Every year I taught Grade 3, my third-graders had a big problem with their friends telling others their secrets.

For example (no real names are used, and the students’ own words are used–accounting for the grammar), one boy said, “My big problem is with Mohamed, because I tell him my secrets, and he tells them to other students, and I don’t like that.”

A girl said, “When I say a secret to Yasmine, she tells it to everybody. She promises not to say it, and then she tells it.”

Another boy said, “The person I have a problem with is Marouane. When I say to him a secret, he tells me he will say it to everyone. Sometimes we tell him a secret, and he doesn’t way to say to us his secrets. He always says to us, ‘I don’t have a secret.’ He keeps saying to us that he will tell us his secrets if we say ours. And then he will never say his secrets.”

Another girl said, “My other big problem was about when I tell my friends my secrets, and they tell me, ‘If you don’t do what we want, we will say your secret to everyone, and to the people you are talking about.’ So I have to do what they tell me to do. “ (blackmail)

I think third-graders all over the world are having these problems with secrets.

Comments?

Mary Mimouna

OK, here I am. It’s the real me, although the photo was taken a few years back, in Egypt.

The main reason I felt compelled to previously write this blog under the pen name of “Eileen” was to protect my sudents’ privacy. Before going public, I carefully checked through my blog and removed anything which might compromise privacy if I were known publicly.

Two months ago I started a new home-based evening tutoring business, EXPERT ELEMENTARY TUTOR. I’m pleased to say that it’s going well.  I’ve decided to go public and attach my blog to my LinkedIn profile.

–Mary Mimouna

This two-minute video  shows how to multiply 21 x 13, and  123 x 321, with an easy line-drawing and angle-counting method.  No times tables needed!

Here is another very clear example showing 432 x 312, done with the same method.  However it shows a way to “carry” digits.

Seeing these videos makes me wonder anew whether math is really about “shapes,” and about describing all the “shapes” in the universe.

If there is anyone from China reading this blog, I’d really appreciate knowing how extensively this method is actually used in schools.

–Eileen

“Counting on” is the name of the strategy given to what I will describe in this post ( as named in the Grade 3 teachers’Houghton Mifflin textbook I used at our school).

Counting on can be done with young children using fingers, but it can also be done in a rhythmic way which is an ideal stategy auditory learners.  It was only when I was required to teach a lesson in “counting on” that I came to realize it is the strategy I till use myself while adding, and that I am actually an auditory learner myself.  I had never heard of “counting on” before I came upon this lesson in the text.

I figured out while teaching Grade 3 that I am an AUDITORY learner, and that I use myself “counting on in rhythms.” For example, if I were adding a column of numbers and had gotten to the total of 39, and the next number were 7, I would break (auditorily) into a group of 4 + 3. So I’d say to myself, “39; 40-41-42-43; 44-45-46.”

I realize that if I added using a more advanced strategy I could be faster, but I’ve never felt the need to be faster; at least I’m always able to get the right answer (which I think is most important for anyone, no matter what strategy they use). The reason I’ve described this to you in detail is that I realize it is just an oral version of counting up totals using one’s fingers.

–Eileen

Can readers help?

I suddenly have several people contacting me who are needing home schooling, and requesting which home-school websites I might recommend.  Can readers help me by sharing the best they have found, with a sentence or two about why they find it best?  Have you used it yourself, and if so, what did you like about it most?

I especially need this information for high-school level, and college-bound students, as soon as possible.  I would appreciate recommendations for elementary and middle-school students as well.

Thank you readers,

–Eileen

This is the most entertaining idea I have seen yet….!  (about 30 seconds long)

–Eileen

There are two interesting facts which are not often noticed, but should be shared with students to get them interested in this subject.

First, the equinox( falling this year on September 22, 2009) means that the length of the day is exactly the same all over the earth:  from the North Pole to the South Pole, and from both Temperate Zones, to the Tropics, to the Equator.

Second, which I’ve noticed over many years of watching the world weather, is that TEMPERATURES equal distances north and south of the equator (in similar continental zones, of course), are roughly the SAME at this time of year.

For example, I live in  North Africa.  Having travelled many years ago to Cape Town, South Africa, I’ve continued to watch the temperatures there, comparing them with the North African temperatures.

Around the time of either the March or September equinoxes, the temperatures in both North Africa and South Africa are roughly the same!

I enjoy noticing this every year, and I feel a lot of students worldwide would enjoy it if their teachers pointed it out.

–Eileen

When a new student arrives in a new school, whether in his home country, or as an expat, he generally doesn’t know anyone.  Studies have shown that the number one predictor of the student’s success integrating in to his new school, is whether isther he is able to make friends.

As a teacher of two decades’ experience, I’ve seen that one of the biggest problems kids have is making friends, due to kids in the new location sticking with the exclusive friends they’ve made since kindergarten, and continuing with those same friends up through high school. Perhaps this is unique to the Middle East; but I’m not sure about that.

In North Africa, foreign kids are excluded from the group when the group talks constantly in Arabic. But this is not the REASON for the exclusion; it is merely the METHOD. The reason is that the kids are trying to maintain their exclusive and extremely posessive friendships that they have here from young ages on in to adulthood.

Making friends is the number one thing parents can think about when helping their child adjust to school in a new country. Parents can sometimes enlist the help of a sympathetic teacher who might arrange certain seating, as children often have an opportunity to become friends with the children they are seated next to. A week or two into school a sympathetic teacher can ask the child if there are any students he would like to sit next to and arrange such interventions until the child has some friends.

Year after year, my students have told me that they often start to make friends with the children they are sitting next to, and that these friendships carry over into lunch recess.   When a teacher changes the seating chart, it actually has the effect of breaking up newly-established friendships.  My point is that, if a student is new in the school, it’s sometimes better to tolerate a bit more whispering in class in order to help a new student make friends in his new school.

–Eileen