Nathan's Work

Once a term, we're invited to Nathan's class for breakfast. It's a chance for him to show us what he's been working on so far in the term.

The past few breakfasts we attended, we spent a great deal of time wandering around the classroom with Nathan, occasionally looking at a piece of work, but ultimately, it felt like we were just using up time until breakfast was opened up to the class.

This time around, we made an extra effort to arrive at 7:30am to maximize our time there. Nathan had a list of four activities he wanted to show us.

We started off with the geometric solids. Nathan presented the tray to us and explained that we could take turns closing our eyes, having a solid placed in our hands to guess. I asked him to name each one before we started so we all knew what they were called, and he had no problem doing that. I have a feeling it's because he's known the names of geometric solids since he was in Cycle 1.

Next up was his grid. Learning to read and use grids is part of his NAPLAN training. He and two of his friends worked on filling each of the squares with a different character and it looks pretty cool!

While we were waiting for a turn with the checkerboard, I asked if he'd like to show us his flag work that he had been doing. And since we still had time, he decided to add the Italian flag to his book.

When he finished with his flag, we went straight to the checkerboard. I chose some numbers, he wrote them into his book and showed us how he uses the board to do his multiplication. I wish I had something like that when I was learning multiplication. It just makes so much sense!

And lucky for us, Nathan and his friend decided to work on one more activity even after the breakfast had been opened up for everyone to enjoy. How neat are these trays? The boys poured blue water into each of them to see the different land and water forms.

The most refreshing thing about this breakfast was that Nathan had already told me about those activities. In our conversations in the car after school, Nathan tells me all about the different work he's done in detail, so it was nice to actually see the material in action.

I'm excited to see what else he'll learn in the remainder of this term.