Last Week in Pictures

   It has been a CRAZY week! Hence the reason from the blogging world for a week. I have been trying to get over my allergies, help heal a sick kiddo at home, and help the other kiddo with his physical map geography project. Anyways, here is a look at what we were up to last week...

 

   We spent our math block reviewing place value. We also worked with ordering numbers greatest to least, least to greatest, and comparing two sets of numbers with <, >, or =.  My kiddos loved our end of the week review games before we took our post assessment.

Here we are working in cooperative groups using plastic toys to make each side of the equal sign the same.

Does this equal?

Using place value mats and manipulative to build numbers. This kiddo needed a little support when it came to her tens!

Place value GO Fish! This was a rotation favorite.

Place value lacing shoes. These were a summer find at Lakeshore Learning. There are base-ten pieces on one side of the card and numerals or expanded notation on the opposite side. Kiddos take a shoestring and lace back-and-forth to match their answers.

My Building Numbers flipbook. You can read about how I made them here.

We also made little alligators to help us compare numbers with the greater than or less than sign.

 

   Our Daily 5 is underway during our Walk to Read rotations. My kiddos in the intensive room have done a fabulous job building their stamina for read to self, writing, and word work. Here are some of my kiddos using our reading tools while reading to self. They are allowed to use the whisper phones (Lakeshore Learning), pointers, big glasses, or reading buddies (beanie babies). These silly little tools have helped my kiddos stay on task longer because they know its a privilege to use them.

    Well its going to be another busy week! I am going to a training on a new reading intervention tomorrow so I am hoping my substitute can teach my kiddos how to make pancakes tomorrow!!! (We are learning how to incorporate transition words in how-to's)

 

 







Math Block and Place Value Overload

   I don't know if you have been watching the news at all, but my poor state of Colorado is overflowing with rain and flood waters. It is so hard to believe that the major cities around me, that are only a 30 minutes drive, is like a scene from a movie. Thank goodness we have a sump pump that has held-up and no flood in my city. Many of the teachers and staff from my district live in cities with road closures so we had an early release yesterday across the district. The rain is continuing tonight with many of the larger school districts already closed for classes Monday morning.

   Well we are in full swing in our math block. My teammates and I have blocked out 90 minutes for math each morning. 60 minutes is spent with calendar, graphing in our Leadership Data Notebooks, whole group lessons, cooperative learning, and individual work. The last 30 minutes is spent with Daily 5 Math. We have been building our stamina the last several weeks with Math with Self and Work on Writing. Math with Self we use my math recording sheet below with today's number of the day. Math Writing is spent working with my math journals. You can read about them and download them here.

 

  This week my kiddos will move onto hopefully get to begin working with Math Work. We will use my Apples Math Unit to practice how to get the bins from our math cart, play each activity, and write our answers on the recording sheets. You can read about this unit and download them here.

   The past week our focus has been on expanding our base ten understanding. As mentioned in prior posts, my teammates and I are using the Georgia Math Units with our kiddos this year. But while planning we discovered that all of our kiddos were missing skills and concepts for the rigor of these units. So we have been using items from my Extending Base Ten Understanding Unit. We began last week with number line activities. We gave each of our kiddos a number card and had them try to order themselves from 1-23 (we only have 23 kiddos so far!) with NO voices. This was pretty difficult with the 17, YES I said 17, boys that I have in my class. We tried it a second time using our voices and helping order each other. I then reviewed number lines with my anchor cart and a large number line. We hot glued frogs onto clothespins so my kiddos would "hop" them forward and backward on the number line. Once we had a good understanding of how to use number lines to solve addition and subtraction problems we played Number Line Sliders. Taking gallon baggies with drawn on number lines we worked in groups to solve addition or subtraction problems. We all began with a different number, spun a spinner, and added or subtracted 0, 1, 2, or 3 from our starting number. Use our number line slider baggies we solved the equation and wrote our answer. We then carried our answer down and spun the spinner again. We played twelve rounds!

   My kiddos then reviewed their odd and even numbers. We played Stand Up, Hand Up, and Pair Up with number cards and odd/even cards. Kiddos with a number card had to pair up with a kiddo that had an odd or even card depending on their number. We then made the cutest Odd and Even Frogs. My kiddos colored and cut frogs and glued flies onto their "tongue". Once they had their flies glued on their recording sheet they wrote the total number of flies, made fact families, and wrote if their flies were odd or even.

 

   We then moved onto place value. WOW. WOW. WOW. This was a struggle at first, but I think my kiddos are finally starting to understand what place value actually is...not just a number. We began by sorting base ten pieces onto mats by bits, rods, and flats. Once we learned what the pieces were we then sorted the base ten pieces by ones, tens, and hundreds.

    Then using my Mystery Number mats I had my kiddos work in their cooperative groups to make the number I asked with their base ten pieces. So I started by say, "My mystery number has three bits, four rods, and two flats. What's my mystery number?" My kiddos built the number on the mat and wrote the number under each of the place values. We played several times with me changing my vocabulary to, "My mystery number has six tens, one hundred, and eight ones. What is my mystery number?" My kiddos LOVED this game. I had one table that had trouble Synergizing together, but they finally got the hang of it. We spent the end of the week using Abby's Marshmallow Math to introduce expanded notation. I don't have any pictures of this activity because I had to use my first sick day of the school year for my eldest kiddo. Poor guy had a fever for two days and then we had to put his doggie down. SAD day! :( But, my sub said the kiddos LOVED this activity and did pretty well. Then on Friday we made place value houses with base ten pieces. My kiddos made skyscrapers and farms that we learned about in our community unit.

   We will review expanded notation on Monday and Tuesday with a dice game and more activities from my math units. We will finish up the week with less than/greater than/equal to with manipulative and alligator crafts. PLACE VALUE OVERLOAD!!! You can get my Extending Base Ten Understanding Unit in my TPT store by clicking on one of the links below.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



 





A Box of Goodies & Place Value

   I was so excited to come home today to a large, brown box on my doorstep full of books!

    I am working with Booksource to create teacher resources for fiction and non-fiction books. I get to read all of these great books and then decide the Big Ideas, generate Essential Questions, determine background knowledge, comprehension strategies, story structure, digital resources, and Common Core Standards met. I am getting such great ideas of how to incorporate them into my lesson plans this year. And the best part...Booksource is letting me keep all the books they send! I became familiar with Booksource through an app I use in my classroom called Classroom Organizer. Classroom Organizer is free and allows you to take a picture (with your iPhone) of the bar codes on all your classroom library books and generate a classroom check-out system. Your kiddos can each have an account and check-out and check-in books from your generated list. Click on the images below to learn more.

   So I was at Dollar Tree yesterday (surprise, surprise) and came across this card holder.

   My boys have been looking for a holder for all their Pokémon cards so I purchased one for each of them. But when I got home and took the plastic wrap off of both I realized that these were more than just Pokémon card holders. They were perfect for my classroom kiddos to practice their base ten understanding. Here is what I have been working on today...

   I made little cards to fit inside of each plastic pocket in the holder. The white cards display the three-digit number. The blue cards represent hundreds, green cards tens, and yellow cards ones. My kiddos can build the number on the white cards two ways.

with base ten pieces

and place value.

   I put two plastic labels, that stick to the inside front cover, to hold all of the pieces and keep the white three-digit numbers in the plastic covers. I found these at Michaels for cheap, but Lakeshore Learning has a bunch in all sizes and shapes. Tomorrow I am making a trip back to Dollar Tree to pick up three more for my classroom kiddos and two for my own kiddos. Their Pokémon cards can wait on the shelf one more night.