We have some new University of Oregon students helping in our classroom in the afternoons with math, science and the various integrated instructional projects we do in the afternoons. Thank you to Sarah Campbell for recruiting some of these volunteers. We also have some new practicum students from the U. of  O. who are receiving field work credit for working in our classrooms.  They also get to see if they might like a career in teaching!

I (Polly) have been taking an interesting course from the Eugene school district about assessing student work and how to help students evaluate their own progress and learn from their mistakes.  For this reason, I have held on to the Penguin reports longer than expected and I haven’t hung them in the hall yet. Also, I haven’t sent home as many math papers this year as you might have been hoping for. I will be glad to send them at the end of the year along with our workbooks.  If you have a concern about your child’s progress in math, I will be happy to schedule an appointment to meet with you sooner.

The course I am taking from the school district is based on a book highly recommended by Jon Saphier, the educator from Boston who has been contracted to work with the Eugene school district to improve student learning.  Jon Saphier’s book is The Skillful Teacher:  Building Your Teaching Skills.  The book we are using in the assessment class is Classroom Assessment for Student Learning:  Doing it Right–Using it Well by Jan Chappuis and others. I have been reading both books and implementing as many good teaching practices as I can from these excellent authors. Last year, I also attended a number of Saphier’s sessions which were open to all Eugene teachers wanting to reflect on and improve our teaching.

Today in math, in addition to giving an assessment that is linked to the new Common Core math standards, I gave children a fun math project to try at home.  Your child may ask you for an empty egg carton (the kind that usually holds a dozen eggs.)  Then your child will need a bunch of small objects, such as pennies, paper clips or beads.  In class we estimated how many total items would be in the egg carton if you put one item in the first egg cup, two items in the second egg cup, three items in the third egg cup, four items in the next and so on until all the egg cups are filled with successively a larger amount by one.  I think your student will have fun with this activity. It is a game from the book Family Math. This is not required as homework–it’s just something to instill an interest and love of math in your child. We had quite a range of estimates. Your child can write down the correct answer and hand it to me any time with his name on it. (It will help if your child doesn’t tell others the answer because it might spoil other students’ enjoyment of the activity.)

In addition to the current math unit about measuring, we’ve been continuing to do a lot of work reviewing math facts below the number ten. This may seem easy, but it is still challenging for most students in the class to do it fluently. Thank you for your interest in your child’s classroom and growth as a mathematician.

Today we had a very important visitor– Maile, a labradoodle who lives just a few blocks away from Edison! Maile’s “human”  is Polly’s very good friend  Fuzzi (Deborah) Basler. This afternoon while we were working on essays about our favorite penguins, five students at a time came to the rug to learn more about Maile and to pet her and see her trick.

Maile is learning to be a service dog who will visit people who need to be loved,  comforted or cheered.  She has a wonderful, calm personality.  Thank you, Fuzzi Basler, for bringing your especially wonderful dog to visit.  When not walking Maile or training her, Fuzzi sometimes volunteers in our classroom during math. She also works at Uncommon Scents, is one of the owners of the Meridian, and enjoys working at the Hult Center. Fuzzi’s husband, John Tamulonis, was recently named Springfield’s First Citizen for his work in economic development. Their children, now grown, went to Edison, Roosevelt and South. We look forward to Maile visiting again some day! Today was Maile’s second birthday!

The Common Core State Standards (CCSS) are very specific standards for each grade level for many subjects we teach.  The goal of the Common Core is to help students develop more rigorous thinking, greater critical thinking skills, and be ready to compete in the global market when they are adults. Forty-five states have adopted the Common Core including Oregon. The 4j school district has been moving toward full implementation of the Common Core and we teachers have been studying and teaching to these standards, especially in mathematics. The recent report card shows the categories now taught and assessed to meet these standards.  Next year the Reading portion of the report card will also be correlated to the Common Core.

If your student did not yet meet a particular standard on the recent report card, please do not be concerned.  I expect your child to meet the standards by the end of the year. We are working hard to help every child meet these more rigorous standards.  The school district has supplied teachers with extra curriculum, resources and professional development to help us.

