We’re finishing up our first full week of school (we always start with a little teaser 3-day week) and the 2nd graders are coming together nicely.
So far, 2nd grade feels very different than first. The students are boisterous and busy and needing quite a few reminders about how to be respectful in the classroom. I have no doubt that they’ll fall right into line soon enough and I’m already seeing improvement. That forming takes a lot of energy at the beginning of the year, but it pays off big in the long run.
Math Block
Our first block of the year is math and so far our work is lining right up with what I planned in the summer. (You can read all about that plan here.) We have been playing games and experimenting with different ways of thinking about numbers as tens and ones. I wanted to spend some good time giving the kids a chance to determine numbers based on their tens and ones so that when we start adding and subtracting those double-digit numbers they’ll be ready. Here are a couple of examples of how we’ve been playing with numbers in this way.
Number Symbols
I chose a symbol to represent 10 and another symbol to represent 1 and they tell me the number. For example, if * represents 10 and ! represents 1, what is this number: * * * * ! ! ! ?
For our actual work with this in class, I’ve chosen symbols that make a little more sense and naturally evolve out of the story, but it launched a conversation about how we could choose any symbol we wanted. The 2nd graders got excited about making a code language for numbers. My resource book emphasized the importance of using symbols that show the difference between 10 and 1. Your 10 symbol should be 10 times larger than your 1 symbol. I started with this, but once the students got the hang of it, we got a little creative.
Just yesterday I expanded this game so that I gave them sample numbers like this — * * * ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! . If you count those symbols up, you’ll see that there are 3 tens and 12 ones. They had to work a little harder to find the number and we recognized together that we could have written this number differently. Mixing it up like this keeps them flexible and is another leap towards adding.
Place Value Dice Game
We expanded a dice game that we played last year. Students have a partner and a paper with two blanks _____ _____. They roll the dice and they can choose to put that number in the tens place or the ones place. It is such a simple game, but it really brings home the idea of the higher value of the 10’s place. It also gives them a low-stress chance to practice writing their numbers, which many of the 2nd graders are still reversing. (We had lots of practice with the letters last year, but less with the numbers.)
Number Who Am I?
As part of our mental math time, I say things like, “I am a number with 4 tens and 3 ones.” They raise their hand and answer. I’ve used the same strategy for number dictation practice. They use slates and when I say it they write the number.
All of these activities have come out of the umbrella story that I’m using (my own creation) about a boy named Kavi who is learning from a wise hermit in the forest. I’m loosely tying the activities back to the story, but I’m finding that the activities themselves are solidifying the ideas much more effectively than the images from the story.
Hopes and Dreams
Today we are going to continue our Hopes and Dreams conversation and extend it to give ourselves some guiding principles or rules to follow to support each other in the classroom. I’ve talked about this technique before (read here) and I’ve found it to be a great way to start out the year. My plan is that we’ll end up with 3-4 rules to remember that we’ll post in the room and refer to often.
This year, we had a parent meeting the day after I did the Hopes and Dreams exercise with the students and I gave the parents a sticky note to write their hope and dream for their child to put on their drawing. Very sweet.
I’ll keep you posted about how our rules conversation goes and what we came up with. For now, here’s a little glimpse at the 2nd grade illustrations of their hopes and dreams.
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