Class #27--8th Age Math Class

Wednesday, December 8, 12:50 P.M. 8th Age Math Class. Class #27 on my “50 Classes or Bust!” voyage. Fresh off reading 9th Age folders and a delicious lunch in our Lower School cafeteria of chicken pot pie and squash, I am in Mrs. Spadone’s math class. (Did you know Mrs. Spadone graduated from Calvert, in the Class of 1977?) Her eager pupils immediately begin exploring the number line and place value with a “count on” technique. They are mastering the “ones” and “tens” place and what happens to numbers when they are combined. For example, when 3 is added to 28, does the tens place change, the ones place change, or do both change? In this case, both places change and the sum is 31. Mrs. Spadone passes out a bowl of place value blocks to each student. The students place “tens” blocks and “ones” blocks onto a chart after listening to instructions, i.e. when Mrs. Spadone says that a great student received 26 stickers, the boys and girls place two tens rods and six ones blocks onto the correct sections of the paper. Next, Mrs. Spadone unrolls a large “10 x 10” hundreds chart with the numbers 1-100 each occupying an individual block. It serves as a very useful tool in seeing how numbers relate to each other. For example, the chart helps students literally see why and how 55 + 20 = 75. The students, in pairs, then play a game using a smaller, individual version of the hundreds chart. The boys and girls roll dice, and then move a small disk from number to number in accordance with the total shown on the pair of dice. Who will be the first to reach 99? It is interesting to see how some students move (or “count”) one block at a time while others understand how to advance ten spaces, for example, in one fell swoop. The students finish the period by working on a few workbook pages to reinforce the concepts covered in class. At Calvert, we pride ourselves on teaching the fundamentals of education, and today’s lesson was a clear example of the emphasis on two of the key building blocks of mathematics: place value and addition.