Tough concept

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Home : 2004 : January : 31

Tough concept
By Tanya

Liz,
The kids have no connection to Celcius so it's especially hard to teach. Don't feel bad, it happens all the time. When I taught first grade my kids just couldn't understand counting money. It was crazy for us to
expect them to do it, they just weren't ready. Now that I'm teaching fourth grade it's elapsed time that baffles them. In both cases I'm confident they'll learn it when they're ready. Do you know any adult who can't count money, know elapsed time, or temperatures on a Celcius scale?
But you need to anticipate the difficulty and prepare for it. For example I purchased Judy clocks

with gears for my kids to do elapsed time. It helps a a lot and although expensive, I know it will be a state test question. And, the PTO has just generously reimbursed me.

If I were teaching Farhenheit versus Celcius I think I'd just have two homemade thermometers at the front of the room and you can have fun reporting temperatures every morning for a week to see the differences between both. I think you can make them easily with a red shoelace or yarn. You'll find that once you've encounted those difficult concepts you'll aniticpate them and get creative in teaching them. Best wishes and don't worry about the dad. He was showing you how smart he was. His problem not yours.