First Day on the Job!

Yesterday I went to the elementary school to meet with my sponsor, Mrs. Teti! It was such an exciting experience. As soon as I walked in the door, the students seemed so amazed by me. I walked in and Mrs. Teti told them to call me Miss Aliccia; all of the students greeted me and waved to me. Their faces were priceless because their jaws dropped when I walked in, I felt excited to finally start this project!
While I was there for the hour and a half that I stayed, I experienced the class playing "Multiplication Basketball." They were divided into two teams, the Sixers and the Wildcats. Two students would go up at a time, one was the shooter and the other recorded the score. The students were learning to multiply using parentheses. For example, if they scored two 1-point shots, zero 2-point shots, and three 3-point shots, they wrote (1 x 2) + (2 x 0) + (3 x 3). First they did what was in each set of parentheses, and then they added those numbers together to get the final score! It was such a good idea to make the students learn their math. I hope that when I become a teacher, I can make up "cute" ideas, such as this activity, in order to make the students understand the concepts.