There has been much controversy surrounding the Common Core but nevertheless, teachers don’t shy from a challenge and are doing our best to implement every aspect of the expectations.

Thank you to all the parents who made the Valentine’s Party possible!  It was so much fun for the kids and at the same time calm and contented.

Valentine’s Day is a highlight of the school year and gets kids reading!

We choose authors who write high-quality literature for children and who create beautiful illustrations.  Here are the authors we’ve studied this year! 

1.  Mo Willems is a three-time Caldecott winner for Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus, Knuffle Bunny: A Cautionary Tale and Knuffle Bunny Too:  A Mistaken Case of Identity.  Mo Willems also won two Geisel Medals for There is a Bird on Your Head! and Are You.

2.  Ezra Jack Keats                         won the 1963 Caledcott for The Snowy Day.  He used collage and marbling techniques in his illustrations.  Ezra Jack Keats was the first children’s book author to be invited to donate his papers to Harvard University.

3.  Jan Brett has won many awards, including the National Teachers Association Top Ten Titles for Elementary Students, 1999, for The Mitten. She is known for her beautiful borders, as well as for her engaging stories and colorful, highly detailed art.

4.  Other authors we have studied this year are Cynthia Rylant and Chris Raschke.

For young children, their work is their play and their play is their work. Some of their best math understandings come as they play with carefully selected math games and manipulatives.  Teachers guide the thinking by asking questions, such as “How did you do that?”  and “Tell me what you’re working on.” Or,  “I wonder if you can describe what you’re doing by telling me with numbers.” Students are preparing for the adult world when they will work in teams, collaborate, and need to be able to discuss ideas clearly. Sure, we do paper and pencil math too. And we have high expectations.  But the element of fun in math is never far away. The work is beautiful, engaging, and leads to real learning that sticks.

It took work and negotiation to find enough green blocks to create this pattern!

We’ve been studying Antarctica and Penguins! We enjoyed reading Bob Keefer’s recent article in the Eugene Register Guard about his recent trip to Antarctica. We’re learning about water temperatures in different parts of the ocean. We weighed ourselves and measured our heights for our passports. Today we brainstormed what to take with us on our make-believe trip. Then we compared our list with the list of what Bob Keefer took with him.

We had a good week! We began an author study of Jan Brett and began writing a book of our own! Check out Jan Brett’s amazing website, janbrett.com.

We saw video clips about Bats on National Geographic. Did you know the largest bat has a wingspan of six feet! Don’t worry–these bats eat fruit! We brought home our Bat Folders and brainstormed everything we’ve learned about bats! Did you know that when children write about science, their writing skills improve dramatically!

Math has continued to be fun and meaningful! Children sometimes work alone, sometimes in pairs or in groups. This increases conversation. We want to inspire children to explain what they know, ask each other to clarify, listen to each other, feel safe and take risks discussing their math ideas.                 

Students enjoy working with math tools in our Math Workshops. We explore Connecting Cubes, Geoblocks, Power Polygons, and Pattern Blocks. We discuss what we notice about each math tool and we brainstorm what we can do with each math tool. This deep exploration and conversation sets the stage for more teacher-directed activities which we undertake, such as building staircases of connecting cubes to find all the ways of adding two numbers together to obtain a sum of 10. We also fill in designs with Pattern Blocks, and keep an organized list of how many of each type of block we use, recording the sum of all the blocks. Further discussion as a class will show the many different ways we find to meet these math challenges. It is exciting to learn that there is more than one correct answer.

Research shows that when students work with math objects in their hands, the concepts become more easily learned in children’s brains. For example, it is easy to teach fractions when students have had many opportunities to work with wooden blocks which are designed and precisely cut in shapes which show a half or a fourth or an eighth. Geometry is easier in the upper grades when children have opportunities in the younger grades to hold Pattern Blocks in their hands and find ways to fit them together into interesting shapes and designs. In-depth discussions about our math work helps us learn from each other and helps us learn how to express our ideas to others. This deep conversation about our mathematical thinking is exactly the type of work adult mathematicians do–collaboration is an important skill.