Monday, November 30, 2015

It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas!

What a lovely week!  We had 2 wonderful family thanksgivings full of cousins, family, laughter, and great food!  I can't even begin to list all of the things I am thankful for, but a wonderful family is at the top of my list!  Having a job that I LOVE and being a part of my students lives every day is also pretty high on the list! We celebrated Thanksgiving with our students on Tuesday with a traditional Charlie Brown Thanksgiving!  The popcorn was cooked to perfection and the jellybeans were the right combination of sweet and chewy!  #charliebrownthanksgiving


 

 
http://amzn.to/1NCDkkQ
 The 2nd best part of Thanksgiving?  BLACK FRIDAY!  It has been a girl's tradition in our family to shop, and even though my mom's recent health hasn't been great, we still were able to go! We did wait to go until 8 AM.  :)   We got tons of great deals!  I will admit to doing a ton of on-line shopping on Thanksgiving morning!  I am excited to get all our packages delivered this week!

Today has been cleaning and lesson planning!  #funisover
 
My students love using songs as practice for reading!  They keep mini-books in their book boxes and pull them out during silent reading.We will highlight our word wall words and there is a writing prompt at the end of each song.  You can click on the picture to take a look! 
https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Lets-Go-Caroling-Christmas-Carol-Minibooks-1004317
 
I made a religious edition too for one of my friends in a private school.
https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Lets-Go-Caroling-Religious-Christmas-Carol-Minibooks-1007694
 

 
 

We are also reviewing our math facts with this Holiday Dinner game:
https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Feasting-on-Facts-A-Common-Core-Aligned-Math-Game-984757


and of course, word problem practice!!!
https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Common-Core-Math-Word-Problems-in-Santas-Workshop-392396
 
But our big focus this week is REINDEER!!!
 
Come back this week for reindeer ideas

https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Rudolph-the-Red-Nose-Reindeer-songbook-2235475


I am very excited to shop tomorrow for the 
Cyber Monday and Tuesday TeachersPayTeachers Sale!  
 
I have a cart full of great products!!!

Don't forget to use the code: SMILE


Happy Shopping!







Sunday, November 15, 2015

Turkey Tasks



We have been going crazy with the turkey centers in math!  Our objectives have been adding and subtracting word problems and fluency.  {common core standards 1.OA.1, 1.OA.2, 1.OA.6, 1.OA.8} We have also been working on numbers to 120 and starting place value. {1.NBT.1, 1.NBT.2}

Here are some of our tubs!

Turkey roll and color! 1.OA.6

 Missing Numbers 1.NBT.1
 Turkey Clip Its 1.OA.6

Turkey in the Straw game 1.OA.6

This  week, we are making these cutie headband turkeys to practice fact families.  The 2 parts are the number of each color of feather.




We will also be playing my new Feasting on Facts Game.  I even bought a Dollar Store roasting pan to put my food pieces!



Students match the food cards to the target number on their plate.  We are practicing addition, subtraction, counting money, tally marks, and number words all in one fun game!!!  It is also in my TpT shop!



I am probably keeping this one out until Christmas!  There are a lot of good skills to practice!!!






Thanks for peeking in! 
 Hope you have a great week!

Julie


Thursday, November 5, 2015

3 Activities to Add Rigor to your First Grade Geometry Unit

Geometry has always been one of the most fun units in first-grade math.  We took this unit and Common-Cored it up to make it more rigorous, but we kept the fun!  

The standards that we worked with are 1.G.1 and 1.G.2:


1. Distinguish between defining attributes (e.g., triangles are closed and


three-sided) versus non-defining attributes (e.g., color, orientation,


overall size); build and draw shapes to possess defining attributes.


2. Compose two-dimensional shapes  or three-dimensional shapes


 to create a composite shape, and compose new shapes from

the composite shape.



We pulled out every kind of manipulative we had and came up with activities for them!   


1) One of the kids' favorites was building the shapes out of playdoh and toothpicks!  Here are some of the 2D shapes we created!


Tip: You have to have larger vertices made out of the playdoh, or they will fall apart too easily, and the kids get frustrated!
And...  don't buy 6000 toothpicks!  1 box of 1000 was way more than enough! 
(Learned that one the hard way!) #overachiever  



 And in Common core fashion, we wrote on a recording sheet to explain what we knew about our shapes! 
There is a LOT of writing in this unit! 
I made a point of explaining that the playdoh balls were called vertices or corners.  They picked u;p the terms pretty quickly! 
We did this a few days later using 3D shapes.

2) "Shape Snack!"  Students brought in snacks that were in 2D and 3D shapes.  I provided a list for parents, but I loved the creativity that our families have!  One parent told me they were walking around the grocery store for 15 min, and their child was naming what kind of shapes different food was. I love how into it they were getting!




The kids all brought in food "shapes," and we ate them as a snack!

And of course, writing to tell me about what they ate!  We had so much food we did this all week! And... wrote about it every time!  By the end of the week, I was getting some GREAT sentences! (I made them write a sentence before they could dig in!  #willbeengagedforfood)

The super cutest thing about it all?  They kept on talking about what shapes they were eating at lunch and snacks!


