Hands on Math

Hey Y'all!

Counting to 100 by ones is probably the standard that makes me the MOST crazy!! Listening to children count to 100 is worse than watching paint dry, or having bamboo shoots shoved under your finger nails. Ok maybe not that bad but close, ok? So I've been trying to come up with ways to practice without having to count count.

This is one of the actives we do. I hand each little 5-6 cards. Then we build a numbers chart. I could really tell the children who understand numbers and the patterns that numbers make compared to those who can just rote count and hold no understanding.

Another activity that we do is called count around the circle. I choose a range of numbers (1-10, 1-20,  20-30, etc) and tell the students the starting and ending numbers. Then each child says one number.  When I teach this I always start and I prompt students if needed. I start the first week of school, and it's only counting 1-5. The student who has the end number of the set sits down after they say there number. I LOVE this activity because my squirmy worms can wiggle without bothering others... and I can tell in a heartbeat who knows the number set we are practicing. ;)

Hope this gets you excited and you can use these two ideas in your classroom!

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Getting Interactive in Kinder!

Hey y'all!

Do you use interactive notebooks? Have you thought um nice idea but that's really a big kid thing? Does the teacher next door, down the hall, or upstairs use interactive notebooks? This post is going to have two purposes. The first is to share my experience with notebooks and why I like to use them with little kids. The second will be to share with you my thoughts and feelings about a Carson Dellosa product for note booking. Let's get down to  it then!

I remember my first exposure to interactive anything. They were foldable and my 3rd grade child at the time brough home this hot mess that was supposed to help her review and be ready for the state benchmark exam. Hot mess DOES NOT adequately describe this "thing". I remember seeing it and thinking that it was a waste of her precious time and how dare the teach waste this time! Oh man did I eat some humble pie that year. I missed the whole point and only saw the product. I missed that my child had to use anchor charts from MONTHS ago to find her information. I missed that my child was actively engaged in something that most kids hate- studying for a test. I missed it completely because all I saw was a hot mess and got upset. Yep I got upset. Being a teacher doesn't make you the best parent, funny how we morph into a 3 headed monster when it's our own kid. So upset, disappointed me took a day off from my classroom and meet with her teacher. I wanted to see for myself how this folded hot mess was really going to be valuable and I was lucky enough that they would be making yet another one on that day, this time for math. Boy oh boy, I got 'um now! And I headed off to her classroom ready to "got ya" at every turn. I had a notebook and was ready to collect actual evidence that this was not the way to review children for the test.

I know what you are thinking, had I lost my mind? Really you went that crazy? Yep, not my finest moment but let me tell you what happened when I got to her room. All those little learners packed into a small carpet area were excited. I really thinking that it was taking all that they had not to be jumping up and down or running with wild excitement. Y'all I couldn't believe that every child, even the one my daughter said NEVER paid attention, was sitting up on their knees ready to learn how to make this hot mess and get started looking for the answers. The teacher (let's call her Ms. X) was softly speaking as she showed them how to fold and cut a green piece of construction paper. Then she explained that in a second they were going to return to their desk and they would fold and cut together. And before I knew it they were off, watching and doing until the green paper no longer looked like paper but resembled the hot mess that had come home a few days ago. But here is where it got good. Ms. X turned on a over head projector (and no this only happened in 2007 so it wasn't THAT long ago) with numbered sections. She explained that in each of the numbered section on their folded paper they would need to find the answer. She reminded them to use their brains, use their neighbors, use the text book, and use the anchor charts.

At this point, I braced myself. I just knew the got ya moment was about to happen! Chaos, crying, whining, yelling... everything I pictured happening did not! The kids quickly got started. They knew from before to label and write the "question" from the overhead into a section and start finding the answer. The child closest to me leaned over to the friend on his left and said " hey number 3 looks like what we did at halloween. Remember we had candy?" The child on the left answered back" yea and we had that anchor chart... let's go find it!" These two children hopped up and went to a clothes rack with charts on hangers and started looking through. When they found what they were looking for they found a spot on the carpet and started talking about it. They invited another child over to help them.

