Of all the days to hear that old comment...

I was chatting with someone this evening and the conversation turned to jobs. When I said that I was a teacher, I was given the traditional response, "Boy, it must be nice to have the summers off." This comment doesn't really bother me because, well, yeah, it is nice. But I did have to chuckle that I got to hear that comment today, of all days, because today I was at work 😀

Today was the first of two days of some summer training prior to school starting up. As I mentioned in my last post, we have some math and reading business to take care of. Well, today was math. Lots of new things on the horizon. Our math curriculum, Math Expressions, has a new version coming out, so we met with a few representatives of the publishing company. I won't bore you with all the details, but it was nice to see some of the changes. A good portion of our time today was spent learning about the updated technology features that go along with the curriculum.

Another topic of discussion today was math fact fluency. I am part of a math committee that helped to organize a new resource for the elementary staff to help build up the students' skills with math facts. We met during the school year and a few times over the summer to put everything together, and today was the roll out for the rest of the staff. If you aren't aware, 3rd grade is a big transition year for learning multiplication, so this will be a nice resource to have.

Our final topic of discussion today was Daily 3. Daily 3 is an organizational structure for how math class operates. Last year I began using the Daily 5 structure for reading, so I am really excited to make this change for my math block. I have a couple of colleagues who piloted Daily 3 last year, and they were really happy with how it went. I'm especially excited about the Daily 3 structure because I think it will work well the redesigned look of my classroom thanks to some generous donations from Donors Choose, but I'll save that for another post.

Enjoy what's left of your summer...I know I will!

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