Welcome Back

We have all nicely settled back into our school-day routine, and are well into new learning. Second graders are very excited about learning cursive! While first graders are still fine-tuning their manuscript printing, the second graders are learning 2-3 lower case letters each day in cursive. Second graders must sign in daily with their cursive signatures.

On Wednesday, January 10, all grade K-2 teachers had a morning training with our new math program, Investigations. It was an exceptional morning; I came away with several new math activities to do with our class. Just yesterday, we did the Investigations “counting activity.” All students, first and second graders, were asked to grab a collection of manipulatives. The first graders worked with bears, and the second graders worked with unifix cubes.

I then broke the students up into pairs, with one student doing the counting, while the other student observed and recorded how their partner counted. Then the roles were switched. The outcomes were quite illuminating. As I walked around the room, I observed students counting by 1’s, 2’s, 5’s, and 10’s. It was also interesting to see how the students arranged their collections. Some of the comments I heard were, “I made 3 rows of 10 to equal 30,” and “I counted by 5’s; I have 6 rows of 5 to make 30.” This counting activity is quite useful for mulitplication and factoring in 3rd and 4th grades. Be sure to check the gallery for photos of this math activity.

We also spent the day today at Bishop Museum. The children had a wonderful time at the planetarium. I was impressed by how many constellations they were able to identify. Next we went to the science center, which was a big hit. Again, check out the gallery for exciting photos.

We saved the best for last, the dinosaur exhibit. Our class simply loved looking at the replicas up close. I can’t say the students did much time reading the explanations at each exhibit, but none the less, a good time was had!

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