A rare evening post

- October 01, 2015

Michaelmas daisies

Today was so warm! It cannot be 1 October. It can't. It is more like mid-June. Not a cloud in the sky there was plenty of early morning fog which was the only nod to the season - the entire Belfast Lough was filled in with marhymallows - it was like a bowl of fluffy cream.

So!!! Now that i am raring to go - tomorrow there will be more house cleaning and then i will sit down and look at the things i am not able to do. Now that the routine is more or less up and running i can tweak it to a more realistic level. I am not getting out to run at all so Saturday will see me start this again. And Sunday i am going for a walk in the Mournes. Then i will start riding again on Wednesday. It's all going great. I am managing to get up at 5 ish - tho this morning i slept in till 6.15... the quiet mornings, oh i love them.

I began fractions yesterday. I was really worried because i thought, my god, they are not going to get this. I am going to spend day after day trying to get them to understand why as the number below gets larger the amount gets smaller and why when the number at the top gets larger... well, you know the score. However, the class astonished me by demonstrating that they understood IMMEDIATELY the concept. In fact, one of the students pointed out to me that 1/2, 2/4 and 4/8 were part of the two times tables - after i had shown how they were the same thing - so i could then go quite organically into reducing fractions. Other little miracles - when i did 1/1 a student said, that looks like divide! And as we did the fractal drawing, another student said, i see how form drawing helps us understand maths.

I was also able to say things like... draw a circle and say remember in class One? When we learnt about the sun? How many suns are there? One, they all replied. That's right i said. One. Then when we divide the circle into half - we put 2 at the bottom and one at the top to show that it is one half. But 1/2 + 1/2 = 2/2 = 1... Can i tell you, it was at this exact moment, at this very lesson when i completely understood why we did all the things we had done in all those preceding three years. I was able to draw on everything we had done, especially the trust of the children because we were doing something quite hard, in order to make this as painless a process as possible. I do not know if fractions will continue to be painless, but this was one day when i thought i could feel the angels dancing around the room. Later while we were cooking Tara asked me, Stephanie, why were we doing all that in Class One? You know the sun and all - i said, i think we were learning about the qualities of each number Tara... oh yeah, right... Class One... it seems so so long ago.

So i think i am going to take them as far as adding and subtracting fractions - and then maybe i will do fractions again after Christmas - i will find sometime to then do multiplication and division. When they have all the tables under their belt.

We are reciting the tables repeatedly. Some children have this down to pat. Others are still trying to remember them. But god love these children, they understand why they have to do this and do their best. We do not test them and we do not rank them, we do not use punishments or rewards - all we use is the sheer desire to learn and do. Sometimes there will be those who finish sooner and they get a chance to go out and play early - this gives the others an incentive to get the work done - but they know it has to be done well - or there will be redoing. At the end of the day they are tired - but i like to think also happy.

We have the best fun - i said to the students before we began with the fractions. I am not going to pretend that this is going to be easy. It is not, so i will need your complete attention. I am going to go very slowly, so i apologise to those of you who find it dull, but it is very important that you all understand this because if you don't you will be completely lost when we get to doing more complicated maths. Do not ask me to go to the toilet during the lesson - go before it begins or go after - except if you are really sick. I need you to be here through the entire main lesson and to really really pay attention. Right. Please give me your full attention. If we are ready, we can begin. It has been something awesome to be able to speak to them like this and really now have them there. And they have completely understood that i am now speaking to the thinking part of them - we use manipulatives - we made pizza - but they were ready i could see to start taking the IDEA in. It was a bit sad too, because in this fractions lesson, i realised that the class had grown up. They were no longer the babies i had in Class One - they were in fact, like the Vikings, on their way to seeing the world...