Make Momma Happy

This week, I add another special river stone into my bag of teaching gems. When teaching two and three digit traditional multiplication, I am learning to “clean house and then to “make Momma happy.” The cleaning house refers to erasing the carry-overs from the 1s column to make way for the 10s carry overs in multiplicative factors. With a smiley face filling Momma’s “0” in the ten’s place value, I imagine a happy household as students add their sums. Yet, not everyone is getting along, as one student I work with, keeps repeating the same mistakes. She was forgetting to add what was carried over into the clean house. Perhaps I could remind her, “Did you eat your cookies?” A choral response engages the whole class, “What am I dropping? What am I carrying?” What I enjoy about this vignette is that it makes the math fun. Much like playing a game, a puzzle or a manipulative, it breaks up the routine.

A second realization I am making, is that students may learn more from each other than they will ever learn from their teachers. Effective teaching strategies employ kids learning from kids. Just because a teacher can elaborate to explain the answer to a student’s question in many different ways, doesn’t mean that they should. As teachers, we ask “Who can explain it to Zoë in another way?” Inevitably, a classmate's response is profound, deep, and understood. We engage dialogue between students, we support understanding in their own words, and we validate individual voice as we open opportunity for each student to shine. Leadership is learned. I am happy to be learning from my students just as much as they are learning from each other.

This week, I am also learning to set expectations that encourage participation.  “I am going to call on random students. Be prepared to teach the class.”  “Discuss it with your neighbor and be ready to share.” Not knowing who will be called upon encourages all students to do the work and to be ready with an answer. Another attention getting strategy to be used after small group sharing, is the warm and inviting phrase, “Come back to me 5th graders.” Not surprisingly, it is greeted with a desire to please. Is it any wonder these students love their master teacher? Once she has their attention, she keeps it by saying, “Put your finger on the problem so I know you are following along.” And more often than not, in a well-managed classroom, the kids do. When they pay attention, they discover more on their own. When they scaffold and share, they discover more from each other. And that, truly makes Momma happy.