Step into Second Grade: Meticulous Measurers

2B has been buzzing each day at 1:00. Sometimes, learning is loud...it's loud in a fluttering-with-activity kind of way. It's loud with a sense of urgent movements as students parade around fitted with rulers, metersticks, and yardsticks. It's loud with a "oh!! Let's see how many meters long the SMART Board is!" kind of way. So, while personally I am a proponent of calm and quiet focus, I can still appreciate the messy, somewhat raucous-but meaningful-thinking, talking, and doing that has gone down in 2B over the past two weeks.

On Friday, students were addressed in the Morning Message as "Meticulous Measurers." They read on to learn that the word "meticulous" means "careful." We have measured objects in our room--and a few at home--in inches, feet, yards, meters, and centimeters. Students are learning the business of careful measuring. They are learning to slow themselves down and appreciate the precision required in actually measuring as well as the reasonableness that a good estimate should have. Students are showing evidence of visualizing units of measurement in their head.

I know this because I ask them to estimate before they measure anything and then, they can bet that I'll ask "why does that estimate make sense?" or "how do you know that's a good estimate?" I gently nod and offer a smile as I watch the wheels turning in their head, putting together an explanation of the fact that they visualized "what a ruler looks like" to help them make a thoughtful guess. These kinds of justifications of mathematical thinking are challenging for our second graders to work through and verbalize, but they are making gains in doing so.

Enjoy some pictures of our busy classroom during math!