on. Some students noticed tat some shapes were not represented in the box. They then figured out they could make the missing shapes: two squares make a rectangle, two triangles make a rhombus, etc.

We also talked about the difference between 2D and 3D shapes. We need do some more work here. This week we’ll be talking in casual conversation about how 3D shapes are made of 2D shapes. We’re also going to try to get back on track with the curriculum map I made for myself. I need to get some patterning done so we’ll continue to use the shapes and now start to use them as pattern blocks, along with the colour tiles and lots of other manipulatives from my classroom. We need some community building too, so we are going to make our own bracelets using pony beads and elastic string. I have a collection of beads that’s been hanging around far too long so I want to use them up. AND I need to get going on all the Number Talks that will help us review basic addition/subtraction strategies for numbers up to 20. I completely skipped the fun unplugged coding activities I wanted to do in September, so I will be doing those during our gym time.  I’m excited about trying this out in the big space which we were not allowed to use last year. 

Whew!  I’m tired thinking about it. But also energized. My math interviews are complete and sitting on my desk waiting to be brought home, so I’ll sort through them this week (instead of today like I originally planned!) and find the trends and strengths/needs in number sense. I’m so glad they are done for many reasons, not the least of which is that I can be part of the explorations this week and can MAYBE start taking some anecdotal notes so I can make some informed decisions about what to write on progress reports. 

Calendar

I’d normally have the first week all organized by now.  I’ve been going through my notes (mental and written down) as I try to plan out what my first week of school will be like.  There are quite a few of my old tricks that won’t work this year because of “you know, social distancing” as my son likes to say.  And, truth be told, I could still get a big assignment change so I am not putting too much effort into getting excited about exact plans. But there are certain things that can happen no matter what my assignment turns out to be and no matter who will be in my class.

Last year, I added a new calendar routine to my class and I really liked how it all unfolded.  I had the whole year on the board at once, and I loved how the students used it to count “how many days until” things would happen.  I’m not usually one for celebrating birthdays in class, so I wasn’t expecting them to do their favourite thing:  add their special day to the calendar.  We added the holidays together as the approached and talked about how some holidays are always on the same day (Feb 14 = Valentine’s Day) but others float around according to the cycles of the moon (Passover). This is a grade 2 social studies expectation and I liked how that became part of an ongoing conversation in our room.

This year I have decided to do it a bit differently.  Instead of printing a complete calendar, I found some blank calendar pages here.   I am going to fill out September (maybe only the first 2 weeks?) and then get kids to help fill out the rest.  I made a poster to post beside the calendar:

You can have a copy! 

I want the students to fill in the dates on their own because there are so many patterns to the counting on calendars.  If they are filling out the dates themselves I think it will help them see the patterns. During the first week, maybe in the second week, we are going to work on this together.  I still haven’t sorted out all the details though because, “you know, social distancing!” is going to effect this for sure. Maybe the students can have their own mini version to work on at their desks.  (I keep reminding myself that some kids are going to really love working alone at their desks!)

I’m going to keep this at the front of the room because we referred to it so often!  I want it up close.  I know things will be different now because we can’t have any carpet time, but we didn’t really use it for that anyway. It was just an ongoing topic of conversation all year. Kids like to know when things will happen. This helped with that. I’ve been reading a bit of executive function skills and some of these are the ability to organize, to be able to plan things, and of course manage time. I know that I personally need a calendar or day book for this, and I really do much better if I have written it down.  My phone calendar is great for reminders, but I still need to physically use a pen and paper to write it down before a scheduled activity is in my brain. I need to know when something is due and then I need to write out a plan for how to do that slowly over the course of a week or more.  I need specific small deadlines (because one of my executive functioning strengths is that I am goal oriented) to keep my on track. The wall calendar seemed to provide support in all of these areas for the kids in my class last year, and I suspect it will help this year as well. 

So…20 minutes of each day of the first week…sorted!