CGI

I know most of my posts have been about literacy, but....I am also a math teacher! I know,  big surprise! I have started taking a 3 year course called CGI or Cognitively Guided Instruction. It has really changed the way I teach math. It involves a lot of problem solving and a different way of thinking about numbers. When we talk about putting kids in a sense of disequilibrium when we are teaching them that is exactly how CGI makes me feel. But the thinking coming out of my kids..amazing!

Well we were continuing that journey this week. At CGI this week we were focusing on 2 digit addition and fact fluency.  To give you a little background any time I have ever gone to CGI it has been complete brain overload! I seriously have a enormous headache after each day....tears....frustration. It totally puts you in the perspective of your "kids." I totally feel their pain! Well I was really ok until they started talking about negative numbers in 1st and 2nd grade...then the pain began again! I just don't think I am ready for that....


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The 2nd day we worked on fact fluency. It was really great! It totally helped to tie some loose ends together. I saw a teacher do a number talk and see all the amazing ways different children solve problems and how to push them to the next level without actually telling them how to solve the problem. We learned how to give a math fact inventory to see exactly how they solved the problems. It was something I went back and tried in my classroom the next day! It is definitely a journey, but I think that it will be worth the work.