Click Santa to enjoy this Christmas Math Freebie from our Christmas Math Printable Pack
November 28, 2016
The Holidays are here
We are super excited to be participating in the Cyber2016 sale on TPT. If you are looking for great December resources we have you covered. Our store is 28% off.
October 17, 2016
How to Manage Math Workshop
How to manage math workshop for
student success
student success
We
all know that in order to really meet students’ needs, we need to roll up our
sleeves and get right in there! Sounds easy, right? Well what about the other
20 kids? You know the ones they always show working nice and quiet in those
professional development videos. Well those students are never in my room. So I have to get real creative during my
small math group time.
At
the beginning of the year, as I am teaching procedures and I am not ready for
my students to be up moving yet…. I have the center come to them. Each of my
math stations for the beginning of the year are in tubs. I can put 3-4 baskets
at a table. Lucky for us our first math unit is Exploring Math tools. This
allows students time to explore and play with all the manipulatives they will
be using through out the year.
As
first graders are learning the routines and procedures of a new classroom,
sometimes it is hard to take it all in. Rotating the tubs allows students to
still be able to practice the procedure for stations
from their area, which they already know the procedure for. I think this helps
them to manage themselves better. Later on, we learn how to rotate from our
area and what is expected. By then we have couple of more months of school
under our belt and seem to handle it better. I am not a complete control freak,
I do have some flexible seating options in my room but I am not there yet to
just turn them loose. I am working on it though!!! I am a work in progress, I
tell my firsties all
the time that I am learning too!!!
What is the teacher doing during guided math
At
the beginning of the year, I am monitoring groups and making observations. As I
feel students are learning the routines and ready to try it alone, I call groups. I introduce sheets that
students may see during the workshop. This way I know that students understand
the directions and later on are able to complete the sheet during workshop
time.
FREEBIES
Here
are some great freebies that I use and are apart of our math packs. Try these
freebies and see how you like them
August 16, 2016
The Primary Sisters: Organizing Word Work
The Primary Sisters: Organizing Word Work: Words Their Way Since it's almost time for the kids to go back to school. I wanted to update some of our popular post about teaching ...
August 1, 2016
Back 2 School
It's that time again...How can it be?? I am finally getting the hang of lounging in my PJ's all day and you turn around and it's August. SO let's celebrate this awesome month with a site wide TPT sale(a little shopping retail always helps) Use the coded BESTYEAR to receive 28% off items in our store.
Check out some of these great resources to help make this your best year ever.
Hands down this is our best seller. This number sense pack helps students see number arrangements and helps students begin to see numbers without counting on their fingers. Students begin to recognize the dots on the dice and associate that arrangement with the correct number. These math activities are great for beginning of the year. I use them for math workshop to practice procedures for math workshop during those first few weeks. Great addition to your back to school file!
ANOTHER great resource are our vowel and word work packs. These are great for review at the beginning of the year or they are great to add to your daily word work or literacy center activities.
We have worked hard all summer updating and adding to each pack. Each pack contains color sheets for each word family or pattern, fluency passage, read it write it stamp it, word search, sorting activities. They provide a variety of activities to support your phonics and word study programs.
HAPPY SHOPPING
Back 2 School
It's that time again...How can it be?? I am finally getting the hang of lounging in my PJ's all day and you turn around and it's August. SO let's celebrate this awesome month with a site wide TPT sale(a little shopping retail always helps) Use the coded BESTYEAR to receive 28% off items in our store.
Check out some of these great resources to help make this your best year ever.
Hands down this is our best seller. This number sense pack helps students see number arrangements and helps students begin to see numbers without counting on their fingers. Students begin to recognize the dots on the dice and associate that arrangement with the correct number. These math activities are great for beginning of the year. I use them for math workshop to practice procedures for math workshop during those first few weeks. Great addition to your back to school file!
ANOTHER great resource are our vowel and word work packs. These are great for review at the beginning of the year or they are great to add to your daily word work or literacy center activities.
