Bridges Blog Archive for Your Questions

Blog guest, Alison Fox Mazzola, is a Math Specialist leading her school through the first year of Bridges at St. Matthew's Episcopal Day School in San Mateo, California. Here she reflects on first year implementation in an independent setting. [Photos are from her school.]

Question: How did you first introduce Bridges?

As the blog grows, you may find it helpful to become familiar with the "Search Site" function in the cluster of purple navigation buttons at the top right of each page. When you arrive, go directly to "Advanced Search" located right below the keywords box.

On YouTube, a two-minute video, 21st Century Pedagogy, suggests that curricular construct and pedagogy in modern times has been based on a model created in the industrial age. In this top-down model, teachers controlled information; it was their job to pass the information on to students. Through decades of repetition, this model has become "the DNA of teachers" or "pedagogical DNA."

Catherine Brasseur, a fourth grade teacher using Bridges in Southern Oregon, wrote in with the following question:

Is anyone out there using technology with Bridges? If so, what kind of technologies and in what ways?

What are people doing if they only have computer and internet access? Are there any web apps that augment Bridges content? For the folks using Apple products, what specific apps are they using?

Thank you for submitting the question, Catherine! Please post responses to her in the comments section below.

My Little Farm, Bridges Grade 1: Unit 6, is an integrated, thematic unit originally designed to take the better part of 18 instructional days. An alternative schedule has been developed for teachers who prefer to use a 60-minute math instruction time frame each day for six weeks.

A11 Multi-Digit Addition & Subtraction on the Farm (Alternate Unit 6 Plan)

Plans are in the works to introduce readers to Bridges authors through a new blog series. If you have questions for any particular author, please post them or contact me through the link at right.

I wonder...

Have the first grade authors ever lived on a farm?

Do Bridges authors work in an office or write from the couch in their pajamas?

How many tops were spun? Bridges built? Airplanes flown?

In December, I asked blog readers to respond with the number of student contact days within their school districts. Twelve respondents reported contact days ranging from 161-183. Notably, that 22-day range is the difference of an entire month of school, presumably giving some students far more time for math than others.

A third grade teacher prompted an additional question: