MCC Friday Reflections

I could just see the top of the desk.   I was five years old.   I had to keep rising up on my tipee-toes to get a good look at what my older sister was doing.   It was my first Thanksgiving Break as I was a kindergartner.   The light shone on the paper as my sister wrote the letter. When she summoned me into her room I hadn’t a clue as to what she was up to.   She was my senior by seven years and in my mind she knew everything.   I caught glimpses of what she was up to and saw that she was intent on her task.   She wrote with what seemed like ease and grace to me…I longed to be able to write someday.   “What do you want for Christmas?” she asked, “from Santa” she added. “Santa?” I replied, “You’re writing to Santa?” Without missing a beat I told her that I wanted an “Oscar the Grouch” puppet.   She obliged and wrote it down. That’s all I can recall of that time with my sister, writing to Santa. I don’t remember anything else...

I have three young children (ages 6, 5 and 3).  One first grader and two pre-schoolers.  I look forward to sitting down to dinner with my young family each night, listening to the chatter, enjoying the food.  During the school week my wife and I usually ask our kids what they did in school that day.  From Henry and Ella, our youngest, we usually get the same responses..."recess, play-doh, job of the day"; from Ava we get a bit more but she seems to "forget" what she's done just hours earlier.  We kind of expect these responses but ask nonetheless--if for nothing else than to establish a pattern of expectations.  Expectations for our kids to think about their day at school, share the day's events, and hopefully gain an appreciation of other people's days. Since we aren't getting a whole lot of information thus far in their formative years, I try and make it a point each night at bath time (I give the baths as my wife gets th...

    The above picture was actually created by the class during math. We're starting a new unit and the concept is "Decimals and their Uses". Whenever I begin a new unit (especially in math) I try to ascertain how much my students already know about the content. This guides my starting point for teaching, insuring that I am not wasting their time or mine by teaching them something they already know. Those ideas are best left for a quick review rather than a full-blown lesson. There are several ways to determine the "pulse" of a class in terms of a certain unit of study; you can have them complete a K-W-L chart (what do I " K now", what do I " W ant" to know, and what did I " L earn"?), or you can give them a pretest on the concepts that will be taught and learned. You could have an informal discussion, asking them to talk to you or each other about the topic at hand. Or you could "Wordle". Wordle is a c...