Sensational September
What a great month we had in September! We are rocking and rolling through math. These Tadpoles are math superstars! I have never been "ahead" in our current math curriculum, and we are flying through Chapter 3 with regrouping in subtraction. It's like...I show them...they "get it"...we practice...I help them correct the tiny mistakes they might be making...and bam...we are moving on to the next lesson!
The sketching for the addition and subtraction problems, I realize may be very foreign to parents! Hopefully, the screencasts I've been emailing as homework have helped you kind of see our process. They are all posted on the website under the parents tab and students tab for future reference.
I tell the kids how their parents never did this, and that teachers even had to go to training to learn how. I do show them the traditional algorithm so they can get exposure (some will pick it up and some won't yet, but all will get there), explaining that this is how their parents and I learned regrouping. When we are practicing together, I tell the kids who have finished a problem early, to try doing it with the algorithm. They love the challenge!
Students will not be expected to know how to use the actual algorithm until later grades (maybe 3rd or 4th?). My fifth grader, I know, only adds and subtracts using the algorithm. The beauty of sketching is that it allows all 2nd graders to perform the regrouping process. Before teaching this method, second grade didn't start regrouping until the end of 4th quarter because they just weren't really developmentally ready...and it was HARD for them even by then. AND they didn't know why they were regrouping and what it actually meant. I know I didn't understand the math behind the process when I was a kid. I just blindly learned the steps in the process and called it a day! Now we are regrouping in 1st quarter, with a tremendous success rate, and the kids can explain why they are doing it!
Can you tell I'm excited about our math success! I am so proud of these Tadpoles. Seriously, it takes a lot of sustained mental effort on their part to work through the workbook pages, but it is really paying off for them.
I hope your weekend has gotten off to a wonderful start...October is going to be another month of jam-packed learning immersion!