Oh my, humble pie... I was wrong. WAY WAY wrong and I knew it. Ms. X slid over while I was watching and asked if I had any questions. I think I stuttered out something about procedures and how I didn't think that my K kids could do this, and she whispered an answer that rocked my whole thinking. She said this isn't my idea. In a staff meeting the kindergarten team presented a project that they had just finished on life cycles and they had used foldables. Jaw on floor. Mouth catching flies! I couldn't believe my ears and since my face showed every thought, Ms X giggled and said something like that was my reaction too. And she glided away to help a group that appeared stuck.

That was my first exposure to interactive anything and after I picked my jaw up from the floor, I started looking for ways to incorporate interactive books, notebook, and foldables into my classroom. Lucky for me Dr. Jean came to my town and talked about making interactive pieces WITH kindergarten kids. And my love for them grew! Now I am constantly on the look out for things that could work in our notebooks. Things that hook the kids into learning. Things that I teach the procedure one and we use with all kinds of learning.  That leads me to the second reason for the post, Carson Dellosa's Interactive Notebooks.

I am part of Carson Dellosa's Brand Ambassador team and we get to try out products and give our thoughts on them (two of my favorite activities by the way ;) ). So when I saw that one of the products that I could use and talk about was the kindergarten level interactive notebooks I jumped at the chance. These books come either as language arts or math. I have TONS of ideas for literacy so I opted for math.  Let's talk about the facts first then I'll give you my thoughts.

There are 96 pages in this book. That are divided by common core state standards areas. That is one section is counting and cardinality and another is geometry. The table of contents also shows that there is a section called "reproducible". This section is the blank or editable section of templates. There are also several pages on getting started, what interactive notebooks are, and how to plan or organize these pages.

Here are two pages from the book. The top one shows a programed page by Carson Dellosa. The bottom page is one from the reproducible section. Each of the programed pages has a title and some interactive piece. The pages from the reproducible section do not have a title, but contain information on how to use the page. Each of the programed pages has a facing page in the book that includes sections on introducing the page, creating the page, and reflecting on the learning. This could be used to format you lesson plan. Although the page is listed in counting and cardinality section there in no where that actual standards are addressed.

I use composition books as our interactive notebooks and this picture is to show how a page compares in size. There is a section in the front of the book that talks about choosing the right kind of notebook. In this information Carson Dellosa states that "the pages in the look are formatted for a standard one subject notebook" (page 5). The books lists pros and cons to spiral notebooks, composition books, and binders with loose leaf paper. They even list a tip or two for each kind of book so that you can better choose what works for you.

So I started this with a story, yep it really happened too. I mentioned that I had spent a TON of time searching for things to use in our interactive notebooks. What I didn't write about was the trial and epic failures that I had a long the way. In this book, there are some pages that would have made my life SO much easier! One example would be the whole pro and con section of what kind of notebook to use. Man would that have made things go better and the tips are great! For me to stay with my comp books, all I have to do is reduce the page size when copying AND the tip gives me a suggestion of what to set the copy machine too. There is a grading rubric in the front section that gives a standard format for grading your interactive notebook pages.

Let's talk about what I wish first and then end with what I loved. There are several things that I wished for as I was looking through and working with this book. The first was to have actual standards on the teacher page. I feel that most of the pages cover more than one skill and knowing the intended skills would have been great, rather than me guessing. Since most districts require us to put specific standards I wish that this book had done that too. The second wish that I had was I wanted more. I wanted several options for each skill. For example on the counting objects 1-5, I would have liked several pages that we could have used to build up to 5. Many of the pages felt more like a "chapter review" rather than learning pages. I wished for both! My last wish is one that probably only effects me, but here it is. I wish that all the cut lines were dotted. The book uses dotted lines for folding, big bold lines for cutting, and a medium weight line for separating sections. This was a huge confusion when we started because the pages we had done prior were all pages I had created and used dotted lines to cut.

Let's talk LOVE.... I love that this book is something that I could give to a partner teacher who had never notebooked in her classroom and she would know where to start. I love that this book answered most of the questions that I had when I started and you don't have to go hunting or fail to get the answers. I love that this book has a large number of blank or template pages. I think someone more advanced in note booking would see these as a huge resource. They are my favorite part of this book. I love the rubric and planning guides. The less prep work I have to do means I have more time for planning and being ready.

Final thought... while I think that this book will appeal more to beginning note booking teachers. There is value in this book being in every note booking classroom. Don't overlook it because it appears one way, it really has pieces that everyone can use.


** I am a Carson Dellosa Ambassador and the materials for this review were sent to me at no cost to myself. The ideas and opinions expressed on this blog are my own and are not necessarily the thoughts or opinions of Carson Dellosa.

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Getting down to work with Math Workshop...

I can not believe that this is the fourth Wednesday that we have been in school!! My kinders are getting into the swing of things nicely. Today I want to share my basic workshop model. I set my time into 4 sections: 1) warm-up/ number talks, 2) journals, 3) guided math/ mini lesson, 4) tubs/ small group. Now let's talk about what each of those mean to me.

Number talks are new to my workshop this year and already they are the superhero of math workshop. I have used number cards for several years now, but they always felt contrived. This summer I did some youtube searching for teachers working with dot cards and children. Some videos were better than others but what I learned is that if you are just "flashing" cards you are missing out! We have spent the last two weeks working on the procedures and talk that surround dot cards. For example when I hold a card up my children place a finger on their noise when they know the number. Right now I am not flashing cards but leaving them up long enough for kids to count. Also we are only using dot cards 1-6 right now. Why 6 and not stop at 5? Honestly, I didn't get all the 6's out of my stack when I started this year. 

I personally own Deedee Wills all the credit for math journals! Man does she rock them. We have been using her Math journal prompts and the kids are getting excited each day to see what their question is.  I love the growth we see in using a math journal. I want to dive into to math journals as it's own post at a later time. 

This is the biggest area of growth for me personally. I have always used math small groups as RTI for math. I really want to grow this area of my teaching to match what I do in literacy stations. I am working on a post for that as well. 

So there it is... Workshop Wednesday ;) Until next time...

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Number Sense chapter 3

This chapter was about building routines that instill visual images based on numbers. That is getting children to mentally see what three dot and two dots look like so that they can come up with five. This is huge in mental math strategies. One of the kindergarten CCSS in addition (oa5 I think) talks about fluently adding and subtracting with in 5. It hit me while reading this chapter that subitizing is mental math fluency. How cool would it be to get to teaching addition and the kids "see" it because you spent so much time building mental images of what numbers look like. There were two quotes that really stuck out.

This quote I feel supports the need to use dot cards and ten frame cards so that children are able to see numbers. Along the way we heard the story of a child who could match 3 dots to 3 fingers but didn't know the number name three. This child could see the dots and recreate them but didn't know the name. Using the dot cards would help her grow in seeing the number with the name but since the teaching could include the showing of fingers this child could be successful in a whole class setting. I have seen it time and again that if a child is successful then they are willing to try. 

The chapter spent a good deal of time talking about how to use dot cards and ten frame cards in the classroom I won't go into much detail here, but I am excited to think about how these could be used in my room. Starting the first day we could look at cards and talk about how many dots we see and learn how to show that many fingers without shouting out the answer. We can use ten frames or five frames to start seeing numbers in groups and talk about how many dots are there and how many more do we need to fill the frame. This chapter excited me. And then I read this:

Do you see the power of the dot cards? This quick routine that shouldn't last more than 5 or so minutes ( once it is up and running) impacts SO much of future math work. 

This chapter also introduced me to a new item, a rekenrek. Have you ever heard of this tool? 

They have ten beads on the top row and ten on the bottom. In the book it also talks about a version where you can hide beads behind a white board... Like this one. 

I'm going to find out if our math coach has ever used these and see if she will come model it for me, since I'm struggling to understand it. 

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Ch-ch-changes....

Lots of changes coming over this summer. Ones that I am super excited about! I am getting a new blog look, starting several new features, and revamping some of my TPT and TN products.

