EUREKA! CGI book!

This three day weekend I decided to clean out a piece of my garage. I said a piece because it is big and because three years ago I moved my house And classrooms at work, yeah the same summer days apart. Two years ago I moved schools and grade levels. I had been a primary teacher forever and moved up to the big leagues to work under an awesome principal. Then this year I am a teacher on assignment, no classroom. Whew! So I have been adding and adding boxes with no time to really go through and organize it. I had two goals one, go through every box on three shelfs and throw away and begin to group and organize. 2nd I have been looking for my Close Reading book by Sundae Cummins that I just skimmed last year and my Extending Children's Mathematics, fractions and decimals book by Epsom and Levi. 

Well, I have not found the books yet! But I did find some amazing work my second graders had done with CGI and problem solving. So, I ordered the book with my amazon prime account💜💜💜. Never thought I would love paying 79 dollars but I do 💜Amazon Prime. The book arrived the next day. What! Who is, How is Amazing I love it. I worked on the garage and hung out with my kids. Then Hunkered down with my long lost book. Um, I thought I would re read a few chapters I needed to help some teachers with coaching questions from last week. No, read it cover to cover taking notes and sticky notes. This is amazing. It really brings back the idea that we need to invest in training teachers not to learn how to deliver instruction based on another's curriculum but to learn content and curriculum in deep rich way like modeling the CCSS. I relearned so much and made powerful connections to Liping Ma' s work. 

I was trying to share the idea that I learned from her to some kindergarten teachers that we cannot just learn place value we need to learn it and understand that the teaching of conceptual place value leads to deep understanding of fractions and decimals, it is part of a package we are teaching and to teach only in the context of the k/1 standards does not address the package. Here is a peek at a math package.

  I now have examples and quotes to support this thought. I highly recommend this book for both primary and upper grade teachers. It is awesome  and has inspired some new thinking more post will follow with all the ideas that have bubbled up from this night of reading, the best part of this reading was me and my third graders trying to solve the problems together, she loved it and was thrilled that she was working with fractions in advanced ways. Great read. Have a happy 3 day!