Small Successes

      So, I've been envisioning starting this blog for a few months now, and I have to say, when I've been planning out how it will go, I figured I'd start off talking about some cool thing I implemented or showing some pictures of my little pinterest projects that I've tried.  But we've been in school for a week and a half now, and do you know what I'm most excited about?  This quiz over addition properties (commutative, associative, and identity) that my kids took yesterday.
     Now, you have to understand that this little group of third-graders this year did not come in with a wealth of mathematical understanding.  All of third-grade gave a little pretest of math skills--very basic stuff like adding numbers to twenty and place value to the hundreds place and comparing numbers--and my very highest grade was a 73.  And when we've been doing math and I've been asking them how they added a number, looking to discuss some mental addition strategies, I haven't found a single kid who can go beyond "I counted in my head."
     So, as I was saying, we've got a lot of work ahead of us in math.  But here's the thing.  I gave this quiz, and all but one student made at least a C!  I had three 100s and a whole bunch of As.  I taught...and they LEARNED!
     Which I guess is the whole point of this blog.  I mean, I didn't do anything exceptional to teach this.  We used counters to practice commutative and associative properties, and I let them use Twizzlers to make the parentheses for associative.  Then we did a couple of word problems and talked together about what property the word problem showed.  I put them in partners and let them do a few more of those on their own while I pulled about 6 kids who still didn't get it and worked with them in a small group.  Then I gave them the quiz.  And they ROCKED it!  And I LOVED it!   It just felt so great to be successful at what I was teaching, to have what I work so hard at add up into something good.  It might not have been anything spectacular, but it worked.
     I put their graded quizzes into their homework folders to take home today.  One little girl came up to me and said, "Ms. Haines, I did so good on that quiz!  It was so EASY!"  What makes that so great is that she's one of my most struggling math kids.  And what a few days ago she had no idea about, is now way easy.