Let's start with blogs and blog designs. I am working with the WONDERFUL team at Honey Bunches Blog designs . I am so excited and can not wait until it's finished. But the new blog got me to thinking about my classroom. It's been the same forever and honestly, I'm tired of it. When I started teaching umpteen years ago I had a cute bears and bees theme. EVERYTHING was bees or bears and red gingham. Cute! Then I changed over a few years ago to a zoo theme. I made a lot of my items using KPM Doodles clip art. Very cute! But now I'm tired of that! I kind of think I'm tired of looking so "baby-ish", not that we really looked baby. I think you get what I mean. The teachers I teach with are AWESOME! There are 4 of us and they all have super cute rooms!! My neighbor does an amazing Hollywood design! So awesome! And across the way we have a super cute zebra print and pink room. I worried that the boys wouldn't like it but either they didn't notice the pink or it wasn't a big deal. And her neighbor has a construction theme! Hard hats, caution tape, and tools everywhere!

Then there is me... a half hearted zoo. It's not cute. It's not complete. It's kind of well tired. So I've been looking and NOTHING is getting me excited! NOTHING! UGH! I know that I like bright colors and the rainbow chevron is something that I love, but a theme it does not make. I guess I'm worried that my kinders will feel slighted (or maybe its more the parents) if my room isn't themed. At least I've got time to figure that part out. ;)

Now about the blog features that I am working on. I love Elsie's blog called a beautiful mess. I was thinking about how she plans her blog... what she shares seems so effortless. I am betting it because she has a plan. Me, I've not had a plan. I've posted when and whatever was on my mind. I don't want to change that but I do want to have some regularity to my blog. So here is the general plan. Tuesdays are going to be math days. Right now the posts are mostly about the book study number sense but during the school year I want them to be more about what is happening mathematically in my room. Thursdays will be literacy days. I LOVE what my writing instruction has become because of the Little Rock Writing Project. I also am going to include new products and random thoughts but I think that having a plan will help me stay focused.

Now for a request. I am looking to add a few people who blog to be "product testers". The details are this.... while I am in production of a new product I would need to be able to send you a working copy for you to give me feedback on. This would have to stay private, that is no blogging about it...yet. That is the second part of the deal. Once the product goes up on TPT or TN I would need for you to blog about it and pin it to pintrest.  If you are interested please email me at keday56@gmail.com, I won't be pulling names from the comments below.

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Number Sense Chapter 2

Our district really supports CGI math and expects all teachers to use it in their rooms. In my training for CGI I watched a teacher working with a group of children subtilizing. I have to admit that I did not understand at all why this was being used. I just didn't get it. And sadly no one explained to us why this teacher was using this in her room. I get it now. This activity that seemed to be play really had so much meaning that would have been great to understand. 

This quote was from the section where the kids were skip counting around the circle. I am so excited about this idea. This practice that appears to be a game is meaningful practice. It gives the teacher the ability to differentiate for all of their students through the questions that they ask. Think about this with our youngest learners, or our ELL students. These children are still working to Put everything together. A simple count around the circle by ones gives the teacher the opportunity to see where a child's understanding stops working. And at the same time enrich the above grade level student by asking what number would Susan have if we keep counting. One of the common core standards has us counting forward from any number (K.CC.2- count forward beginning at any given number within the known sequence instead of having to begin at 1). How cool is count around the circle for this activity!!!

And you know the kinders will love this because it feels like play. I think this will be something I start the first day of school with...counting to 20. I expect that there will be plenty of children who will not get this and will benefit from the counting practice..

This is just a part of the math goal that I have for this year. To creat routines that are comfortable and predictable so that my students will want to take chances and grow I their number sense. I also thought that it was important to remember to listen to the children. These routines are not just for routine sake... These are learning experiences and if you change the numbers thinking that they should get this and yet they don't, listen! The kids are saying that they have memorized a sequence of numbers but they really don't have the skills needed and should be given more practice with that counting sequence. 

I really am enjoying this book and a shocked at how importInt this is not to have been discussed in any of the math training that. I have been too. 

 

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2am; WHAT?

I am wide awake and for the love of Pete I can not figure out why!! So I decided to knock out a couple of new projects. I found these cubes at the Dollar Tree and decided to get a TON of them! Add a sharpie and they aren't just counting cubes- although they are that too! Since they are foam they WILL NOT make noise when rolled! Yep... gotta keep the distracting noises to a minimum! So I took these blank cubes...

and added numbers. I will also add letters to some.

