Today I want to share with you some of the joy that makes me smile on a daily basis as principal.  One of our teachers received this email from a student.

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Dear [Teacher Name],

I bet we've all thought about how we're gonna try and catch me up.  I missed a few days because I was sick.  So there’s probably stuff to do that i missed, like a new skill in math.  Maybe crushing decimals and fractions with bricks (because we've done a variety of stuff with those two numbers).  I would rather do 1 on 1 with you than get 20 lbs of homework.  So maybe we can do some catching up in class, or extra homework. Thanks for your time.     

[Student Name]

The student followed up with the teacher in person today and said, “I hope you know that the 20lbs of homework comment in my email to you was an exaggeration.  You would never give that much homework, but sometimes exaggerations are not understood through email. I just want to make that clear.” 

On the subject of math, here’s a great resource of sentence starters to support mathematical discourse.

My own 5th grader asked me, over homemade sliders on Tuesday, how the fraction ½ could actually be considered 1 divided by 2 or how fraction ¼ is considered 1 divided by 4.  She said her peers were telling her this was true and it just didn’t make sense.  While I could have drawn a circle and shown the 1 circle divided into two parts, I thought I might need to try something different with Sammi’s sometimes very concrete thinking.  I got a scratch paper and said, “Well, let’s try dividing 1 by 2 and see what happens.”  We performed the calculation through the traditional algorithm and out came .5.  Her eyes widened.  We then did the same for 1 divided by 4 and out came .25.  We related this to a dollar, a 50 cent piece, and a quarter.  Her response was, “Math is magical!  This is why I love it.”

While I didn’t probe with any of the awesome questions in this resource, the next time I will!

And back to that charming student who stole my heart by proactively reaching out to his teacher about how to catch up due to his absences…

Each and every one of our Almond students is absolutely amazing!  Thank you for sharing your children with us.  They are incredible human beings who make this world a wonderful place.