Mike and Kendra teach fifth grade math. Julia and Hannah teach fourth. Teachers mix up their partnerships so we always have a homeroom teacher with each of the students. Julia and Kendra’s Strawberry Creek blog (jshields@theberkeleyschool.org and kcass@theberkeleyschool.org) is just a click away (at the top of the page) for day-to-day information on fourth-grade math.
Throughout the year, I find myself repeating the following tenets to math students:
- Seize the opportunity to be wrong and learn from it. Wrong answers are often more valuable than correct ones.
- Everyone is a mathematician. Forget about what you thought before.
- Mathematicians are lazy.
- Show your work.
- Math is patterns.
- We will develop habits and patterns of thinking this year to help you solve math problems, so every problem doesn’t feel new.
We will teach eight units per grade in the Bridges in Mathematics curriculum this year outlined below. This curriculum is new at TBS in 2017-18, so students will be adapting to the routines particular to the program, and each year will be better accustomed to them than the last. Many of the other local independent schools use and like this curriculum; we are excited about its implementation, especially for the continuity and cohesiveness of the student experience.
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