Then I made baggies of 10 (five in each color) so that we could work on counting. I am also in the process of making math mats to use as well.

I also got whisper phones done! I have 10 right now, didn't get enough end caps. But I will be making 10 more this weekend and as a goodbye present for my teaching partner I am going to make her some! Here is the first batch. I had monster duck tape on some and Hello Kitty on the others. I did get some different duck tape today that I think I will use for the rest. It's bright colored chevrons. Very fun!

I thought I would give the measurements... I used 3/4" PVC pipe and elbows. I cut the pipe to 3-1/2" sections. I was able to get 20 segments, plus some from my pipe. Total cost for this project was under $15. At first I wasn't sure if I liked the white space on either side of the duck tape but the more I live with it the more I am ok with it!

See the white on either side of hello kitty? That is what I'm talking about... And this little suckers are LOUD! I can not wait to use them with my little ones!

I am going to be exhausted but I am working in my room today. And I have a quick dr's appointment to have him look at my progress since surgery. I think it's going good but I am still struggling to go up and down stairs. I am hoping that he will help me out with some more PT... to get the stairs part now that I have WAY more strength. I am worried that workers comp wont give me the PT though... stinkin workers comp ;)

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Have you heard of Learning Spots lessons by Carson-Dellosa?

Just recently I got the chance to use the Learning Spot interactive white board lessons by Carson-Dellosa and I want to tell you all about them!! First I must say that my kiddos LOVE the "magic board". They love that they can move items all over, they love when they get the matches right but until now the only form of cheering for the write answer came from me.  I'm getting a bit ahead of myself, let me go back to the beginning.

Carson-Dellosa came out with a new interactive white board program and lessons a few months ago. The program gets downloaded to your computer. The best part is that you can have the program on a home computer and on your school computer!! HOW awesome is that!! I can open a lesson at home and read the lesson plan, called teacher notes, and read through the lesson as well as some differentiation and extension activities. In getting ready to use the Beginning and Ending Consonant Sounds, I was able to go through the lesson portion without the smartBoard.The Beginning and Ending sound lesson is divided into three sections; beginning sounds, ending sounds and both together. Once the lesson is open I could pick the letter that I wanted us to work on without having to go through letters that I didn't want to work on. One thing that I want to mention is that because this was a lesson on sounds that each picture has a little speaker icon at the bottom that says what that picture is. Here are my kids working on this lesson:

Here we are working on the student activities section. We were sorting sounds by their beginning sound.

Remember how I said that my kids love it when they get things right? Well honestly all kids do, but here is a picture of one of my kids moving the last picture to where it belongs. Once the child moved the last picture into place we clicked on the "check my work" button and look at what popped up... with motion AND clapping!!

We LOVE this new addition to our classroom. It was SUPER easy to prepare for the lesson and the kids caught on without a lot of me teaching them how to use the program. The last section on the lesson is an independent work section where I was able to print off some practice sheet that I put into a station for them to complete.

I also used the addition lesson that is for first grade. My kids enjoyed working with this one too!! With the common core standards teaching addition so early in kindergarten I was beginning to run out of ideas... thank you Carson-Dellosa!! Here are some pictures of the kids working the addition lesson:

Now I bet you want to try it for yourself... right? I'm tell you if you have a smart board you NEED to look at these lesson!! Here a link to where you can see all the lessons available: click here for lessons
And here is where you can learn more!

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Snowflake symmatry and a wonderful Friday

Today I decided to add to what we are doing with shapes. I am a common core classroom and I'm pretty true to what we are supposed to teach. Today I deviated... now I have a reason and it's a good one. We were talking about triangles and I decided to talk about the kinds of triangles that you can draw (equilateral, isosceles etc) and I realized for the kids to really get it they needed to understand line of symmetry. So we huddled up (yep just like in football) and I told them that they were going to learn about something that the big kids are learning! That gets their attention every time! We watched a little piece by the Number Crew from united streaming, which I think explains lines of symmetry better than I can. Then we folded some shapes to see if they had lines of symmetry. We found that most shapes do, but that you can fold a star or a heart so that they don't. Then we talked about how we could make a snowflake that had a line of symmetry. We made one as a class and then I sent them back to tables to make their own.

