Touch money conting

Have you ever just learned something and thought "WOW, that would have been useful to teach my students over the years... well, that is me today. I just learned about touch money. The three larger coins have dots to represent counting by fives. A quarter has five dots, a dime has two dots, and a nickle has one dot. This is a fantastic way to help the visual kids learn it! I made up desk charts to put on each child's desk. I love this concept! I am sure I will make up posters and worksheets to go along with this.

Each Friday I do a newsletter for parents titled "Munchies for the Mind". It is full of interesting facts, my opinions on things, and links to higher learning for the students. The parents are really supportive on these and enjoy having their child do the weekend writing activity. I think communication with parents is the best thing to establish in a classroom. Yes, some parents do take it too far sometimes, but I am happy to include them into their child's first grade experience.

We are preparing for our Thanksgiving Feast that I do with my first grade students. We are making a class book of the images we have of the very first Thanksgiving. The students watched a great video on Unitedstreaming.com on the holiday of Thanksgiving. Then they created their pictures for our book. We used the cover and template I am sharing. Then they shared their pictures with the class and told why they think the first Thanksgiving celebration was special. This was a great lesson on adding social studies into our curriculum.

Challenge Spelling Words

In first grade, we are trying to create differentiation in all areas. With the push to make everything Common Core aligned and challenge our students with rigor, I have been looking closer at the things I do/ create for my students. I find that I do try to acheive this in all activities. One way I have succeeded in accomplishing this is in Spelling. I give each student the Pre-Test on Mondays. If they pass it, then they get the opportunity to select 5 words that they would like to learn how to spell. They can be any 5 words that interest them. We post these words on their desks, they do Challenge Work with these words, and they get tested on Friday to see if they can spell these words. Here are some of the papers that I use during Spelling each week. I will post more throughout the week, as I use them. The children love to be a Challenge Speller. I have about 6 children each week get to do this fun activity that is special for their learning level. It amazes me at the words they come up with to spell... and that they spell them right on Friday! I am so proud of my students!!

Doubles! Doubles! 6-10 version (+playlist)

We are learning about adding double numbers and this video is so fun to watch and sing. The kids can't get this song out of their minds. :)

http://www.youtube.com/v/yFuskIXXQa4?list=PLF158F7EFBB65A045&version=3&showinfo=1&attribution_tag=8qkmwsp0P_L-zv5csnSsQg&autohide=1&feature=share&autoplay=1

Dice Game for Math Center

Happy Monday!! I am continually working to beef up my centers and create rigor in my classroom. I am using this activity to help my students to master the Common Core Teaching Standards in math. This activity will enhance their addition and subtraction strategies. The students roll two dice and then add them together. If they are using addition, they will write the two addends into the first two boxes and write the answer at the end. If they are using subtraction, they will roll the dice and add them together to find the other member of their fact family. (We call the largest number the "daddy".) They write the daddy first and then the two numbers on the dice in the middle and last position. For an extra challenge, the students have a third form to write the entire fact family sentences on them- two addition and two subtraction sentences. This is used to differentiate the lesson.

Halloween Fun in First Grade

Happy Halloween Everyone!! We are having a blast this week learning about pumpkins, bats, owls, spiders and Halloween. I am focusing this post on things I do the two days before Halloween- when I do let the kids talk about costumes and "scary" Halloween characters. I try to make it more of a fall celebration in the days prior to this. But all kids enjoy a little bit of fun at this time of year. So I let them talk about the things I usually ban- vampires, zombies, witches, ghosts- in a first grade fun manner. The first time anything gory comes into the conversation, I stop it. ha ha Have a great holiday!!