Number Sense - Math Centers for First

I love first grade.  Out of all of the grades I have taught, first has been my favorite.  I only was able to teach it for two years, but I would go back in a heartbeat. Besides getting to teach phonics, which I love, I enjoy teaching the other content covered in first.

For math I usually followed this routine:

✰Read a story or part of a story involving the standard
✰Play a game that will show up in a center, either new or review, and not always an entire game depending on time

✰Whole group lesson with think pair share or group practice

✰ Individual practice/ small group/ centers- students would move into centers after completing and turning in individual practice.

Games are amazing because...

1. Games are fun so the students are practicing the skill in a fun way.
2. The students are working the entire time because they are having fun.
3. Students learn about being a good sport while playing games.
4. There isn't any grading involved!

A lot of the games we played, I either learned by watching other teachers teach and tweaked it, or I came up with, but either way, I had to go on my computer and create something for my class.  When I made the resources for my class, they were pretty basic.  But now I have "prettied them up." and they are ready to played!

Want this resource?  
Click on the picture to get your own!

More or Less Game

One game my students LOVED was the More or Less Game, which is super easy and has them practicing one more, one less, ten more, ten less.  What makes it challenging is they cannot go over 100 or they lose so they will need to think strategically!

Can we all take a moment to look at that last rule?  Kids seem to really struggle with shrugging off losing a game so I include it with the rules as a reminder.

Counting by tens puzzles

I also made puzzles for my students.  I wanted something simple they could do to practice counting by tens.  Originally I used photographs I had of my kitty, Toby, and our class pet, Oscar, but in the centers in my TPT store, I have clipart art as the pictures.  The puzzles also go forward and backwards.  

Side note: This handsome boy passed away earlier this year from cancer and I miss him so much.  If you want this puzzle of Toby, right click and choose "open in a new tab".  Then you can print it out.

Toby was such the character and would pose for pictures!

More or Less Riddles

The last center I created actually has a whole group lesson included.  The whole group lesson has two strategies for the students to use if they need help and a practice riddle. The whole group lessons helps prepare the students for the task card riddles.

I really like task cards because I find them so versatile.  I don't always put them in a center.  In fact, I would use these riddles in my morning routine for extra practice.  Sometimes I use task cards as a  Scoot activity or as a "Write around the room" activity.  I wanted to give the students an opportunity to move around so I rarely put task cards in a center to be completed.  Disclaimer: I did this preCovid, so do what is best for the health and safety of your students.

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You can find these centers in my TPT store.  Either click on the picture above or you can click HERE.

Happy Teaching!

Chrissie

Teaching Text Features in Second

I always find when students can create a product, it helps them understand a concept.  I planned this project around that idea, where the students had make a book about tulips and text features.  This was the second time we were covering the standard, and I wanted to give them something hands-on to do that was different than making a collage/poster (which is what we did the first time). 

Ta-Da!  Do you like the background?  I put it on a log. 😬

So my thinking for this is, it may not be exactly to the standard, BUT it gives the students a peek inside the mind of an author of informational text.  The kids had to plan their book, create a table of contents, include the text features we were reviewing, create a glossary using some of the words in their book, include page numbers, and complete the pages. 

 

It was a lot harder than I thought to get second graders to do all of that.  The illustration page was pretty easy because the kids had tons of practice with drawing pictures and writing a sentence about said picture.  

Even this page was not too difficult for the kids to complete.  Especially because I put a word bank on the board for the kids to use to help with the labels.  

For whatever reason, the students had hard time with this page, even though it is very similar to the first page.  After a whole class brainstorm, the students felt more confident and completed the page.  

It seemed like it would be easy, it as not.

This about killed me.

Originally, I was going to have the kids choose their own words to put into the glossary, but after so many of my kids seemed to struggle with it, I decided to choose the words.  They had to go back and underline the words in the book.  The glossary and table of contents were done in whole group since most of the kids needed the extra support.

All in all, we made it!  The books were fun, the kids were able to practice using the text features in their own spring-themed book, it was a win-win!

Think this is something that would be awesome to do in your classroom?  

I've got you covered!

Visit my TPT store by clicking the link HERE

Place Value PowerPoint

Woo!  I have finished my first math unit for the 2018-2019 school year! Yes, I'm on summer break. And yes, I should be relaxing, but that is not my jam.  So as a compromise, I binge watched Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt while creating it.  If you have not seen that show, you should because it's hilarious!  Disclaimer: The unit is only seven days because it's working on one of the rounding standards (3.NBT.1.1).  None-the-less, I have most of the first two weeks of math done for the upcoming school year. 🙌

Let's rewind a bit and I will give you some background on where these math lesson came from.  The district I work for requires common planning.  They want you to differentiate while systematically teaching the same thing, at the same time, in the same way because that's not confusing at all.   Because common planning is forced upon the teachers, what ends up happening is lesson planning gets split up among teachers and there isn't much collaboration 😞.  Or as colleague put it, "Forcing common planning only produces mediocrity, not greatness."  I have lots of thoughts on this, but that will have to wait until another blog entry.

