[LivieLou]

We have adopted this program in our district this year and will have a 3 hour training before school starts. I am not sure if 3 hours will be enough time to figure it out. Also, we are not allowed to go through the materials we have recieved at our school until the training so I do not have a clue what it entails.

The questions I have are:
Does this program have specific skills they want you to address at calendar?
How to you fit in the workbook? I am not a big fan of workbooks for the little ones.
Are there a lot of math games/manipulative activities?

Thanks in advance!

[s315399]

Lucky you getting a training! They just handed us the box and that was it, lol.

The program has a unit (Topic 15) that is all about calendar but I haven't come across anything as far as a daily canlendar routine - I'm planning on continuing what I did last year with my students. As far as games and manipulatives go it's wonderful! Each lesson has a workmat with hands on activities. There is also a CD with the student workmats on it so if you have a projector you can do a guided practice on your board. It has some great game ideas too. I started my students off with ordinal numbers and they had a lot of fun playing the center time games.

As far as workbooks go I like how it is set up. Every lesson has one page, on the front is a reteaching sheet and on the back is practice. I had 5 students who were still struggling with ordinal numbers so I pulled them and did a few games and then worked through the reteach with them. On Monday I am going to have them try the practice on their own. I'm with you, I really don't like workbooks and probably won't use them except for reteaching purposes when necessary.

Good luck, I hope you like it as much as I do!

[oeoeo]

After 5 days with it I can say I do not like it. It has directions that are confusing to my little ones. It asked them to draw triangles and circles to show how they sorted. My kiddos can barely hold a pencil much less draw a triangle. I guess it depends on the students.

I don't like how the manipulites are introduced. I believe they need a little time to "mess around" with manipulatives before being asked to work with them.

I hope you have good luck with it and I hope it gets better for me.

[s315399]

I agree with giving them a chance to just mess around with the manipulatives. I've been using mine as morning work just to give them a chance to explore the tools. And I'm on your side that having them draw shapes is silly - we haven't even really learned about the triangle yet and here I am making the try to draw a triangle that wind up looking like a cross between a square and a circle, lol. My kids just sorted, no drawing. I'm sure the parents would rather be able to see what their child did but if it's not age or developmentally appropriate we just don't do it.

[LivieLou]

Thank you both for your responses. We don't start until August 29th so I will not have any practical experience until then. I hope I like it and it works well for the kiddos.

Thanks again!

[k teach]

We adopted this program for this school year. I have been through two trainings and still had some confusion when implementing the lessons. There are a lot of worksheets, like the spiral review and quick check, that I am struggling to work through. Someone on proteacher or a blog said they do the worksheets in small group while other students are in math centers. I think that would work best. Keep us posted.

[oeoeo]

When we said it looks like a lot for each day we were told that since each day is broken down into 4 sections that "2 and 3 were key" and "1 and 4 are more" (extra)

[YankeeDoodle7]

We just adopted this program too. So far, I find it very confusing to use. It is VERY poorly organized. I teach 3rd grade, so it may be much different for you, but I have to go from book A, to a pouch of loose papers, and then to book B, just to figure out what to do for one lesson!

Maybe I'll like the series once I can figure out how the darn thing works!

It does have a lot of games.