Winding Down the Year

Last week was the first week back from spring break. And we're all feeling the end of the school year's approach. 

I don't normally do a countdown. I'm too busy going from assignment to assignment to pay attention. But this year, I actually sat down and counted. 30 days. 

So, on Wednesday, I found a spot on the board and wrote "days left". 

At the beginning of the day, two of the students take care of changing the dates on the board. We have a little calendar with velcro numbers. Jennifer puts up the number for the current day. And then the date is written out by Jonas. 

Jonas has trouble writing up the date. We point out where Jennifer placed the correct day. We'll tell him to add one to the previous day. But it's always a bit of a struggle for him. 

Because I'm lazy Because Jonas needs the practice, I've decided that the countdown is now part of his responsibilities. I assigned it to him on Friday. 

I explained that he would need to change the number down one. I asked him what one less than nine was. (He could leave the tens-place two up. That's a whole other discussion on how hard it is to get him to grasp that concept.) But he got to eight pretty quickly. Success. 

We'll see how Jonas does with the countdown. (Obviously, he doesn't do this alone.) It'll be good practice for him.

(When you read this post, our countdown should read 25 more days left of school. Woo-hoo!)