DANIELLE'S PERSONAL LEARNING PATH

When I first saw that geometry was a common core standard starting in 1st grade, I immediately thought of the geometry I took sophomore year of high school and panicked...not my strongest subject. Obviously, I quickly realized they meant basic shapes and was relieved- then I did some digging...there's no way they're just learning to recognize a triangle in the 2nd grade, right? Recognize and draw shapes having specified attributes, such as a given number of angles or a given number of equal faces. Identify triangles, quadrilaterals, pentagons, hexagons, and cubes. Partition a rectangle into rows and columns of same-size squares and count to find the total number of them. Partition circles and rectangles into two, three, or four equal shares, describe the shares using the words halves, thirds, half of, a third of, etc., and describe the whole as two halves, three thirds, four fourths. Recognize that equal shares of identical wholes need not have the same shape....

One of the most frustrating parts of a teachers' day is the constant "how long until lunch?" "how long until recess?" "is it time to go home yet?" "Is it time for PE now?" My most vivid memory of pre-school is using that yellow teaching clock that's in every classroom to learn how to tell time because my teacher got tired of explaining to me how many more minutes until my mom got there (I was that kid crying all day until my mom picked me up). In a world of Apple Watches, iPhones, and smartboards, kids don't care to learn to tell time anymore. Why bother figuring out where the hands are pointing or even which hand is the minute hand if you can peek at the smartboard and see the time written out for you? While I definitely agree that in most situations you can rely on a digital clock to tell you the time, I believe being able to tell time and read an analog clock is one of the most important skills we can teach our students. It's...

For this post, I decided to take a look at collecting data, which is a first-grade standard. In the first-grade room I worked in last year, we would have morning meeting every day with a morning message where students got to practice filling in snap words and letters they knew and hear about their schedule for the day. At the bottom of the morning message, we would take a poll related to an upcoming holiday, the season/weather, or fun "national day of" polls. For example, on National Donut Day, we took a poll of the students favorite flavor of donut- glazed, chocolate, or powdered. We would then discuss the results in terms of comparison. It started out as a s l o w moving process, but eventually they got the hang of it and thought it was so fun! We would analyze things such as which had the most  votes, which had the least votes, and eventually worked up to things like how many more people chose one over another? While this may seem like a simple activity, it really set ...

This week I'm going to dive into a topic that really intrigues me. In elementary school, I was beyond blessed to have teachers early on who DRILLED us on math facts, and it was something that came pretty easily to me. Because of that, when it came time for long division, I was excited to move on to what I thought was such "grown-up math" (3rd grade me had apparently never heard of calculus and was oblivious to the pain it would bring me in undergrad) 😅 Division was one of those things that I just felt comfortable with, and when I started working in a school, I felt really prepared to work with kids on division. Little did I know that they use a funny strategy now called partial quotients using "friendly numbers." At first, I was super skeptical of this method of division. It seemed like another one of those math things that they're having kids now do in 10 steps when it only takes 5. I was frustrated at the time it took and felt it was unnecessary untii...

While trying to pick a topic for my first blog post, I took a quick minute to think back to the students I've worked with and what math concepts they struggled with. I see a trend across many grade levels in difficulties with addition/subtraction problems and word problems. I believe a strong understanding of place value sets the foundation for building more complex concepts, like the ones I mentioned above. While place value seems like the most simple and straightforward concept, it's one that trips many students up as they move forward to things like word problems, decimals, and carrying/borrowing in addition/subtraction problems. Sooo even if you're like me and think place value is just second nature, let's take a moment to put ourselves in our students shoes and find some fun ways to master place value! So first, what exactly do we mean by "place value"? Place value is simply that: the value that a digit holds based on its position, or place, in a numbe...