Division Work

Today, I had a day off from work after two evenings of parent-teacher conferences.

I visited the girl's school today because she wanted to show me how she and her friends were dividing a six-digit dividend by a single-digit divisor using the "racks & tubes," a Montessori math material.

It was great to see the girls working together to master the process. The classroom is delightful, with mixed-ages working on totally different things. When they asked for help, the teacher came and sat in front of their work, backed turned to the rest of the class. It is really a different model than traditional school where everyone does the same thing at the same time and the teacher is a task master.

I brought a lesson to give to the 3rd grade students. It was about the pattern you can see when moving from one square number to the next. They made predictions based on the pattern. It was fun.

Picked up the boy from school and took him out to lunch at the pizza cart next door.

Went back to the girl's school for an interview with a teaching candidate for a new upper elementary classroom. She was a lovely person. Really poised and precise with the language of her ideas.

Thankful for a sunny, busy first day of spring break!