Coming Soon: Math Workstations, Part 2

Ok mathletes, it's time to change out the math workstations. Using the format I learned about at our district's GAP conference (which you can read about here) math workstations have become a great part of our math block. Now it's time to up the ante and change some of the activities. Here is a preview of the workstation "staging" area...

Workstations to include domino addition sentences and parking lot, 10 frame bump, ways to make 10 part/whole mats, 10 frame flash cover up, unifix doubles towers and pending purchase at Wal Mart "ice cube tray" math. More details to come!

TGI almost Friday...before I can hit the couch (and possibly fall asleep on it at 7pm, possibly) I've got a discussion board post and routine write up for my book study due and tomorrow we've got a short day, Write From the Beginning training and a teacher social outing. Here we go!

Pencil Schmencil

Hello all, remember me? I've been wrapped up this week and haven't had a chance to blog about the wedding of the year (I will trust me), but I had to share this with you because it has Changed. My. Life. 

If you know me, you know that I can't stand all things pencil. You may remember from reading this post that pencils drive me "12 kinds" of crazy. Well today my friends, all of my problems have been solved. I found the most AMAZING pencil sharpener! I'd love to share it with you but it's a secret. I found it in another teacher's room, and I can't quite disclose where at this time. But I can tell you that it sharpened 40 pencils in seconds flat. I will sneak off to sharpen my pencils here from now on. The only foreseeable issue is that the pencils are so sharp, they may technically be considered weapons but we'll cross that bridge later.

Happy Friday everyone!

Stuck on Science

The first quarter curriculum map for science leaves much to be desired. I'm trying to create meaningful activities and stay true to the curriculum map. The strands include; who uses science, inventions and inventors and something to do with gauges and measurement. With 30 minutes twice a week, I'm coming up short!

This week I'm focusing on inventions and inventors. I checked out a book at the library with lots of pictures but the text was way too advanced. I went through the book and saw a section where it lists inventions alphabetically, shows a picture and gives a couple paragraph blurb. I took it and ran. I created this anchor chart to use...

First we talked about how inventions start as ideas. The inventor builds or creates their idea to make something easier or better. Then we talked about inventions that we know of like light bulbs and cars. Then I busted out the book. Each letter lists about 3 inventions, for example A listed 1) automobiles, 2) aspirin and something I can't remember! I showed the pictures and read the list to the kids and let them pick which invention they wanted to hear more about. I wrote the name of the invention on our list and read the blurb from the book to them. They picked really fun things like Ice Cream, Dynamite and Elevators. It was fun explaining what life might have been like before the inventions. Today we got through A-M, tomorrow I'm hoping for N-Z.

I think I'll pull it out next week and let them pick an invention, write about how it makes life easier or better and what it would have been like before it was invented. And illustrate, of course! I can just picture exploding buildings being drawn for dynamite!

Does anyone have any quick or fun suggestions on how to spice up these lessons? Please, please, please?

GAP Conference

Yesterday we had a teacher inservice day where the entire district attended the Growing As Professionals (GAP) Conference at the Phoenix Convention Center.

My experiences with this annual conference have been hit or miss. The year Ron Clark presented = big hit! Some of the breakout sessions in the past have not been as helpful or relevant as I would have liked but overall the conference is a great chance to get together as educators and remind ourselves why we teach. Yesterday's keynote speaker was Todd Whitaker educator and author of many books including

He was extremely funny and inspirational. The main message was "Raise the Praise, Minimize the Criticize" which I promptly made up a little song and dance for :) He basically talked about how we should treat people (students, parents, teachers) like they are good. Our society tends to treat people like they are bad, asking a student in the hall "what are you doing?" instead of "can I help you?" or asking our trusted spouse who is 20 minutes late coming home from the store "where were you?" instead of not mentioning it at all. He spoke about how treating good people like they are good makes them happy and treating bad people like they are good makes them uncomfortable, you shifted the discomfort to the difficult people instead of feeling uncomfortable yourself.

This probably doesn't make any sense, but it really gave me a great perspective on how I can deal with difficult parents. This was the topic of the 2nd breakout session we attended. Although it disappointingly ended early because he had a plane to catch, I'm going to use what I learned and check out some of his books.

The first breakout session was a math workstation session put on by Lakeshore where we were sure we would be receiving a sales pitch on their expensive wonderful products. Turns out it was really informative and they even gave away products! The presenter talked a lot about the difference between "centers" and "workstations". I got a lot of great ideas on how to differentiate the workstations and create them to leave out and tweak with content or materials instead of changing out centers all of the time. She said workstations are best done in pairs for no longer than 15 minutes (including set up/clean up). The best way to pair your students is to make a list based on level from low to high and divide the list in half, then pair the kids next to each other so the lowest of the low is paired with the lowest of the high.

For example:
Pam(lowest)    
Sam
Dan
Jen
Pat
Todd
Ann
Dot (highest)

split the list in half
Pam    Pat
Sam   Todd
Dan   Ann
Jen    Dot

Another great assessment trick she taught us for workstation performance assessments is to tape 5x7 colored notecards to a clipboard with each students name on one. While you walk around, make notes on what they have missed or are struggling with, when the card is full place it in their file and replace with a new card. I'm totally going to do this! I may have to do it on this clipboard I found at Brown Paper Packages

While I was learning about workstations, my teammate and gal pal Ruthie was teaching, yes teaching! a breakout session! I would have loved to attend and see her in all of her glory but I thought dividing and conquering would be best :) Word on the street is that she did awesome, I'm so proud of her!

