Our first graders visited the lab for the first time today. What a fun group but, wow, they keep us moving! In kindergarten, a student’s username was his/her first name. In 1st grade, this changes to “last name + first initial.” Oh, what chaos this causes! I carefully explained what their usernames were, how they were different from last year, and that all they had to do was to look on the back of their name cards to see what the new username was. Suddenly several hands went up. “You didn’t spell my last name right. There’s no a at the end!” For some it took quite a bit of convincing that, “Yes, everything really is okay. That letter at the end of your last name is the first letter in your first name.” Very confusing for a young first grader! But everyone was able to log on and have time to do some math activities. In a couple of weeks, they’ll be little experts!