Doubles Plus and other shortcuts

One of the things that we must help children do is recognize when to use a particular strategy. For the Doubles Plus One strategy, tell the children "when the numbers are next door neighbors (the numbers are consecutive like 6 and 7) then we can use the doubles plus one strategy."

Doubles Plus Two
If a child is faced with a problem like 5 + 7, think through the same steps as Doubles Plus One except add 2 instead of one. This works for facts that have number that are separated by two.

When helping a child to recognize when to use this strategy tell them to use it "when the numbers are NOT next door neighbors, but two doors down from each other."

Plus 9 Shortcut
If your child is learning a fact like 9 + 5 these are the steps to think through:
* Think 10 + 5 = (which is much easier to add)
* Now minus 1 (Think 15 - 1 + 14)
* Now say the fact: 9 + 5 = 14
* Remind your child that you added 10 + 5 instead of 9 + 5. That's one more than you started with, so you have to take that one away to get to the correct answer.

Minus 9 Shortcut
If your child is trying 17 - 9, these are the steps to think through:
* Change the 9 to 10 ( Think 17 - 10 = 7, which is much easier to subtract)
* Now add 1 ( Think 7 + 1 = 8)
* Now say the fact: 17 - 9 = 8
* Now remind your child that you subtracted 17 - 10 instead of 17 - 9 . That's taking one more away then you started with, so you have to add that one back to get the right answer.

Minus 8 shortcut
If your child is learning 15 - 8, these are the steps to think through:
* Change the 8 to 10 (Think 15 - 10, which is much easier to subtract)
* Now add 2 (Think 5 + 2 =7)
* Say the whole fact now: 15 - 8 = 7
* Remind your child that you took two extra away when you changed to 8 to 10 in the first step, and you must add it back to get the right answer.

What is Multiplication?

Keith Devlin claims

“Multiplication simply is not repeated addition, and telling young pupils it is inevitably leads to problems when they subsequently learn that it is not.”

http://letsplaymath.net/2008/07/28/whats-wrong-with-repeated-addition/

Addition requires identical units.

The sum must always have the same units as the addends.

Multiplication requires different units.

The product does not have the same units as either the multiplier or the multiplicand.

    .

Multiplication: multiplier X multiplicand = product. 

The multiplier and multiplicand have different names, even though many of us have trouble remembering which is which.

• multiplier= “how many or how much”
• multiplicand= the size of the “unit” or “group”

classroom management

A good article about "classroom management".
Some of these ideas may help volunteers at their child's school.

http://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/classroom_qa_with_larry_ferlazzo/2015/01/response_goal_of_classroom_management_is_to_have_power_with_not_over_kids.html

Common Core resources

http://commoncoretools.files.wordpress.com

police were called to a third-grade class party

http://www.philly.com/philly/education/20160629_Why_police_were_called_to_a_South_Jersey_third_grade_class_party.html

On June 16, police were called to an unlikely scene: an end-of-the-year class party at the William P. Tatem Elementary School in Collingswood.

A third grader had made a comment about the brownies being served to the class. After another student exclaimed that the remark was "racist," the school called the Collingswood Police Department, according to the mother of the boy who made the comment.

The police officer spoke to the student, who is 9, said the boy's mother, Stacy dos Santos, and local authorities.

Dos Santos said that the school overreacted and that her son made a comment about snacks, not skin color.

"He said they were talking about brownies. . . . Who exactly did he offend?" dos Santos said.

The boy's father was contacted by Collingswood police later in the day. Police said the incident had been referred to the New Jersey Division of Child Protection and Permanency. The student stayed home for his last day of third grade.

Dos Santos said that her son was "traumatized," and that she hopes to send him to a different Collingswood public school in the fall.

---------------------------------
Why?

According to district officials, the Camden County Prosecutor’s Office (CCPO), has stripped school staff of its authority to investigate any incident that could potentially be deemed a criminal violation, instead ordering the involvement of local law enforcement. The impact of that edict has even kept teachers, aides, and administrators from communicating with children directly about behaviors they may have typically corrected on the spot.

“Their claim is when we investigate on the school disciplinary code, [law enforcement] investigate[s]on the criminal code,” said Collingswood Superintendent Scott Oswald. “If we do ours first, it could interfere with theirs.”

Oswald said that standard has forbidden school staff from doing much more than calling the police for every infraction, no matter how minor, rather than risk failing to follow the statute. For the past several weeks, the first call home about something as routine as a scuffle on the elementary school playground has been made by a Collingswood police officer instead of a representative of the school.

