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

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