Math Archives - Presidio Knolls School

Neighborhood Math: Thinking, Noticing, and Wondering

At PKS, we believe that math (like everything we teach) is not something that lives isolated in a classroom. Our goal is to get our students to take the ideas that we discuss in school and notice and wonder about them in their daily lives.

Elementary

Spotlight on Math: The Pentagon Problem

At the beginning of May, we shared the pentagon problem with the PKS community: can you discover or create an irregular pentagon that will tile the plane with no gaps or overlaps? Many students and parents rose to the challenge, and it has been so much fun having conversations about the various solutions and how they found them.

Curriculum

Mathematics in Preschool (for Parents!)

Head of Preschool Simona Chongo and Oaktree (P2) teacher Cecilia Wang facilitated a session for parents focused on understanding children’s mathematical development in the preschool years.

Curriculum

The Vision of Mathematics at PKS

As a progressive school, our vision for mathematics has many unifying elements. It is our expectation that students look beyond “doing math” to “thinking like mathematicians,” and to see the potential for beauty, fun, creativity, and trans-disciplinary connections in mathematics.

Elementary

Kindergarten: Field to Table

In this engaging unit, teachers helped children answer a few essential questions: Where does food come from? How and why do we grow our own food? How do people organize the environment to produce and distribute food? How does knowing about our food help us make healthy choices? The unit was based on four basic premises: First, all living things have basic needs. Second, plants and animals have life cycles. Third, some foods are regional and/or seasonal. And fourth, gardens require care and attention. Through these lenses, students dove deep into lessons about geography, environmental science, math, and non-fiction vs. fiction.

Elementary

First Grade: The Building Unit

The first grade blue class is in their third week of their building unit. There is tension in the air as students fly around the classroom putting the finishing touches on their projects before the final exhibition on Friday. Some projects boast tall towers made of cardboard, while others are short, squat structures secured by wooden columns, but they all have one thing in common: they were handmade and designed by a first grade student with the intent of learning about buildings.

Elementary

Second Graders and “My City” (我的城市)

The two PKS second grade classes kicked off the year with an exciting dive into their own habitat: San Francisco. The 我的城市 (“My City”) unit of exploration encouraged them to ask and answer big questions: What is a city? What does it take for people to live together and get along? What infrastructure is critical to keeping a community peaceful? What are the biggest problems in San Francisco?

Elementary

Fourth Grade Migration Presentation

There's presentation fever at Presidio Knolls School as the different classes wrap up their units of exploration.

Elementary

Second Graders Celebrate San Francisco

One important aspect of a "progressive" approach to education is giving students the opportunity to showcase their work. Today, PKS second graders had such an opportunity.