“We were told that if we were deemed to be interfering with an investigation there would be potential criminal consequences for us,” Oswald said, including criminal indictment of school staff or the loss of state licenses.

http://www.njpen.com/police-investigations-mandated-for-discipline-issues-at-collingswood-schools/

XtraMath and touch screens

XtraMath is a program used at my daughter's school to help students remember the answers to number facts quickly. My daughter was using it on a laptop and typing numbers on a QWERTY keyboard was a source of many mistakes for her.

You can purchase an iPad or Android version of XtraMath for an additional fee. Or you can run the chrome web browser as you would on a PC, except the keyboard on the touch screen works. By using the on-screen numeric keypad, my daughter was able to complete a session with no mistakes.

free minecraft server

I am running a free minecraft server for classmates of my daughter.

If you are the parent of an MSJE student, send me an email with the subject "minecraft server" and I'll send you information on how to access it. (if you don't know what MSJE is, you aren't)

There is no official affiliation with the school.

Mission San Jose Elementary Classrooms

The original site seems to consist of:

An administration and kindergarten building. Only one K classroom.
3 wings of 4 classrooms each, labeled from 1-12.
This would mean two classrooms per grade.
Wings 1 and 3 had bathrooms, as well as another set of bathrooms next to the admin building.

A kindergarten classroom was added. It has a bathroom, unlike the first.
This newer classroom is labeled K1 and the original room K2.
A transitional kindergarten classroom was added, labeled 1A.

A total of two additional wings of temporary/permanent portable classrooms were added west of the original 3 wings. These new rooms had far fewer windows.

The first wing, from north to south, holds rooms 13, 14, and 15 in a cluster.
Room 16 is standalone.
Another set of rooms 16A/B/C are also standalone for special services such as the PE instructor, speech therapist and other short term uses.

The final 3 rooms in the first wing of added rooms,, 17, 18, 19 are close together but don't touch.

The final, west-most wing, holds rooms 20 and 21 with a shared wall, rooms 22 and 23 with a shared wall, and room 24, a triple wide, as a standalone. It currently is a science room.

This gives a total of 24 numbered rooms plus K1, K2, and 1A. However, 24 is not a classroom and 1 is used for K. This leaves 22 rooms for grades 1-6. The nominal assignment is 3 rooms per grade so only 18 are needed.

In 2015-16, there were 4 5th grade rooms and 4 6th grade rooms but only 2 2nd grade rooms.
That means 18+1+1-1 = 19 rooms were in use, leaving 3 available for other purposes. They were rooms 4, 6 and 12, one in each of the original wings.

There was a bubble in the kindergarten class of 2013-14 where entry into kindergarten was severely restricted and many qualified families were forced to go to other schools. The kindergarten class of 2014-15 was able to accept all applicants.

liability for negligence

A crucial factor in establishing liability for a slip and fall injury is showing that the defendant had notice of the hazardous condition. Without such notice, no liability will attach. The plaintiff may satisfy this burden by proving actual notice, or by showing constructive notice. 

Actual notice of a particular hazard may also be established through third persons who testify that they warned the defendant directly of the dangerous condition prior to the injury-causing accident. 

http://www.bpslawyers.com/Articles/Actual-Notice-of-Hazardous-Conditions.shtml

Grade 2 - Math - Comparison Bars

This is a list of the cases covered in the video Grade 2 - Math - Comparison Bars.

1. Compare with Difference Unknown (how many more)
   Jeremy has 10 crayons. Amanda has 3.
   How many more crayons does Jeremy have than Amanda?
2. Compare with Bigger Unknown (more)
   Noah has 10 more caps than Ben. Ben has 10 caps.
   How many caps does Noah have?
3. Compare with Difference Unknown (how many fewer)
   Dan reads 9 books. Ana reads 11 books.
   How many fewer books does Dan read than Ana?
4. Compare with Bigger Unknown (fewer)
   Jim has 5 fewer balls than Sadie. Jim has 9 balls.
   How many balls does Sadie have?
5. Compare with Smaller Unknown (more)
   Nike hikes 12 miles. Nick hikes 4 more miles than Zia.
   How many miles does Zia hike?
6. Compare with Smaller Unknown (fewer)
   Jen eats 2 fewer peas than Scott. Scott eats 9 peas.
   How many peas does Jen eat?

A 3rd grade problem

What really happened in the pop tart "gun" incident?

In Anne Arundel, the boy’s disciplinary referral used the word “gun” four times, asserting that the child “chewed his cereal bar into the shape of a gun” and aimed it at other children. The document quoted the boy as yelling, “Look, I made a gun!” It cited classroom disruption as the primary reason for the suspension, and an administrator noted several previous incidents of disruptive behavior near the bottom of the form.

In Nussbaum’s opinion, dated June 26, he rejected arguments from the boy’s family that the school overreacted and that the suspension arose from a bias against guns. The father said he was told the day that the boy was suspended that it was for playing as if he had a gun, not for ongoing problems.

