Behind the Scenes · K–1 Math Enrichment · Little Newtons · Upper West Side
Inside Our Classroom: Session 2 with L. & S. — A K–1 Progress Report
A teacher’s recap of today’s small-group class with two K-to-1st-grade students. Where they were a week ago, where they are now, and the two specific things each child will work on before the next session.
What this post is
This is a working teacher’s recap from today’s Little Newtons session at our Upper West Side studio. Two students — we’ll call them L. and S. — came in for their second class with us. We are publishing the notes the way we would write them for a parent, with names kept private. If you are a parent considering SOMATH, this is what a real session looks like from the inside: small group, specific feedback, and a clear plan for the week ahead.
If you missed it, here is the recap from session 1 with the same group — numbers, the decimal system, place value to the thousands, and a four-digit puzzle. Reading that one first will give you the full arc of where these two students started.
The headline: noticeable growth in one week
The biggest difference today was not any single skill. It was the interaction itself. A week ago, both children were quiet, hesitant to volunteer an answer, and they barely spoke to each other across the table. Today the room was the opposite. They were finishing each other’s sentences on the place-value review, they were comparing their notebooks without being asked, and twice they corrected each other — politely — before the teacher had to step in. That kind of peer-to-peer math talk is exactly what we are trying to build, and it almost never shows up in session 1.
What we covered today
The plan for session 2 was operations — addition and subtraction with carrying and regrouping — built on top of the place-value work from session 1. We worked through:
- A five-minute warm-up review of the ones-tens-hundreds-thousands chart from last week
- Two-digit addition with carrying, using a real word problem about saving allowance money
- Two-digit subtraction with regrouping, with each student walking through one problem at the whiteboard
- A short logic puzzle: “I am a two-digit number. My tens digit is double my ones digit. My digits add to nine. What am I?”
- Five practice problems in their notebooks, half addition and half subtraction
Both students completed the practice set. Both got the logic puzzle (the answer is 63). That is real progress from where we were a week ago, when carrying was a brand-new idea for both of them.
L. — progress notes
L.
L. had a strong day on the math itself. Her carrying was clean, her column alignment in her notebook was better than last week, and she was the one who solved the logic puzzle first — she got there by guessing and checking, which is exactly the right strategy at this age.
Strengths today
- Confident with two-digit addition with carrying — no longer needs the place-value chart as a crutch
- Used a guess-and-check strategy on the logic puzzle without being prompted
- Volunteered three times today, up from zero in session 1
Home practice for the week
- Dictated paragraphs in her notebook, following the lines. L.’s math thinking is ahead of her handwriting. When she writes word problems and answer sentences, her letters drift above and below the notebook line and her numbers get squeezed into half-rows. Ten minutes of dictation, three times this week — a parent reads a two-to-three-sentence paragraph aloud and L. writes it on the lined notebook page we sent home, one word per beat, staying inside the lines. Anything works as content: a recipe, a postcard, a sentence about her day.
S. — progress notes
S.
S. made a real jump today on subtraction with regrouping. Last week he was getting stuck on which column to borrow from. Today he walked through a regrouping problem at the whiteboard without help and explained, out loud, why he had to take a ten from the tens column. That is a session-level milestone for a child entering 1st grade.
Strengths today
- Subtraction with regrouping clicked — explained the borrowing step in his own words
- Strong number sense: knew right away that 63 was a reasonable answer to the logic puzzle
- Much more talkative with his classmate and with the teacher — the room is no longer intimidating
Home practice for the week
- Learn how to hold a pencil properly. S. currently grips his pencil with all four fingers wrapped around the shaft, which is making his writing tire him out after about ten minutes. The target is a standard tripod grip — thumb, index, and middle finger holding the pencil, with the pencil resting on the side of the middle finger. We recommend a triangular pencil grip (a small rubber attachment, $3 at any office store) and five minutes a day of any drawing or coloring with the grip on. Two weeks of this usually fixes it.
Next class: shapes and measurement
Session 3 is the most hands-on session of the short course. We will cover:
- 2D shapes — triangle, square, rectangle, circle, hexagon, with a focus on counting sides and corners
- 3D shapes — cube, sphere, cylinder, cone, with a small basket of real objects to sort
- Length — introduction to the ruler, inches versus centimeters, and measuring three classroom objects
- An introduction to time — the analog clock face, the hour hand versus the minute hand, telling time on the hour and the half-hour
Parents: please send your child in with no homework other than the two items above (L.’s dictation, S.’s pencil grip). Both are small daily habits, not workbook pages. The math we are doing in class is doing the heavier lift; the home practice is just removing two specific friction points so they can focus on the new content.
For other UWS parents reading this
If you are a parent on the Upper West Side considering math enrichment for a child finishing Kindergarten or entering 1st grade, this is the format: groups of two to four, individual progress notes after every session, and home practice that is specific to the child instead of a generic packet. We are two blocks from PS 87 and across the park from PS 199, and we run K–1 short courses several times a year. The fastest way to see if it is a fit for your child is to book a free 60-minute evaluation — we meet your child, run a short written diagnostic, and email a written report within 48 hours whether or not you enroll.
Try a free 60-minute evaluation
If you are on the Upper West Side and your child is finishing Kindergarten or entering 1st grade, come see the classroom for yourself. We are at 226 W 79th St, 1st Floor, two blocks from PS 87.
The evaluation is free, lasts 60 minutes, and includes a written diagnostic emailed to you within 48 hours — whether or not you enroll.
Book: schoolofmath.us/evaluation · Email: hello@schoolofmath.us · Call: (646) 668-6151
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Want your child in a Little Newtons class at SOMATH?
Our foundational program for Grades 1–2 (ages 6–8). Number sense, addition and subtraction fluency, fractions on the number line, and structured word-problem practice — the on-ramp into Grade 3 multiplication and division.