Fourth grade math continued their geometry exploration. Tomorrow will be our last day. Today they had to figure out how to determine the area of a shape that was not a quadrilateral. The idea was to see if students could use what they know to figure out what they didn’t know. Most students found this easier than I expected. A few students can now determine the area of a triangle based on what they know of quadrilaterals.

Third grade reading had a breakthrough! One student wrote a fabulous summary. We were able to discuss how hers was just a little bit different from some of the others that had been turned in. Students are starting to figure out the small pieces that make a strong summary. I’m excited by their progress as a whole, though I know some of them are less excited – they’re doing a great job!

Grappling seems to be the word of the day. Second grade math grappled with some difficult fraction concepts (if this rod is 3/4, which rod is the whole?). We reviewed that as a class today and I know some left still a little perplexed. Again, this is completely expected and will come as they deepen their understanding of fractions. We moved on to putting fractions on a number line and I feel like I might actually have seen some brains explode. This is something they’ll work on tomorrow, but it is something that is a difficult concept. Understanding a visual representation of a fraction is a little easier than understanding how it relates to a number line. I started by putting the number zero at one end and the number one on the other end. Most of the class told me that couldn’t really be a number line with only two numbers. Once we started adding fractions, there was more brains exploding. It was a great day in math.

My second grade writers continued to write their stories. I’m excited to see where they end up. Each student is taking a different path, but I’m having great conversations with students as they write.