Nussbaum wrote: “As much as the parents want this case to be about a ‘gun,’ it is, rather, a case about classroom disruption from a student who has had a long history of disruptive behavior and for whom the school had attempted a list of other strategies and interventions before resorting to a suspension.”

Nussbaum said he was convinced that “had the student chewed his cereal bar into the shape of a cat and ran around the room, disrupting the classroom and making ‘meow’ cat sounds, the result would have been exactly the same.”

Nussbaum also said he found it troubling that the family allowed news media to attend the student’s hearing, noting the possibility that the child’s reputation would be tarnished.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/hearing-examiner-backs-suspension-of-boy-who-chewed-pastry-into-gun-shape/2014/06/30/f3aee730-004b-11e4-b8ff-89afd3fad6bd_story.html

 “We had not been able to make him understand that he had to follow the rules,” Sandra Blondell, principal at Park Elementary School, testified during an appeals hearing Tuesday that lasted more than six hours in what has become known as “the Pop-Tart case.”

Blondell said that the child, then 7 years old and diagnosed with ADHD, received the two-day suspension after repeated problems and lost instructional time. “This must have been probably the 15th or 20th time there was a classroom disruption,” she said.

At Tuesday’s hearing, school officials said the boy also had nibbled his pastry into a gun shape a day earlier. But his teacher, Jessica Fultz, testified that on that day (the previous day) he was more compliant when admonished. On the day he was suspended, she said, he was not responsive when she told him to stop.

School officials produced a lengthy log of various types of incidents. They argued that they had made many efforts to address the boy’s behavioral issues. The family said they had not seen the list before and had been unaware of a number of the incidents.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/pop-tart-case-gun-appeal-school-officials-say-the-problem-was-ongoing-misbehavior/2014/04/30/c5727900-cc6f-11e3-93eb-6c0037dde2ad_story.html

Lexia Reading Core5 levels

Lexia Reading Core5 levels are organized into grade levels of material:
Pre-K (Level 1),
    K (Levels 2–5),
1st grade (Levels 6–9),
2nd grade (Levels 10–12),
3rd grade (Levels 13–14),
4th grade (Levels 15–16),
5th grade (Levels 17–18).

Student's End-of-Year (EOY) Benchmark is to complete all of the material up to and including the levels that correspond to their grade level.

Strategies for solving subtraction problems in Common Core

from a 1st grade teacher:

We are exploring strategies for solving subtraction problems where the starting amount is a teen number. On Friday we reviewed 3 previously learned strategies and another option. I believe some students had some difficulty with the last option. Here are the strategies we've discussed.

Make a picture. 
Draw circles to show the starting amount. 
Cross out. 
Count what is left.

 This is a level 1 strategy in terms of complexity and would have been first used in kindergarten.

 For the problem 14-8=?, draw 14 circles, cross out 8, count 6 left.

Count on to subtract. 
Count up to the starting amount. 
Use dots or your fingers.

This is a level 2 strategy that is introduced and mastered in first grade. An advantage to this strategy is that it can be done without paper.

For the problem 14-8=?, think 8 + ? = 14
Count on: 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14.
Six counts gets you to 14.

Think addition and make a ten. 
Put up/show the rest. 
See the difference. 
Use dots or your fingers.

​This is a level 3 strategy that is introduced and practiced in first grade. It is practiced and mastered in second grade. (I haven't spoken about the levels with the students or the grade level of mastery.)

For the problem 14-8=?, think about 14 = 10 + 4 and 8 + ?=10.
8 + 2 = 10 and 4 more are needed. 

So 8+2+4=14 or 8+6=14 and 14-8=6.
This strategy, once grasped, is faster because the counting is eliminated (or minimized if one is still counting to make a 10). 

​Subtract across ten. 
Take apart the starting amount in two steps. 
The first step takes it down to ten. 
The second step takes away the rest off of 10.
This level 3 strategy is introduced in first grade, and there is minimal practice. We did it with counters and drawings, but ideally the strategy would be used mentally. This strategy is the most complex because it involves taking apart both the starting amount and the amount being subtracted.

For the problem 14-8=?, first do 14-4 =10 (subtract to 10, an easy problem).
Then, think "I took away 4 of the 8, what is left still to take off the 8?" 4 is left.
Do 10-4=6 (subtract from 10, a second easier problem than the original subtraction problem).

I.e.
14-8 = (14-4) - (8-4) = 10 - 4 = 6

All of these strategies are presented as options to students. They can choose to use any of the strategies.  They are not tested on the strategies themselves. They are asked to solve problems and show their thinking. The current goal is accuracy and understanding. A larger, longer goal is flexibility and efficiency. 

Of course, if someone already knows 14-8=6, then he or she should just write that! Each child can and should use the strategies that make sense to her.