A Little Sunday Project & My New Favorite Resource!!!

Here's a peek at my newly organized and de-cluttered math station supplies. I love the way I reorganized all of my math manipulatives and 8 station tubs; however, I found that I still had bins full of random games, file folder games, and other laminated creations that needed to be better organized. After giving it a little thought, it made most sense to me to organize these materials into 4 bins labeled by the quarter. I wish I had taken before pictures. Now at least I have it narrowed down enough to see what I have to work with. This is the first time I've had enough materials to need to organize into multiple tubs. I have a spot under my computer table where I plan on storing these. Maybe some velcro and material around the edge of the table to cover them....hmmm.

 

I managed to squeeze this in between birthday celebrations for my hubby. When my students found out it was his birthday, they wanted to make him something. We decided to make him a book about what we know about dentists (since he is in his 3rd year of dental school).  Not the cutest tooth out there, but all I could find during my 20 minute planning time. This page below was my favorite!

I also purchased Mrs. Jump's Reading 101 packet and I am LOVING it. I love planning and teaching guided reading and hate it at the same time. There are just so many ideas out there and so little time to do them in. The Reading 101 packet has really helped me focus my plans and remember that I don't need to get it all done in one 20 minute guided reading group. I'm looking forward to using it this week! Click below to check out this amazing resource (great for new-er teachers!!!).

Guided Reading Lesson Plans

I finally finished my plans for next week! Good thing it is raining here because it took all day. That is one part of being a semi-new teacher that still gets to me. It takes me a LONG time for me to plan when I do my best job, partly because I spend the majority of my time stalking blogs instead of writing my own plans. But as I stalked blogs today I decided I would post an example of my guided reading lesson plans. These are the plans I use with each of my 4 reading groups. I typically see 3 groups a day. My two lower groups I see 5 times a week. My other two groups I see 3-5 times, depending on the skills and the week. So basically I write what you see below at the beginning of the week and then each morning I pull out books for the day based on what I noticed from yesterday's small group instruction. Then I just fill out the "New Read" part of the planner. I find it easy to plan ahead for word study and writing, but I like to plan my guided reading books before school each day. It's just something that I have found works for me.

Favorite Things that Worked This Week

One of my purposes for writing this blog is to keep a running record of things that worked in my room and things that I need to keep thinking about. This week I capitalized on Valentine's Day and made heart Elkonian boxes to use in my guided reading groups. We started with the hearts in the boxes and then pushed them up into the hearts for each sound. I used clip art from DJ Inkers and found the heart vase fillers in the dollar spot at Target. It was amazing how much my first graders wanted to get their little fingers on those purple hearts! I told them if they were not listening and following the directions then they would get the regular chips instead of the hearts ... needless to say they sat right up in their seats and started their warm up read!

The second successful project for this week actually came from one of my fellow first grade teachers. Although our district uses the HM math series, our grade level regularly consults Teaching Student Centered Mathematics (K-3) by John Van De Walle. We are currently working on money in small math groups, but we are always trying to find ways to provide our students with a strong number sense foundation. This week we introduced these cards and then later moved them into a math station.

At first the cards looked daunting and I was even a little skeptical about using them, but the thinking was that if we strengthen our students' mixed skip counting skills then it would be easier to count a mixed group of coins (dimes, nickels, pennies). Van de Walle points out how abstract counting money is and that it is hard for students to make sense of why each coin is worth an arbitrary amount.

The front of the card looks like this. I taught my class that when you see a 10 you count by tens and then when the numbers switch you have to count on by ones. The last number you say is the answer. So for this card you would count "10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74."

Then they flip the card over to check the answer. I also put out a game board with these cards so when the students get the right answer they move their piece up one spot on the gameboard.

Not only did the students get it, but they thought it was challenging and thus when they got the answer right they were hooked. I am not sure how effective this game will be in helping students count money because we have not assessed counting with mixed coins yet, but I am hoping to see a difference!