Math Monday - PD Book Review Month-to-Month Guide

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I just finished reading Second Grade Math  A Month-to-Month Guide by Nancy Litton.  I know I'm always need for a great read about mathematics when it's published by the Math Solutions group with the forward coming from Marilyn Burns herself.  As the title indicates, Nancy takes the reader through an entire school year with ideas and suggestions month by month.  I've been teaching for quite some time and still find nuggets of goodness to walk away with.  The first chapter actually address your classroom set up, organization, and routines before the children arrive.  It's reaffirming as an educator to find suggestions I had in place and to discover ideas with a more sophisticated twist for second graders.  I will definitely do a name sort with a Venn diagram looking at syllables and letters in the name at the same time on the first day of school next year.  I  implemented our morning routine right away to include Today's Number Routine, a book about equations.  What struck me the most as I read this book, was the amount of time needed in second grade for developing place value, addition and subtraction understandings with students.  This book was written before the Common Core Standards came to be and these three areas should of been dominating our focus back then, also.  There are several math games my students are loving and quite engaged with that I've chosen to use in class and then have them shared at home as part of our Family Math program.  Another idea from the month of April, was to do a graph with how many letters are in your name but to take it a step further; which letter is used most often in our first names.  Writing about our math process and thinking is a piece of each activity and each activity is centered around the mathematical processes which is the heart and soul of applying mathematics.  If you are looking for a book to anchor your thinking and math workshop then I would suggest any of the books in this series.

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