Atama sagemasu

Which, in Japanese, means literally, "I lower my head." You say it when you watch someone do something amazing; it's meant to convey admiration. I said this to myself after watching Ms. Lee wrap up my math lesson today.

I had designed a place-value game for one of my classes last semester, and tried it out while she was out last week. It needed some work, but she wanted to see it, so we tried it again today. We went over how I would introduce it, and they remembered playing it, so it went smoothly. I played with our odd student (we have 25 kids), everyone else in pairs, and she walked around to see them play.

I was about to do a share at the end of the class, and she asked if she could take over. Of course! I said. And she went to work.

She did something that I know you're supposed to do, and somehow I never manage to get as concrete I should: she modeled the way you score the game on the sheet I designed. This may seem like a detail, but it's how the kids "show their work" and they were all over the map with their recording methods, this time and last time. She managed to explain how to score it, get them to explain to themselves why and how to do it this way, and had the class doing a little mental math at the end to boot. Her words were well-chosen, and the demonstration was just right.

She also had a few great suggestions (and in hindsight, perhaps obvious!) improvements to the scoring sheet, and ways you could customize it for what you want to teach (20's, 100's, counting by 5's or 25's and so forth).

I realize how far I have yet to go until I can be pitch-perfect like that. But in the meantime, I think the penny finally dropped on modeling. I hope I can hang on to the "aha" moment long enough to try it out properly!