one of the core aspects of the Math in Focus philosophy: less emphasis as placed on the end result than students being able show their thought process. At the second grade level, this means topics like multiplication are covered on a much deeper scale than before. In other words, the days of memorizing times tables and scrambling to fill out sheets of assorted problems in under a minute are gone--the typical lesson now consists of dissecting these problems, making connections, and piecing them back together.
A Different Approach
On this particular day, Little begins the lesson by taking her students through some warm up exercises. First, they count off by twos, fives, and tens. Then, she wheels over a large number chart and calls on students to do the same, writing their sequences beneath the chart.
One girl, when asked to show skip-counting by fives, mistakenly leaves out all the multiples of ten, only writing the numbers that end in five (5, 15, 25...). Little does not intervene, allowing the girl to finish her sequence before asking her to go back and take another look. She quickly realizes her mistake and corrects the sequence. This instance, Little says, illustrates another component of the Math in Focus philosophy: allowing students to learn from their mistakes.
The Charger, April '16
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Second graders Sadie Mason, Duncan Jones, and Bailey Key work on math problems. Photo by: Matt Bowling
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