Classroom of the Week: Kerri Bryant’s second-grade class

How many pockets are you wearing on your clothes? The question is basic, but it leads to a versatile math lesson in Kerri Bryant’s second-grade Greenlodge School classroom last Tuesday morning.

After her students count their pockets and record the number, Bryant asks the kids to get in order on the rug, from those with the lowest number to those with the highest number of pockets. She covers ideas such as “the range” of pockets – 0 to 8 – then asks them to guess, based on that, how many pockets a new student in the classroom might have.

The students return to their desks, filling out a chart that tallies the number of children who have zero pockets, one, two, and so on, and make a bar graph using the same data.

“You guys are graphing all-stars,” Bryant says after many students quickly finish.

Graphs done, she asks what is the most popular number of pockets, and one boy correctly reports it is either 0 or 4.

Then comes the fun part, as Bryant shows the kids how to play “Dollar Rummy,” in which the goal is to find cards - marked 25 cents, 35 cents, or 85 cents, for example - that add up to a dollar.

As they disperse in pairs to play, Bryant discusses Everyday Math – the program her class is using which involves constant review of topics and lots of activities. A typical lesson might include a math warm-up, new teaching, a worksheet, and finally a game that ties everything together and gets the students to review and use their skills.

Bryant says the math games are “really fun, and they have no idea that they’re learning.”

“As a teacher, they’re really educational,” she says. “But as a child, they love them. They’ll play with them in indoor recess.”

Greenlodge Principal Katherine Kiewlicz says Bryant piloted Everyday Math last year, when her current students also participated in the program as first-graders. The program is new to the rest of Greenlodge’s second-graders this year, as well as its third- and fourth-graders.

The “spiraling program” exposes students to something, then returns to it again and again, so at any point students could be getting introduced to certain skills, developing them, or mastering them, Kiewlicz says.

“It’s rigorous. It gets kids to think about their math,” she says.

Friends Kiley Flynn and Maddy Barrett, both 7, play a few spirited games of Dollar Rummy.

Flynn looks at her cards – which include 20 cents, 10 cents, and 10 cents – and says, “I can’t make anything.” But then she sees another combination, involving an 80-cent card in the middle that is available to both players.

“Wait, I made one,” she says, grabbing the card and adding it to her two 10-cent cards, making a dollar.

Dedham Transcript staff writer Edward B. Colby can be reached at 781-433-8336 or ecolby@cnc.com.