The children always know best!

Today was a Monday of all Mondays! I got yelled at for parking my car where it is not marked kindergarten drop off. I was met with a new student that no one told me was coming. I couldn't get my key to unlock my door and then realized I had left my keys in the staff room and I was in fact using someone else's. (it was actually my students that noticed!!) But the ultimate was today during math. We have been learning to round off numbers. Today was rounding to the nearest ten thousands. I gave, I thought one of the most stellar introductions to rounding off I have ever heard. I even heard applauds ringing in my ears. I had passed out the practice sheets to my students. I explaining the first three problems and I was on a roll. I wrote examples on the board and then asked them to do the next five on their own and we would correct them. I circled, I wrote, I was at my top form. It wasn't until I asked them to do problems independently that I noticed a few puzzled stares. Yet, they were respectful and didn't say a word. I walked over to finish stapling homework. I looked up and all my students were leaned over their desks hard at work. I really got the concept across I thought. I gave them ample time and then I approached the board to go over the answers. As I walked over to the board to ask who would like to do the first problem, I realized no one volunteered. I walked around and the reason stared back at me. I had taught them the concept of rounding off to the ten thousands and had given them a multiplcation paper. I couldn't believe no one said a word. The puzzled looks came back to me and I understood why. My students were working so hard to make sense of what they were seeing, that it stunned them. My page 11 was not the same as their page 11. Somehow the tablets had the wrong page for number 11. I got to hand it to my students. Their answers were very creative to make them look like rounding off . Three times three does not look like a ten thousand number unless you are a third grader trying to keep up. I quickly collected all the papers, sent them out to recess, hoping that when they came in we could start over and forget the last wasted twenty minutes. We did, and they did. They were awesome! It was a Monday, but we managed to get through it, and we even learned the real way to write ten thousand when rounding off. Thank goodness this day ended finally. Yet, through it all, I came to know that children always seem to make sense of anything, even a mixed up teacher, and move on. Sometimes that all you can do.