October 26th, 2023

Today I was at my old elementary school, Silver Lake Elementary, teaching Mrs. Vietti's 2nd grade class. It was so weird to be back. Especially to be back teaching students when I haven't even graduated high school yet. As I was walking back, all the memories just started flooding back anf it was a little overwhelming. When I got to Mrs. Vietti's class, I realized that her class was my old 4th grade classroom and it just felt like a full circle moment. This class was at a different point in their curriculum. Today they were focussing on comparing 3 digit numbers and plotting them on a number line and I had 3 different activities for them. This class was special because there were a few students who spoke little English and even though I took 10 years of Spanish, I was a little rusty, so I had to dig deep for my Spanish skills with this one. 

I started by doing a group demonstration. I used some small orange disks that I borrowed from our soccer coach to make the ends of my number line. I then used 2 students per demonstration. I started by giving one student a whiteboard with a 3 digit number, lets say it was 384. The next student would get a different 3 digit number, lets say 493. I then opened it up to the class to determine where the second student should stand. Should they be on the left of student number1, indicating it was bigger then their number, or the right, indicating it was smaller. They really like this, and they had a really fun time directing which side of the student they should stand on.

The next activity was their favorite. I went around to each student and whispered a 3 digit numer in their ear, some in Spanish (I was proud of myself), and told them to write the number down but don't let anyone see it. Once all the students had their number, they had to organize themselves from least to greatest, but the catch was that they couldn't talk, so they had to use hand motions or simple show their number and decide. I was a little nervous about this activity with students this young but they absoutlye crushed it. You could kind of tell the ones who stepped up to be leaders and help out, but they all did so great. At the very end when they had successfully completed it, they all cheered and high fived each other which I though was absolutely adorable. 

The last activitiy I had for them was a little game with placing 3 digit numbers on a number line. For this one I really wanted them to have 9-sided dice so I had to borrow some of my friend's DnD dice and even buy a cheap set of my own just to make sure their were enough for each students. I had them get into partners and all they had to do was roll the dice 3 times to create a 3 digit number and then plot it with an expo marker on some laminated number lines that I made for them. Then, whoever had the bigger number won. I had them do 10 rounds of this since it went by pretty quickly and it worked out really well timing wise. 

I had such a blast getting to go back and teach at SLE and I'm so happy that my lesson went well and the kids had such a great time with them. I will be sending out another round of emails to teachers to see when I can teach another lesson, but in the mean time, I need to study for my calculus test!! :)