Math

Hi. I am having a wonderful time getting to know the students! I know many parents from my prior time at Orchard School and have introduced myself to others; please feel free to introduce yourselves to me if we have not met. The first few weeks have gone well and my main goal has been for us to get to know each other and establish new routines. The basic format of math class begins with a quiet time activity in which students explore various aspects of math, followed by class jobs, and then our main lesson for the day. I began our learning experience with a real world problem by asking students to determine how many feet our Orchard chickens have. They worked in partnerships and illustrated and explained their process in finding an answer. We continued with a place value activity called Stars in 1 minute. This is a great activity because it includes time, estimation, skip counting, and literacy.

As part of our celebration of the Chinese New Year, we have been reading a story called “Grandfather Tang’s Story” , working with tangram puzzles, and creating our own tangram puzzles to bring home. We will be exploring Chinese number formation and are continuing to work on number formation and pencil grip. Please encourage your child to form numbers from sky to earth and check on pencil grip for ease of writing.

I have begun implementing positive discipline in the classroom with our weekly job chart we created together. Students seem to enjoy the responsibility and take their jobs seriously.

One new class routine involves answering a weekly graph question and the first two graphs have been Venn diagrams.

And now, on to February!