At TVCS, we use a combination of math curriculum and tools to meet each student's learning needs at their individual learning level to get them as close as possible to mastering all of the common core standards in math.

Our primary math curriculum is The Investigations curriculum.  

Six major goals guided the development of Investigations. The curriculum is designed to:

• Support students to make sense of mathematics and learn that they can be mathematical thinkers
• Focus on computational fluency with whole numbers as a major goal of the elementary grades
• Provide substantive work in important areas of mathematics—rational numbers, geometry, measurement, data, and early algebra—and connections among them
• Emphasize reasoning about mathematical ideas
• Communicate mathematics content and pedagogy to teachers
• Engage the range of learners in understanding mathematics.

Underlying these goals are three guiding principles that are our touchstones as we approach both students and teachers as agents of their own learning:

• 1. Students have mathematical ideas. The curriculum must support all students in developing and expanding those ideas.
• 2. Teachers are engaged in ongoing learning about mathematics content and about how students learn mathematics. The curriculum must support teachers in this learning.
• 3. Teachers collaborate with the students and curriculum materials to create the curriculum as enacted in the classroom. The curriculum must support teachers in implementing the curriculum in a way that accommodates the needs of their particular students.

This was our last week of math journals. We spent some time looking back at all the math problems we have solved. We are excited to take our journals home with us this summer.

As you may know, we often follow the Investigations curriculum in math. We have incorporated components of this curriculum into all parts of our day. Below are four primary goals of the curriculum:

• 1) to offer students meaningful mathematical problems,
• 2) to emphasize depth in mathematical thinking rather than superficial exposure to a series of fragmented topics,
• 3) to communicate mathematics content and pedagogy to teachers,
• 4) to substantially expand the pool of mathematically literate students.

This week was full of fun math experiences again! We had math journals on Tuesday and Thursday, and always enjoy the independent time to be able to solve a problem using the method and pace that each of us needs. We also had a fun Shape Party to bring a close to our study of shapes. Every party here in Kindergarten involves food, and so we each got a bag full of goodies and had to place each piece of food on the correct shape, both 2-D and 3-D shapes were options. We also had plenty of practice with subtraction in centers this week playing "Egg Carton Math."  The Black Bats have a fundamental understanding that unlike addition, subtraction can be tricky and that the "bigger, bossier number has to be in front, or else the problem will not work. We are so proud of how far they have come with math this year. 

A new concept was introduced to The Black Bats this week, and we are mostly investigating it at morning meeting, at group activities, and ticket to Toyko. We are starting to learn about the concepts of more than or less than, and higher than lower. We have two goals. Students need to identify numbers as being higher or lower than each other in terms of just looking at numerals. The other goal is for them to understand the relationship in terms of quantities. For example, when looking at the numbers 16 and 22, imagine something....pennies, candies, etc. That helps students visualize more and less.

One part of math curriculum in this Kindergarten room is the beloved Math Journals. It is loved for many reasons. It belongs to only them, they are responsible for their own work, they thrive on the expectation for it to be used properly and the rules of "Math journal time" to be followed, and they can incorporate their own unique interests into each entry. Each "prompt" is a story problem really, and asks for the problem to be solved. That is it. Some kids write a math sentence, the answer and they are done. Others write words or tally marks to arrive at the answer. For others, they need a picture, and color, and more detail. "Math is not just....math, you can find your answer in the way you are most comfortable. For me, that is drawing!" - Sorayah.

Our study of shapes has moved into the newest realm - discovering the 3rd dimension! This concept is a double edged sword, because it can be foreign and overwhelming for kids to think of a square becoming a cube, but the real life connections such as picturing a box makes so much sense. We have pulled our 3-D wooden blocks to the carpet for some exploration, incorporated them into centers, and have used them as the topic for ticket to Tokyo.