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.