We have worked hard all summer updating and adding to each pack. Each pack contains color sheets for each word family or pattern, fluency passage, read it write it stamp it, word search, sorting activities. They provide a variety of activities to support your phonics and word study programs.
HAPPY SHOPPING
July 12, 2016
The Primary Sisters: TPT sale
The Primary Sisters: TPT sale: Don’t miss out on some great sales today and every Tuesday this summer. Use the code #2forTuesday to see some awesome products half off....
TPT sale
Don’t
miss out on some great sales today and every Tuesday this summer. Use
the code #2forTuesday to see some awesome products half off.
Our back to school Count and color is a great review or introduction to subitizing numbers. When students work with dice they begin to associate the way the dots are arranged with the number. This helps students see the number
without counting which is the foundation of number sense.
 |
These
printable count and color math activities are our best seller. They are great
for stations and morning warm up. I use them in my math workshop time. Students practice with dice to help them subitize numbers. Seeing how numbers are arranged and associating that with how many is a important number sense skill. This is a growing bundle. I just added 5 more pages and will add more as the year goes! So get it now for half off!!
Need
word work activities? Well here they are. WE created these word work activities
to be fun and easy for students to use during stations. Long vowel teams can be
hard for students because they always want to give that vowel the short sound!
These printable activities are a great addition to your word work time.
Get them while they are 50 % off
July 10, 2016
Best Ipad Apps
to
use in the Elementary Classroom
Last
school year, as a pinnacle leader in my county, I had the
opportunity to have 20 Ipads in
my classroom. My students loved
using
them daily in stations and to actually create technology
products.
Yes 6 year olds can create tech products on their own!
Not
only can they create products but they can teach you a thing
or
two while they are at it
Best
Advice
My
best piece of advice is to choose 2 to 3 apps that you can
easily use throughout all curriculum areas and that
students,
can use independently (after modeling of
course).
Teachers
often ask when and how do I make time for these tech moments. I don’t like to try to cram anything extra
into my already jam packed day. So
for me it has to be purposeful and meaningful and not anything extra.
So when I planned to digitally publish my students writing
by
using Chatterpix, I
allowed time during my Writer’s Workshop
for
students to work on this. Another tech project required students to use Skitch to label and identify plant parts, so during or STEM time students uploaded a picture of a plant and labeled the parts. These technology projects make great assessment pieces also, almost like killing two birds with one stone.
Must
have
Apps
Click
below to check out our Spookleys
Chatterpix is a
free must have app, that can turn any picture into
a
talking picture. Students take a picture and save to camera roll.
Chatterpix will
access the camera roll and allow students to upload
their
picture. They simply swipe across to make a mouth on their
picture.
Next students press the record button to animate their
picture.
Students used Chatterpix to
digitally publish their writing.
After
reading Spookley the Square Pumpkin students created their
own Spookley’s
and wrote about how to be a nice friend. To work
on
reading fluency, students practiced reading their writing to a
partner
so they would be ready to record their writing. Students used
an Ipad to
take a picture of their Spookley and save to the camera
Roll.
Chatterpix is
great to use across all subject areas. Students can
snap a
picture of anything you are studying and then record facts,
read
their writing, or tell all about themselves.
Click
below to check out our Spookleys
Skitch is
another free app. Students can label and describe
anything
using just one or two words. This is what makes
Skitch such
a great app for young learners. During our plant unit
students
would take pictures of plants in non fiction books we were
using
as read alouds. Students saved the pictures to the camera roll
then
opened the Skitch app
and uploaded the picture. As an assessment, students labeled the parts of a plant. This app does need
a bit
more modeling to show students how to draw the arrows and
bring
up the side menu options, such as text boxes and frames. Skitch is
also great for math, students
can use manipulatives to represent different sums. Take a picture and
use Skitch to
show the parts or write the number sentence.