What we did... first we folded the blue paper so that it had a line of symmetry. See the paper on the right? YOu can see the line. The kids then started placing shapes (pattern block pieces) around a center piece.

Here are some more examples.

I have to say that I LOVE my babies!!  They had so much fun with this activity. I saw the ellison dies in a teacher catalog and really thought that the kids would love to be able to create things with them. I look forward to being able to make more projects with these!!

I just had to add this picture. It was a BEAUTIFUL day today!! Well it did cloud up and tonight it's raining but the weather was mild, you almost did not need a jacket. The little one in the plaid coat is my teacher's assistant. Her job all week has been to lead and help those who aren't doing the right thing using HAND SIGNS only! Here she is pointing to the ground, which tells the line where to be.

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Can you help me?

Hey teachers I need your help. I am working on something that I might list at TPT (Teachers Pay Teachers). I've used some of these items in my room but I didn't know if other teacher might like them. The deal is that I created them kind of open ended and defiantly differentiated. My kids are still struggling with the tricky teens so right before the break I made this worksheet. The point of the sheet id for the child to write the number several times ( I tell my kiddo's how many times to write it- usually 5). Then they cut and paste the small pictures on to the large page. For this page, I had them gluing paint brushes on the paint bottle. I've also had them glue them beside the paint bottle- another quick look at those positional words. Since some of my kids have no problem discarding extra pieces, I made this sheet with 20 paint brushes at the bottom. The second sheet only has 11. This is the one that I use with the kids who still struggle to stop when they reach their number.  This is that group of kids that can count orally and can count a set number (if you are looking for how many) but they struggle to stop counting when they reach the desired number.

So here is where I need your help... can you download the pages below and critique them? I know there are not any directions on the actual pages, and that might be something that a teacher would want to have. If this becomes something that I sell on TPT there would be a "how to use these pages" at the beginning of the download.

Tricky Teens page

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Common Core Journaling Prompts

I have been working on a new set of journaling prompts. I still have a few students who struggle with counting. I created these to help them. My plan was to create a set of prompts that I could use in a small group while the whole class was working on their journals. What I found was that the children who understood counting also enjoyed working with these. I very quickly was able to give the direction to count and write the number to the whole class but each child had their own number to work on! It's differentiation at it's best... I'll be making more and more of these as the year rolls on, but here is the first set! And they are aligned to the common core standards.

Click on the picture above to see the whole package in my TPT store. And I'm posting a  free page so that everyone can try it. This is my first document to put up at google docs, so please please let me know if there are any problems with the page!! The graphics in the free page are from the WONDERFUL KPM Doodles!! LOVE them...

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math journal prompts

Yesterday I shared about my counting collection love affair and math journals. I thought that I would share with you a little sample of how I do math journals. Remember that I use those black and white comp books as the base and I add some kind of label to the top. Last year I used premade note pads like the ones you get from Carson Dellosa.This year I am using Avery Labels that I printed. ;) 

Here is a Mini version of the Math Journal Prompt file for sale at TPT

Once you grab the file and open it, you will see that there are 5 rectangles per page. The idea is to reproduce enough for your whole class. Since my state won't allow more than 20 kinders in a room or 25 firsties, I laid out the page in multiples of 5. These are ACTUAL prompts that I have used with my kiddo's. They are handed their journal and a prompt and know to go to their table and glue to prompt into the book. We use a date stamp at the beginning of the year to date them, and later we write the date. I have the full version for sale over at Teachers pay teachers. The full version has over 50 prompts in it. And knowing how much I LOVE math journals, I wouldn't be surprised if more of these pop up. We are changing to Common Core this year and I will be reworking some of these  this summer.

I am scheduled to take CGI (a math workshop offered by the Dept of Ed in my state). It's a 3 year commitment to learning math instruction. I am super excited about the training and I am hoping that it fits into the ideas that Debbie Diller has. Keep checking back to see more about my journey through math work stations and for some of my ideas...

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