38: It Was A Good Day

It wasn't a great night with my Dodgers on the brink of elimination,

but today was a new day.

Started off with a free breakfast (Bryce) and ice coffee for educators

from McDonalds.

Then was sad to see the demise of our canopy.

Apparently the Dodgers' bats were not the only casualty of the crazy wind last night.

But the day took a turn for the better.

Today, I wanted students to practice counting, number sense, and understand that print carries a message. 

I wasn't so concerned that students had 1 to 1 correspondence for their Tree Count Book.

My main objective was for students to understand the meaning of a written numeral.

I just love to let them go and just observe.

So much learning on my part by just observing...

I noticed that after guiding S through the first 2 pages, he took over the process and complete the last two on his own.

I noticed that although my main instructions were to draw a tree with a trunk and leaves,

some students gave me more, applying what we had learned about trees so far.

M drew roots on his trees!

I video my students a lot.

The videos provides data that I share with families on ClassDojo instantly.

And sometimes,

if I am lucky,

I catch a wonderful surprise!

Today as I taped F working on her book,

I saw her monitor and check her work

and then she independently added what she was missing,

and she checked again! 

In those few seconds,

I was able to access her knowledge of number sense

more deeply than I would have if she just filled out a sheet.

She was using strategies on her own!

Oh, and the Dodgers lived to see another game in October.

It was a good day.