Math+Chat+-+Second+Grade

     ==    __Welcome to our On-line Reflection Meeting! To add text, simply click on "Edit this Page" and start typing. Please be sure to sign your name or initials to your comments. The goal of this is for you to place comments that will help us teach the math program more effectively.__       == = __enVision Topic 1: Understanding Addition and Subtraction - 8 days__ = 

**__enVision Topic 2: Addition Strategies - 9 days__**
[|ddbroussard] Well....I taught this today and the discussion went really well, but the transfer to paper - not so great. I will have 4 or 5 intervention kids tomorrow. Usually I only have 2. The same kids did well on the lesson before, Making 10 to Add 9, but somehow they missed the boat on this one. I'll fix that tomorrow. :o) Personally I think lessons 2-6 and 2-7 should have come before 2-5, but that is just my opinion. Have a great evening! D'Nita

I agree with d'nita about the intervention kids. It seems that mine are the same 2-3 each time. They really caught on to the concept of making 10 easier than i thought they might. It was exciting to see how resilient they really are! We are getting in to the groove of the program with structure and routine. memmert

My topic 2 comments.

BSQUIER

I needed 2 days to introduce and familarize the students with ten frames. I feel the pacing is fast for some of our learners. I get frustrated with not having enough time to teach the skills to fill in the gaps, before I need to teach the skill required.

I am doing topic 2 test online and on paper. The tests are completely different. However the skills tested are the same. I like this because it assigns the online tutoring for the specific skill the specific student needs. It will also give you an cummulative excel spreadsheet that will keep track of the testing that your students do. It will also give you item analysis which allows you to track certain difficulties your class might be having as a whole, or a question that might not be quiet right.

slandry My only concerns have been concerning some of the quick check items. How we teach it is not always how it is shown on the quick check in the problem solving question at the end of each page. Most of them are pretty clear and mirror exactly what we taught. But I thought the last one for quick check 2-5 did not mirror how we taught it. We taught them to pick and circle the 2 numbers they wanted to add first. According to the quick check, they should have written separate number sentences for those numbers and then show adding that last addend. That is not how those problems were done for the first four problems or on the independent practice. My students rewrote the main sentence in a different order and circled different numbers that they could start with. They correctly answered the overall sentence. I accepted that as that's what they practiced doing the most. It's a little confusing. On another note, I will be trying to test my kids on the computer for topic 3 to get in that routine.

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I am loving how topic 3 is going. My students seem to be able to take what they learned of math strategies on topic 2 addition and keep applying them as we go into the subtraction. One thing I find a bit off, about the program is that we were told the only manipulatives we would need were provided, but the lessons call for more. I am substituting other manipulatives, however I think it would go easier if it matched the book. It is a logistics issue. ======

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I have enjoyed Topic 3. However, I am concerned about many of the quick checks having problems on them that the students have never worked in the lesson and yet that defines what homework I give them as well as the next days center activity. Also, today on Topic 3-6 the lesson is about solving a two step story problem by using the answer to one question to find the answer to the other question. The quick check had a graph for them to pull information from and they had to find missing addends to work the problems- which is fine, but the Guided and Ind. Practices never set up any problems the way Quick Check wanted to see them do it. I think just about my whole class will need intervention tomorrow. I am suppose to give the Topic 3 Test tomorrrow and feel uneasy about doing so. I suggest 2 days on this lesson. Also, my students wanted to make a related subtraction/ addition sentence to go with the first number sentence no matter what the second part of the story asked. Great strategy from prior lessons but it can't be used in this lesson. I had to really teach them to read the second part and write numbers that related. They were also asked to write a 2 step story problem and boy was that a fiasco. Need more practice! ======

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Michele I agree with you completely on the 3-6 quick check! It did not match the lesson at all! My students seem to be doing really well with this unit. Many of them are switching back and forth from adding on to subtract or actually subtracting. But they are able (for the most part) to write related addition and subtraction sentences. I have to admit I'm not always crazy about the homework for the kids who have the reteaching side. There have been a couple of instances where they have only 2 problems to work out and the other students have like 5 or six! To me it's not really comparable or fair. Thankfully, I've not had parents question me on this. They seem nervous but willing to just work with me. The practice pages, to me, seem to be pretty much on target with what the lesson taught and even finds ways of challenging them and they enjoy it a little. I'm going to give the topic test tomorrow depending on how a quick review goes. And I'm thinking about trying the computer version as well. Fingers crossed! ======

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My students seemed to "flow" easier with topic 3...or I was flowing better. 3-6 was an unexpected glitch in my flowing. The students were somewhat confused with the actual physical seperation but not that the story continued on. Once they understood this, it went somewhat better...until 3-6 quick check! Enough said! The Guided practice and Ind. practice did not prepare them for this. ======

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Topic 3 has flowed easier for me...maybe it's becoming more comfortable with the program. The kids have really been catching on to missing addends and taking addition problems and turning them into subtraction. Making the connection with 'how many more' and only having addition problems to choose from has thrown them off some. They have only, up to this point, done subtraction with that wording.====== memmert

ps...lesson 3-5 has a mistake in the student TAKS book. as i was teaching mrs. cullen was in here and we were all confused because what we were looking at was different than what was being asked for. it was confusing to us all.

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__** enVision Topic 4: Place Value Numbers to 100 - 11 day **__ topic four has gone pretty easy. the kids have a good base of understanding when it comes to place value, greater than, less than, and hundreds charts. ======

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they get confused some on patterns. i don't think it is necessarily a problem in knowledge but a lack of believing they know the right info. they just have to reword sometimes to fit their knowledge to answer the questions that go with our lesson. ======

the only other issue has been the spellings of the number words. we have had a chart to refer to help as they are getting used to spelling these. but the knowledge is there! yeah!!
memmert

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Topic 4 definately has flowed much easier...kudoos to first grade teachers because my class had a FANTASTIC knowledge base of tens and ones. The charts were a little confusing to them on the lesson that contained the "teens" section. They all said.."three columns make hundreds. I have never seen a teens column! " We discussed it and I made some clarification. It wasn't anything that we got stuck on. My only concern is from lesson 4-10. It seems to me that ALL children struggle with word problems...I would have liked to have had more time or concentration on these types of problems. One reason is that the TAKS test contains alot of them. I hope that we incorporate a strategy that we ALL use soon. C>U>B>E>S or anything else that can be used across the grade levels. The children really respond to these types of teaching techniques. We have been talking about incorporating something like that for about 3 years now...Let's deside and do it! Keep up the great work second grade teachers. You are all awesome and are working sooooooo hard. I am grateful to be a part of such a supportive team!====== TBoat... __**Benchmark 1 Thoughts:**__

__**Topic 5:**__ I was amazed how well my kids did with money and really seemed to enjoy it. We used lots of manipulatives and they really had fun. I had my concerns because it threw in the .50 cent piece and adding quarters to that pretty quick. Since we hadn't taught two digit addition I wasn't sure they would catch on but they did. My topic test scores were really good. m. emmert


 * __Topic 6:__**

__**Topic 7:**__

__**Topic 8:**__