September 3, 2015
There are two topics I decided I wanted to address in Today's post; Math and parent-teacher interactions.
First, each day in between the math lesson and the math group work, there is a "math warm-up". There is number of the day activity. The teacher asks for a volunteer to pick any number. The student puts the number in the middle box on the smart board. For example "22" was today's number. There is a box on the left that says "1 less", a box on the right that says "1 more", a box above that says "10 more" and a box below that says "10 less". I really like this activity. I did something similar with a girl that I used to tutor. The main difference was that the box above was "10 less" and the box below was "10 more". I liked this method better. If you look at a 100 chart, that is how the chart is set up. The box above 22 on a 100 chart will be 12, not 32 like it is shown in the SmartBoard activity. The second part of the "math warmup" is a coin activity. Students begin by reviewing how much each coin is worth. The teacher then drags 3-8 coins down and the students add up the worth. This is definitely something I will add to my classroom if I am in a younger aged classroom. Even though what the students are learning in math currently (addition and subtraction word problems), has nothing to do with money I think this is still a great skill to practice daily since money is a life skill.
The second topic for Today is parent-teacher interactions. I was always curious how much parents contacted the teacher, what they contacted the teacher about, etc. My co-op today was sharing some encounters from last night. She had two different parent phone calls, both very different from each other. The first call was from Emily's* mom. This mom was calling because she felt like her daughter was too smart for first grade and should be moved ahead to second grade. My co-op asked me my opinion about the topic and how I would have answered her mom. From my observations over the past week and a half, Emily is definitely one of the brighter students in the class. She is on chapter books while some students have yet to master their sight words, and she is above average on the math topics we have covered thus far. However, her maturity is absolutely not on a second grade level. She struggles with sitting still on the carpet and lays down frequently, she also has to be told to do tasks such as unpack her backpack, clean up snack, write her homework down, constantly throughout the day. My co-op agreed with my thoughts and explained that that's exactly what she kept reiterating to the mom for an hour and a half the night before. The second conversation was involving James*. James' mom called to explain that her and James' father are divorced. She proceeded to say that James stays with mom one week and dad the next week. The call mainly revolved around the concept that she and the father have very different parenting styles. Because of this she wanted the teacher to 'okay' the fact that James' homework responsibility are basically exempt every other week. My co-op obviously did not agree to this and explained that regardless of where James is sleeping he is still responsible to complete the minimal homework that he has. This conversation led into a deeper talk at lunch with other teachers about divorced parents. I got a look into how different each students' situation can be when divorce is involved.
*Name Changed
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