By Jen Tatasciore
Director of Curriculum
We kicked off our inaugural Math Night last week on the evening of Tuesday, October 29. We were thrilled with the turnout and the amount of helpful information the children and teachers shared with the families who attended.
Kindergarten teacher, Valerie Lockhart, walked children and families through math games connected to our new Early Learning and Kindergarten program, Developing Roots. The games focused on building number sense through counting, matching, identifying, ordering, and building numbers. Students also sorted various items by considering a variety of attributes while exposing the children to their first encounter with Venn diagrams.
Second grade students set up math addition strategy games to teach families how they use mental math, number bonds, doubling, and part-whole strategies to explore adding numbers within 1000 with and without regrouping.
Fourth and fifth graders introduced families to the CPA, or Concrete-Pictorial-Abstract, approach while teaching about addition, multiplication, and fractions. Students created a carnival-like atmosphere as families engaged in multi-step problems using bar models, visuals, and manipulatives to solve.
Eighth graders capped off the evening by showcasing the use of algebra tiles to solve algebraic equations. By providing a visual, concrete representation of abstract algebraic concepts, the students showed families how to manipulate and understand ideas like combining like terms, solving equations, factoring polynomials, and the distributive property through a hands-on approach.
All in all, it was a lovely evening of shared learning. For those who were unable to join us that evening, attached are some helpful resources to share some of the key concepts we focused on that evening.
We hope you will all join us again on January 15, 2025 for our second annual Learning in Action event!
Helpful Math Resources
