Simon Says Math Game

I have to do some assessments before report cards, so I decided to make a fun way to figure some things out!

Setting Up

Hello there :)
I was thinking to myself the other day, "when I get my own classroom, I am going to be so overwhelmed trying to set it up that I will probably forget so many things." I am notorious for keeping tons of lists and sticky notes everywhere to remind myself to do things, so I decided I would get a jump start thinking about this. I wrote a little check list of at least some of the things I will need to do just to prep a new classroom, and sharing is caring, right? So here ya go!
Click here! :)

Happy Halloween!

In the spirit of Halloween, I made a little ABC activity students could do during workboard centers. Students will match spiders with lowercase letters on their backs to their webs with uppercase letters.
I included all of the letters, but I would only put a few out at a time.

You can download the pdf here to print and cut!

Enjoy!

Morning Meeting Greetings Giveaway!

I am so sorry that I update this blog so infrequently! I now have two jobs (one as a kindergarten paraprofessional and one in retail) and it is a bit overwhelming!

However, today I spent my afternoon putting together a bunch of morning meeting greetings for you!
Personally, my plan is to print them out, laminate them, and then put them on a ring so it is easy to flip through and find a greeting idea in the mornings. And it's free!
You can download it here: http://www.scribd.com/doc/108930522/Morning-Meeting-Greetings-Styled

:)

Silent E

Hello there :)

This is my last week of student teaching (WHAT?!), and I know I very rarely post, but hopefully I will have some time to put things up.

I've been wanting to post this idea for like 3 weeks. My first graders were learning about long vowel sounds, and my teacher taught them the rule that if there is a silent e, it makes the vowel say its name. I thought her idea to do this was really clever, so I wanted to share it!

She put a bunch of cvc words in the pocket chart, and then she had students come up, read the word, put a star with an e on it at the end of the word, and then read the new word with the silent e ending.

Then she had student make magic e wands! They were really cute, and they loved doing it. Then they got a worksheet just like the pocket chart and practiced reading words with and without the e ending.

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!