Popplet lite
is the third must have app. For primary students. Popplet is a
mapping and graphic organizing tool. It is great for students who need a visual
representation. Students can insert their own words, images and drawings to
describe or tell about almost any subject from science to math. I used Popplet in
just about all areas. Students can use this app in Guided Reading to retell a
story using beginning, middle and end.. In Science students can upload pictures
of the phases of the moon and label each phase. During work on words, my students used Popplet to
practice their spelling pattern for the week. Students would put the pattern in
the middle and then make words with the pattern in the other boxes.
As I discussed at the beginning, I
used lots of other apps during the year and will try to blog about those at a
later time., but in order to make it more manageable these are the 3 that I
really concentrated on using. These 3 apps are user friendly (and teacher
friendly) and can be used across all subject areas. I would love to hear how
others have used these apps or any other apps that you think are the best
April 12, 2016
Spring is in the air and I'm tired!
I love spring and how much I can see how my firsties are growing and learning. It's this time of year when we begin to see the fruits of our labor! They can read, they can write and they have so much energy that it wears me out! So somethings about Spring may not be so great.
Another thing I love about Spring is our Plant Needs unit.
Another thing I love about Spring is our Plant Needs unit.
Be sure to follow us in our TPT store to get the latest product news!
March 14, 2016
NOOO! It’s come to an end! This is the last blog post for a while of the Featured Teacher Tuesdays!
Years of tumbling, cheerleading and a passion for teaching made her blog name come to life! She has been teaching for 9 years, 6 of those being in first grade! She has truly found her teaching niche!
Heidi has been married for 15 years (yep, he’s tied up in the basement) and has two beautiful girls ages 15 (don’t do the math) and 10! Faith brings joy in her life each and every day! God has blessed her family and teaching career! She is a middle child (typical middle child syndrome) and requires lots of attention from those around her!
Organization fuels Heidi through first grade! (It may be a disease!) Check out her blog for some amazing tips on how to organize Words Their Way, Listening Stations, Behavior Management, Erin Condren Planner, Common Core Assessments, Classroom tips and so much more!
Laughing is important to Heidi! Mo Willems, first grade quotes, and National Lampoon movies can put a smile on her face. Just like Wimberly, Heidi can worry a lot! Therefore Heidi clings to
Psalm 46:10 “Be still, and know I am God!
Heidi’s best seller is her Editable Daily Behavior Chart! This is an amazing product that every teacher who has a student with challenging behavior needs!! Heidi loves to hear success stories about teachers using this in their classrooms!!
Fry’s First 100 Sight Words came about when she had 30% of her students struggling with sight words! Yikes! To overcome this obstacle, Heidi created a product that focuses on teaching the words in context using pictures, repetition, and motor skills! She ended that year with 100% of her students knowing all first grade sight words! Love it!
Heidi’s First Grade Common Core Math Assessments are a full year’s worth of assessments! She even has a blog post with a yearly calendar to help you plan!
Check out one of Heidi’s freebies!
Don’t forget to join me in following Heidi!
March 2, 2016
Meet Karen Wasdin from Silly Sam Productions!
Karen has been teaching 1st Grade for almost 30 years. She is a Baseball Mom from New Jersey and loves to watch her son play for the High School team and travel teams. Her husband is a Videographer/Photographer and she enjoys assisting him in producing sports and educational videos in his business, MoonGate Video Productions.
Finding ways to help her young learners understand the trickiest concepts has driven her to create multi-sensory approaches and engaging lessons that MAKE LEARNING FUN! These techniques can be found in her products at TpT.
Color-Coded Fact Families Mental Math uses the color-coding technique to help learners make connections to math strategies.
is an integrated Reader’s and Writer’s Workshop unit that has students look at the story of the Three Little Pigs through the eyes of different characters. Then they do the same with their own personal narrative about their first day of school. This helps them truly discover and empathize with others and recognize feelings other than their own.
is an extensive unit covering the heart of the first grade phonics curriculum. Word Houses use patterning chunks and vowel sounds to help students become stronger readers and writers. Creating their own Vowel Books helps students celebrate all that they have learned.
You can find and follow Silly Sam Productions here:
Facebook: Silly Sam Productions Instagram: sillysamproductions
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