3) Have fun with it!
We watched "Spookly the Square Pumpkin."


this led us to a debate about whether or not he was indeed a square! (lol!)
We decided that they called him a square because his face was a square- but he was really a cube!  Nice segway into the faces on a 3D shape!  I love it when the stars align for these teachable moments! 


And we made Amy Lemons cute little Owl Craftivity!

We discussed the shapes it takes to make the owl.  This fit wonderfully into our Owl Unit we are working on in reading and Science!  I found this Red Ribbon Week display to put on our bulletin board! 




We finished up with daily building and tangrams task cards to make our composite shapes!  It was a lot of fun Hands-on activities! The students were so excited to have math every day, they learned a ton, so I could not be happier! 

All of these activities are in my unit.






I included every manipulative I could and wrote assessments to end each of the standards.  I also added a page of technology links and a sample lesson plan to explain how I used it!





I hope you have a great night!



Monday, October 5, 2015

A Firefighter Beginning Reader Freebie

This year I am taking our lowest students in first grade for our RTI time.  In our room, I have the help of an awesome special ed teacher, sometimes a para or a tutor, and me for an hour  and a half every day.  We have a small group of about 12 that are already about 1 academic year behind their peers!  We are working to catch up our students by the end of the year.  Not a small task, but it has been fun pulling out every trick I have learned to try to make the most of every second I have with them. 
So when I was pulling out my guided reading books to go with our Fire Safety unit, I had no luck.  I was finding too easy or too hard.  I decided to use our list of sight words we are working on and put them into a very basic beginning reader.  Here are a couple pages.  Download it for free by clicking on the pictures.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B8g6oWKcZiB_WmtRdnNjeEtiOEU/view?usp=sharing

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B8g6oWKcZiB_WmtRdnNjeEtiOEU/view?usp=sharing



 
They will read it with me and illustrate it later.  Have a good week!
 
 
Sunday, October 4, 2015

Fire Safety Week





October.
I just love the sound of the word October. To me, it brings a contentment and calm that I haven't felt for a couple of months.  Six weeks into school, routines are made, habits are set, there is a new flow for the year.  I can breathe.  Finally!  The cool days have replaced the extreme heat in my classroom.  All is good in the world.  Ahhhh...

And so, this weekend I cleaned.  I mean truly cleaned-  not the "I will grab the hunk of cheese that my child left on the coffee table the night before on the way out the door and wipe the spot with a Clorox wipe." cleaning that has been my last six weeks of clean. #neglegtedhome  I moved chairs and couches and dusted and even did windows.  Ahhhhh... and life is in order yet again!  {for a day or two anyway!}  Now I am settling in for a few hours of planning my week!

This week is all about Fire Safety! 

I found a cute Fire Safety Video



 


 
I have some fun math tubs I have going on this week.

Some Addition Clip cards.


 Some Fire Truck Cover games.  I made 2 different types of cards for differentiating.










And some problem solving....








I found some fun Firefighter figures in the toy section of the Dollar Tree to use as counters a couple years ago!  The kids love them!

You can get the activities {HERE} !  
 
Hope you have a great week!
 

 
 

 

 




Tuesday, September 22, 2015

Math Strategies

Math Strategies Just stopping in quick, this is a busy week!  I am spending a some time to develop some addition and subtraction strategy lessons for my students this week, and I made some posters for my anchor charts.






 You can download them for free in my TpT store!  Click the link or any of the posters!  Almost halfway through the week!
Monday, September 14, 2015

Apples

Apples This past weekend, my family and I took a little visit to our local apple orchard.  I have been in "Apple mode" ever since!  First of all, I found this Carmel Apple Cheesecake recipe on PINTEREST:  YUMMY!  I mean seriously, YUMMY!!!  


 
Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/kimberlykv/4013533080/

 

It is already gone and I cannot wait to make more!

At school, I have been doing some activities from my apple unit. Click on the picture to download it for free.
https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Apples-and-the-Common-Core-301625
 



I love adding chances for my students to get up and moving. Here are a couple I did this week!
 
First, I took the sight words we are working on this week and review from the past 2 weeks and wrote them on apples.  I found these cutouts in the Walmart clearance for 50 cents.

First, we took a piece of shared writing we did on the Promethean Board.  I printed it and gave them each a copy.  Then, they went around the room searching for words that were in the writing and highlighted them.
 
 
Then, later in the day, we played a little sight word search!
 
They each got a copy of the recording sheet and I gave them a word to look for, when they found one that matched my description, they wrote it in the apple.  I had them sit down on the floor when they were ready for the next word.  I gave directions such as find a word with 2 letters, find a word with the short vowel /i/ sound, find a word that rhymes with shoe, find a word that starts with a t, find a word that starts with a vowel.  I did this until all but the last row was filled.  Then, they had to go around the room and write four words they did not use yet.  It was amazing that the students were having discussions about the words, even my low readers were engaged and excited.  You can download the recording sheet for free HERE, or by clicking on the picture. 



Hope you have a great fall day!