Inequalities

I've started teaching all the math lessons in my first grade, and last week I needed to introduce inequalities. Yikes! I remember being very confused when I learned about inequalities when I was younger, and my teacher I work with is still confused to this day! So I wanted to make sure I presented the information in a very clear way.

We use the enVision math program, and in the program it only spent one day on inequalities and it jumped right into using two-digit numbers. So I put in an extra day in order to introduce the concepts in a more in-depth way.

I started by telling my first graders that we would be talking about something called "inequalities," and I asked them what the words "greater than" and "less than" meant. Then, I showed them this inequality alligator I made. It moves so that I can make it show greater than, less than, or equal to. Plus I laminated it so that I can write the numbers on each side with a dry-erase marker. I had a group of 5 students and a group of 2 students come up and stand on either side of the alligator mouth. Then we talked about which way the sign should go. We talked about how we always have to read our number sentence left to right, just like how we read a book. We did a bunch of examples together as a class.

After, I had more examples on the smart board that we worked on together. Finally, my students filled out this worksheet on their own.

I have several students who are significantly behind in math, and even my students who really struggle got all or almost all the answers correct! It was one of the best math lessons we've had in a while, and I could tell my students were really proud of themselves for understanding it so well.

Management

It's been like a month since I've posted. Oops! I have a lot of things to post and no time to do it.

But I wanted to post two things I've been doing in my first grade classroom. This class has a lot of behavior  issues. It is nearly impossible to get through anything without constant interruptions and children talking, moving around, and generally being crazy. So to try to give them some motivation to work on blurting out, I implemented a "marble system." Every time I feel like they are working without a lot of talking or inappropriate behavior, I give them a marble. They need to get 50 marbles, and then they will have a special day. We haven't even decided on what the special day is, but it doesn't matter to them. They are just excited by the idea of something special. It really has been working well for this class, although there is still MANY times when they are very loud.
I have a clear tupperware box with all the marbles they still need to earn, and a lady bug for all the marbles they have. They love looking at them and counting how many they have and how many they have left.

Another thing I've been doing is for one child who has a lot of anger management issues. He often gets frustrated with his work and ends up getting very angry. He breaks things, rips up his papers, and yells at others. So I decided to give him a cup to put in his desk. On one side of the cup it says "I need help" and on the other side it says "I need a break." When he is getting frustrated, he puts the cup on the desk to indicate if he needs help from the teacher or if he needs to take a break in the book area. This has been helping him by allowing him an option other than anger. The picture is kind of hard to see, but here it is!

Hopefully I will be able to post more things soon! I just taught my class a math lesson about inequalities that I want to post about!

Counting by 10s!

Today was my last day student teaching in kindergarten. I was so lucky to have such an amazing cooperating practitioner as a model of good teaching. I'm really going to miss that class :(
Off to first grade next week!


Last week I taught a lesson about counting by tens that my students really enjoyed.
We started by listening to this song: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yn691ALuywg&feature=related I cut it though so that it only played the chorus twice and it didn't say "multiples of ten." After singing it once, we stood up and did hand motions. We started with our hands by our feet and slowly moved up with every number until our hands were all the way up for 100. They loved it and wanted to sing it over and over. 


Then I had my students pair up and play a game where they lined up the numbers 10-100 (multipes of 10 only) in order. Then one would close their eyes and the other student would flip a card over. Then their partner had to guess which was missing!


To end, we played "Pop!" We all stood in a circle and counted by 10s. Whoever got "100" had to jump up, yell "pop," and sit down. Whoever was the last person standing won!


Here's a link to the full lesson plan: http://www.scribd.com/doc/85689502

Seuss-tastic!

It is Dr. Seuss week! Everything has been going really well, and I wanted to share some pictures of the things we are doing!

Pocket Chart: Finding word wall words

Making -at words

Fish Venn Diagram

Real and Nonsense words

Princess Pat -at lesson (lesson plan posted in a previous post!)

Monday Morning Message

Tuesday Morning Message

I crocheted a lorax!

School has already announced that we will have a half day due to impending snow storms. That's great and everything, but I just want it to be spring!!

Princess Pat Lesson Plan

Writing lesson plans is so tedious. They are completely impractical. But we have to write formal plans for all the lessons we teach during student teaching. I have tons to write this break, and I have barely started. (How is it already Wednesday?)
But I just finished my Princess Pat -at word family/rhyming lesson plan, and I thought I'd share it. I already explained it a little in a previous post, but I figured someone might want to see the actual plan!
Here it is! Princess Pat

One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish

For one of my workboard centers children will be sorting red, blue, and red with blue fish into a venn diagram. I wanted to share the worksheet I made!
I made it in black and white since I don't have access to a free colored printer, and I am going to just color everything in with crayon probably! I'm also going to color over the words "red" and "blue" in those colors, and I will color the two circles with the corresponding color.

I uploaded the worksheet to scribed. I hope this works! Venn Diagram

How long were the dinosaurs?

While I'm posting about my dinosaur unit, I might as well share this too!

In my previous post, I mentioned that I did a short dinosaur unit two summers ago with 3 and 4 year olds. At the time I was really trying to figure out good math activities to do that were fun (as it was the summer program) as well as educational. Here's what I came up with:

I decided that it may interest my students to see how long a dinosaur was. And what is every child's favorite dinosaur? A t-rex, of course! So, I researched how long a t-rex was (note: dinosaurs are not measured by their height because they walked hunched over: they are measured from head to tail) and discovered they were up to 40 feet long.

My classroom was not 40 feet long, so I decided to do my lesson out on the playground. I used a long extension cord and measured forty feet with my students (with a tape measure), stretching it out across the playground. Then I used some receipt paper (that came in a large roll) and used it to measure the heights of my students as well as myself. They loved being measured and then being able to hold the piece of paper that was the same size they were. We placed all of our paper heights on top of the extension cord one next to the other and found that all of our combined heights did not even come close to the length of the t-rex.

There were mixed reactions to this activity. My four year olds LOVED it. They were all really interested in dinosaurs and thought it was sooo cool that our heights didn't reach the end of the dinosaur height. My three year olds were not so thrilled. They were too distracted by the fact that we were on the playground, and they didn't really care about their height. So, I would definitely do this again with ages four and up. With younger students, the teacher mostly does all the work, but with older students, they can do the measuring and comparing. I would say this activity could go up to third or fourth grade and still keep the interests of students. If you do not have enough space to do a forty foot dinosaur, you can measure feet compared to a dinosaur foot instead.

Happy Measuring!