Let's move on to when the collaboration did work!  At some point last year, we were all told to switch which subject we were teaching and had to pull a subject from a coffee mug. I pulled math and so did the first year teacher, who promptly started crying because she was just getting used to planning and reading, and well, we all remember how stressful our first year of teaching was.  However, once she accepted that it would not be ALL bad working with me. 😜  I told her I wanted to create units that did not require us to need the out-of-date curriculum nor a bunch of worksheets.  We collaborated on what to plan together and then I created a PowerPoint and a brochure to go with it.  It had everything we needed and it was not a bunch of worksheets.  We were so excited to share it with the team!

This is the part where the team was supposed to tell us how wonderful they and we were and thank us for all of our hard work.  That's not what happened.  Half of the team hated them.  Clearly, the two of us were on the side of liking them, especially because our kids LOVED them!  We also were given a new group member to make sure other lessons were planned since they did not like the PowerPoints.  Regardless, the two of us still continued to plan math together.  I made the PowerPoints and started showing her what I was doing so she could add to them.

This upcoming year, my buddy is going to teach another grade, but never fear!  I am going to continue to make these PowerPoints, brochures, and I am adding handouts and flipbooks!  I refuse to be mediocre and if it helps my students, I am doing it!

That was the end of that story, but now we get to discuss what is in them!

Obviously, there is a PowerPoint.

Each day of unit includes a cover page, materials page, daily target, and warm up.  The following pages include the lesson, when to switch over to the brochure or flipbook, accountable talk (fancy speak for discussion questions), and whiteboard activities.  I've also written a final test to accompany the unit.

I am putting the product in my TPT store that you can find HERE!

Happy Teaching!

💜Chrissie

Using Illustrations to Understand Texts

I am incredibly excited about this resource!  I've been working on it for quite a while and I am thrilled to use it in the fall! Since third grade is the first year for testing, the third grade team set up a mock FSA to get the kids exposed to the type of environment they would be testing in when it came to the actual test.  I made this very pretty spreadsheet that broke down what the kids needed to work on and realized they struggled with RI and RL 3.7.  That standard has the kids using illustrations to help them understand the text, so it shocked me they struggled with it.  I know they did similar strategies in K-2 because I used to teach first.  My guess is either the kids were not used to the type of questions being asked or we rely so heavily on reading text that we don't pay much attention to the pictures anymore or a combination of both.

The data sent me on a journey to find a resource to help my students.  I needed something explicit so my kids could practice with just this skill.  Since I could not find the right resources, I decided to make my own.  I started first with my fictional resource, then with informational. 

Our district is pushing close reads and encouraging all teachers to use those strategies, so I created a close read aspect because the kids will have to make notes about the picture on the page.

The notes can be observations or inferences about the picture.  Then, they have to put their thoughts into complete sentences. I noticed my students struggled with that in general so I figured giving them a place to practice that would be beneficial. 

Then, the students will read the text about the picture and answer the questions.  I created 14 pages for fictional practice and 14 for informational practice.  I plan to use it in a mini lesson and there are enough pages that I can put the others in a center.  

There are a few things I did with this resource.  I made FREEBIE versions of both.  Those can be grabbed HERE and HERE.  If you like those, you can purchase the full sets HERE and HERE. 

I also bundled them to save teachers a couple of bucks!  You can find that HERE.

Happy Teaching!

♡Chrissie

Chrysanthemum Anew

When I taught first grade, the entire grade used the book Chrysanthemum by Kevin Henkes to discuss bullying and friendship.  If you have never read it, it is about a little mouse, Chrysanthemum, who is teased at school because of her name.  One day, a new and very pregnant music teacher comes to school and tells her how much she loves the name and she was also named after a flower and has a long name.  Eventually, Chrysanthemum grows to love her name again.  It is definitely worth reading with your class, and the discussions I had with the first graders were very meaningful.

We had a lot of resources for the book since it was taught so many years.  However, everything was old school.  So I was cutting, taping, and making copies since nothing was electronic.  I decided to take what we were doing and create it electronically.  Then, all we would have to do is print off the pages we needed and make copies of those.

A Chrysanthemum Freebie was the first product I made for my store (not that I have a ton in it at the moment) and I just recently took it off as my primary free resource.  It is still in my store and you can find that HERE.  However, since I decided to spend my summer working on TPT products and getting ready for the next year, I've updated the freebie and the full unit project to look more professional.

