I don’t know about you, but I am often hard on myself. I will have a plan perfectly laid out in my head, and when I do not follow through on it or need to alter it, I beat up on myself.
It’s exhausting. I exhaust myself.

Today, I am making an effort to speak nicely to myself throughout the day. I am cheering myself on despite the persistent negative voice. This morning, I praised myself for having gas in the car, having my lunch prepared, and leaving early enough to get to work on time (not early). I said, “Danielle, you’re doing a great job. Keep going.”

I could beat up on myself, but that’s the lazy way out. Being negative is easy.

Praising myself and remembering I am worth it requires energy and effort. The people around me are worth it, too.
I am no good to myself or others when I condemn myself for acting like a human being.

Talk nicely to yourself; you are worth it. Your joy brings joy to others, your self-confidence makes others more confident, and your appreciation for life helps others appreciate life, too.

Have a beautiful week, you’re worth it.

The first—and second-grade Numbers and Operations in Base Ten  #1 (NBT) standards require students to understand place value and use it to add and subtract.

The NBT standards describe place value as bundles of ten and bundles of 100. It is not described as knowing the difference between the ones place and the tens place.

First-grade students are to see the number 51 as
51 ones
5 tens and one one
or three tens and 21 ones

Second-grade students are to see that 132 is equal to
100 + 30 + 2
or 13 tens and two ones
or 132 ones.

It is critical for first—and second-grade students to understand place value at a deep level. Focusing on one’s place and tens
place is highly superficial and has little positive effect on long-term success in mathematics.

How might second graders solve the problem below, if they understand place value.

(NBT #5) Mrs. Mack has 230 pencils. She wants to put 10 pencils into each pencil box. How many pencil boxes will she need?

230 = 200 + 30
20 tens + 3 tens= 23 tens or 23 boxes with ten in each box

230 = 100 + 100 + 30
10 tens + 10 tens + 3 tens

How might students with a superficial understanding of place value solve the problem?

*If you give students base ten blocks to solve the problem, I highly recommend not giving everyone the same amount or the same denominations. Giving them different denominations becomes an authentic opportunity for students to use various combinations to reach the given amount. Some students may use only tens and ones, others may use hundreds, tens, and ones, and others may use only hundreds and ones.  

Flexibility and the diversity of approaches allow different perspectives to be seen, heard, and learned from.

Create a mathematical statement that describes the following expressions:

4 × (18,932 + 921)

7 + (5 × 12) ─ 4

Create an equation that accurately represents the mathematical statements:

Twelve times the sum of 5 and 7

The difference
between the product of 7 and 9 and the sum of 12 and 5?

Second-grade teachers, you are the last stop on the train before the numbers students calculate become significantly larger.  Students will need an understanding of place value to use it strategically to solve complex problems.

Students also need a strong understanding of place value to solve problems involving decimals of tenths, hundredths, and thousandths, which rely deeply on students’ knowing how to make groups of tens and hundreds.

When I see fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh-grade students struggling, I can almost always make a direct connection to the NBT standards in the first and second grades.

For example, fourth graders must know that 4,000 is ten times as much as 400. I can draw a direct line back to the second-grade standards.

Fourth and fifth graders must understand the relationship between one whole, one-tenth, one hundredth, and one thousandth. Again, this concept directly relates to the NBT standards for bundles of tens and hundreds.

If things are falling apart for fourth—and fifth-grade students, we can blame a limited understanding of the first—and second-grade standards.

If the students don’t understand the concept in first grade, we must catch them in second grade before the daily undeniable pressure of state testing begins in third.