100 Follower Freebie!

My TpT store reached 100 followers, hooray!!  I know this is a tiny, tiny fraction of what some of you amazing teachers have accomplished, but it is exciting news to me!  I'm happy to share a freebie to celebrate!

Our math curriculum includes a daily Math Meeting.  We go through the 10 or so pages of math review on our SmartBoard.  I love that it gives us constant practice with important math skills, but it's inevitable that by mid-year, the meeting becomes a little too routine for the kids, and they start to get super wiggly on the carpet.  I've seen fellow teachers create worksheets for their students to follow along and complete during the meeting, but it seems to me that, if done everyday, that too would eventually become unmotivating (and make for lots of grading papers on my part...)

So, my solution: Just one table of kids are Math Meeting Reporters each day.  That group of 4-5 students grab a clipboard and a chair and sit behind those on the carpet to complete their "reports" as we do each part of Math Meeting.  This works great for me for several reasons...

*Each kids only reports once or so per week, so it doesn't become a boring task.  They are always excited when they find out it's their turn!

*It's a quick, informal assessment, and better yet, I only have a handful of papers to grade after meeting, instead of 22!

*There are less kids sitting on the carpet, so they are less wiggly!

My pages are aligned to the first grade Common Core Standards in math, and I add pages of more difficult math skills as the year progresses.  Click the picture below to download my reporter pages for free!  I hope your kiddos love them as much as mine do!

 

P.S.  If you would like small edits made to these pages to fit your specific needs, I'd be happy to do that! Just leave me a comment! :)

A math freebie. (And a suprise in my teacher mailbox!)

Hi friends!  I have a math freebie to share with you.  My students have shown a need for some extra practice with the 120 chart, so I put together a packet of a few games and a few worksheets.  

These activities –especially the puzzle worksheets- are helping them understand the patterns on the chart.  And, if you have little ones who are struggling with place value (the CCCS of recognizing that the digits in a 2-digit number represent tens and ones), the place value game in this pack should really do the trick!  

I would've liked to take pictures of us using these materials, but that day happened to be a planned observation with my principal, so I focused on being teacher instead of photographer. :) I hope you find them useful!  Click on the picture below to download the packet for FREE from my TpT store.

Also, I have to share the special mail that our class received today – our very own letter and photograph from Mr. President!  Back in November, we wrote letters to President Obama congratulating him on being reelected and asking him some questions.  I sent them out with help from Teacher to the Core, and then forgot all about it.  Well, I nearly jumped up and down when I saw the big manila envelope in my mailbox today!  (I won't share the pic because it has our school's full address displayed.)  And my students were, of course, amazed!  They begged me to copy it for each of them to take home!

Have a super week everyone!

Happy Halloween!

Okay, I really should be working on report cards.  Really…they are due in less than a week and I’ve got nothing – not even names on them!  BUT, I just have to share a few pics of my cuties enjoying their Halloween activities today!  I posted a few weeks back about our school’s Fall Festival, which takes the place of a Halloween Party.  No costumes, no treat bags….no chaos, I suppose.  Well, I couldn’t help but add some Halloween stories and some of the super cute freebies out there!  Here we are enjoying them!  AND, I realized that I forgot to share a Halloween freebie of my own!  Mix up a batch of Golden Grahams (monster scabs), witch’s warts (chocolate chips), candy corn (pumpkin teeth), and marshmallows (ghost droppings), and this math activity will be a hit!  I guess you won’t be able to use it this Halloween (oops!) but I hope you’ll be able to store it for future use! 

Halloween Write the Room.  My kids just love doing this writing activity.  They were totally silent as they did it - so focused!

Sorting and graphing our Halloween Mix!

 

Click the picture to get my freebie!

Autumn Activities!

Remember when I said I loved fall?  Wasn’t kidding.  Check out my recent grocery store purchases:  

Yum!  Breakfast time now makes me a happy girl! But…guess what else I purchased at the store:

Yep!  My second sickness of the school year.  Sigh.  However, it didn’t stop me from enjoying Fall Festival week with my firsties.  Here are some pics of us on our field trip to the pumpkin patch, and then square dancing for parents in our Western attire!

 

Are they cute or what??  Our 3-day week was filled with autumn activities.  Holiday weeks are so exhausting fun!  In place of our regular curriculum, we did fall read alouds, games, writing activities, and more..  Check out my Autumn Activities Pack to have some Autumn fun in your own classroom!

Click here to get my Autumn Activities!

Math Workstation Madness!

Our math workstations are officially up and running, yippee!  We started the year learning 10 or so number sense games, one each day with partners.  Then, we made an I-Chart for math workstations (inspired by Daily 5, at the suggestion of one of my kiddos!).  This describes what workstations should look like and sound like in our classroom, and it promotes independence!  (Which equals teacher happiness.)

If you do Daily 5 in your classroom, this probably looks familiar!

Fast forward to this week, and the kids were ready for workstations!  Each day after our math meeting and math lesson, they check the pocket chart to discover which station they will visit with their partner.  Partners will probably stay the same for the first quarter, and then we'll switch!

The partners get their station tub.  Each tub has one of the games they’ve learned and an additional activity or game to practice a current math skill.  And soon, each tub will also have a math book.  (That is, whenever my Scholastic order decides to arrive! J) The point is, no more early finishers! 

I've found that these dollar store tubs aren't the easiest to get out and put away, but they were cheap and they'll work for now!  I decided to put one student in charge of stacking them neatly and in order for us at clean-up time, and that has worked well!

The partners go to their station’s designated working spot, which is shown with number signs posted around our classroom.  No more questions or arguments about where to sit!  Easy, done!

The kids work on their activities for about 20 minutes each day.  While they work, I travel around the room, teaching those extra activities in their tubs.  And eventually, I will pull kids or small groups to the teacher table for skill practice with me.

To support math stations even further, on Wednesdays, my teacher friend and I combine our firsties to teach a new math game.  She doesn’t have a Smart Board in her classroom, so it gives her kids experience with ours.  It also gives our kids the chance to partner up across classes!  After that lesson, we put our new game in a workstation tub.

If you’re using math workstations in your classroom, check out my new freebie, Fall Ten Frames.   Click on the picture below to get your copy!

That's all for now friends!  I hope to soon compile a larger set of math workstation activities!