I kept the same ideas in the unit project. I added a page that explains how to use each resource and how to differentiate the lessons for all learners.

I did keep the Chrysanthemum clipart I created a few years ago, and it took me such a long time to do because I made it in Word.  😂  I am so excited to have this updated version in my store!  It was fun making it, is one of the few primary resources I have, and is only a dollar!  It can be found HERE!

Happy Teaching!

♡Chrissie

Meet the Teacher

When I found out last summer I was making the move from first to third, happy is not the word I would use to describe how I felt about it.  Third grade in Florida can be summed up in one word: testing.  Third grade is an automatic retention year for students if they make a one on the FSA, Florida Standards Assessment.  If students make a two, three, four, or five, they can move on to the next grade level.  For reference, three is considered grade level.

Because third grade is an automatic retention grade, many students and families have testing anxiety before they even meet the new teacher.  Knowing all of that, I find it extremely important for parents to know immediately how much I care about their student's success.  Meet the Teacher is my chance to do that.   There were things I did last year that I will outline below, and how I am changing it up for this upcoming year.

Last Year's Meet the Teacher

 Last year, I did that in a variety of ways.  I saw the idea on Pinterest (and for the life of me, I can't find it again) to have a bag to put all of the Meet the Teacher goodies in so nothing gets lost.  I made these using my Cricut.

I have to admit it did take me quite a bit of time, so I may need to come up with an easier way to do it that still looks nice.

Last year, I switched it up a bit last year from what I normally do.  I bought bubbles to give the kids with a cute tag instead of giving my usual bag of popcorn.  While it was cute and the students enjoyed getting them, popcorn is usually BOGO at my local grocery store and it is cheaper.  The students will enjoy anything I give them, and if I can use that saved money on other things (for my classroom, or you know, to pay bills).

In the past, I have had parents who wanted pictures with me and their child.  I thought it would be sweet to have a spot in the room for a Meet the Teacher photo opp.  I received several compliments from my parents about it too!

On the other side of the board, I wrote a whiteboard message to my new students.  I wanted them to ask me any questions they may have about third grade. Some students were shy, but I did get quite a few questions that I answered on the first day of school. This is something I definitely want to do again for my next Meet the Teacher.

Meet the Teacher in August

This will be my eighth year teaching and I still have so much to learn.  I will be adding some magnets for parents this year, and some other fun things. 😊
After talking with a friend and doing some research on Pinterest, I decided to create my own information cards for the parents.  They are very easy to make.  I typed up my information, printed the apples on different apple colors, laminated them, and put a magnet on the back.  Voila!  A little gift for the parents!  I have also added it as an editable freebie in my TPT store.  You can grab that HERE!

With third grade being a big testing year, I know families are eager to help their child with reading comprehension.  However, I a lot of parents do not know what to ask their kids that will lead to a meaningful conversation.  I created a bookmark for the parents that has questions they can ask their child to check for comprehension.  I am laminating them and putting a magnet on the back too so they have a place to put it without it getting lost.

A couple of years ago, I did a scavenger hunt around the classroom.  I think I am going to bring it back and have the students and their families do an activity at each stop.  It will give me an opportunity to meet with each family while the others work on the scavenger hunt.  I guess my next step is to figure out what they will do at each location.

If any or all of these ideas sound like a good fit for your classroom, click HERE to find the product in my TPT store!

Always working,

Chrissie

Those Who Can

About Me:

I've taught a lot of different grades and I have a variety of experience.  Most teachers teach a grade at a school for awhile (lucky), but that wasn't what happened with most of my career.  I have been teaching 8 years now and I feel like I finally found a "home" and am teaching a grade I have taught previously so I can get really good at it.  With that being said, I like to create.  If I can't find something, I will make it.  As a result of that, I had a colleague suggest I try my hand at Teachers Pay Teachers.  I was already making it, might as well put it up, right?  Wallah! Here's a blog!

I came up with the name "Those Who Can" after my husband and I were talking about what to call a teacher store.  Somehow the saying "Those who can't, teach" was brought up and the name of the store was born.  I don't know what idiot came up with that saying, but clearly, he was not a teacher.

Teaching Experience:

My first year was in a 5/6 classroom in a one school district.  I had 11 students, which seems easy, until you realize they've been together since kindergarten and so it is more like 11 brothers and sisters.  My sixth graders graduated high school last year and my fifth graders graduated this year!  Eek!  How did that happen?  

I also was a reading interventionist in Chicago for 4-8th graders and a reading coach in another Chicago K-8 school.  I really enjoyed working in the city, but the mayor shuttered 50 schools and laid off all non-tenured teachers.  

I've worked in two schools in Florida and have taught 1st- 3rd grades.  This is my third year of third grade.  😃