I spent the morning putting together some fun games and activities for my new workstations I'm going to assemble this week. First grade teachers (K too), if you haven't been to this website for math teaching resources, you HAVE TO GO! It was shared with me by Meg at The Gilberts Journey, Kindergarten teacher extraordinaire. It is based on Common Core and the activities are ordered in skill and number sense development order.

I created a couple of activities based on activities I saw on this site. I'd love to share but I'm not sure how to upload a document into the blog (needtofigurethisout), leave a comment or email me and I'd be happy to share!

Anyways, being sick in bed hasn't been too bad this morning since I have been productive! I do need to drag myself out for Saturday errands, buy a gift for the wedding we are attending next weekend, find 10 tubs for my new workstations and watch the Sun Devils take on Illinois this afternoon from the comfort of my couch.

How are you spending your College Football Saturday?

Popalong Hopcorn

This week in our reading series we read "All That Corn" where we see the corn go from the field to the factory to the store and then home. We learned how corn is grown, the different types of corn and what corn can be used for. Of course we had some taste tests as well!

Sunday night I steamed ears of corn for everyone. I cut the cob into 4ths and brought an extra ear still in the husk to show them.

 We also drew and labeled the corn stalk, ears, cob, kernels, silk and husk.

Tuesday we had corn from a can and we compared it to corn on the cob. If you plan to try this with your class, 1 can is plenty.

Wednesday was the most fun with POPCORN! I borrowed an air popper (totally investing in one of these for myself), and laid butcher paper out on the carpet. I had the kids sit in a circle around the paper and we looked at the kernels and talked about what they needed to pop. We waited while the popper heated up and when the first couple of kernels popped the kids were screaming and jumping with delight. I totally took a video and it is ah-mazing! At one point I took the top of the popper off (I saw this somewhere...Mandy?) and let the popcorn fly all over the place, the kids were beside themselves. I put the top back on after hot unpopped kernels were escaping and hitting the kids, oops!

 While the popcorn popped (I refilled the popper about 4 times), we made a circle map.

Then I spread the popcorn out and the kids went to town. It was a great ending to the day and our week of corn!

Tomorrow I'm riding the light rail downtown for our district's "Growing As Professionals" Conference. Hopefully I'll learn some great new things to implement in my classroom, at the very least it's a chance to catch up with my teacher friends from around the district.

It's been quite a week (or 2 or 3) around here and thank goodness the hubs comes home tonight from 5 days in the friendly skies. I hope I can say goodbye to this sore throat and get some rest this weekend. Happy almost Friday :)

Good Teachers, Bad Rap

I LOVE LOVE LOVE Ron Clark! Ever since he was the keynote speaker at a district conference a few years back, I've had a mild crush (maybe it's his accent) and been very inspired by his enthusiasm for teaching and courage to tell it like it is.

It's also possible that I may have rented the Ron Clark Story starring Matthew Perry (nerd alert).

Anyway, I saw this article on Facebook yesterday and it was all the buzz in the staff lounge today, I recommend you (teachers, parents, friends or anyone who knows a teacher) take a minute and read this article. It's true that educators are facing higher demands with less pay and resources (duh, we know we make sixpence) but the difficulty we encounter with parents could be one of the few things that make teachers consider "throwing in the towel". That and not being able to pee all day, notthepoint!

http://www.cnn.com/2011/09/06/living/teachers-want-to-tell-parents/index.html

Thank you Ron Clark " Lift us up and make us feel appreciated, and we will work even harder to give your child the best education possible."

More Math Centers

This week we started our new math rotations and these are some of the centers we are using. They are all blog/Pinterest inspired (I'm sorry I can't give direct credit, I don't remember exactly where I got what).

One center is inspired by a game called "Money Bump" and I changed it to "Number Bump". Students pair up and roll a dice with numbers written on it. Each partner has 6 of the same color unifix cubes (6 of one color, 6 of another color for the partner). They roll the dice and place their cube on a number. If their partner rolls the same number, they can "bump" their cube off and take the spot. If you roll the number that your cube is already on, you can add a cube to "lock" the spot so you can't be "bumped". You can only lock your own cube and cannot connect more than 2 cubes on a single number. The first person to run out of unifix cubes is the winner. Eventually I'll write addition sentences in the bubble or have the numbers be sums of 2 number dice.

The next center is a fine motor and counting/value center. The students pick and card and add the corresponding number of paperclips. I was so surprised at how many kids didn't know how to properly use a paperclip. You could do smaller numbers and use clothespins but I wanted to use teen numbers and that would be too many clothespins!

This number center requires the students to roll 2 or 3 dice and count up the dots, find the number in the tree and color the number. The original idea calls for Bingo blotters but I was too cheap to buy 6+ at the Dollar Store, so we use makers :)

This center is called "Cover Up". Partners sit across from each other and roll 2 dice. They count up the number and use a cube to "cover up" the number they rolled. They take turns until one person has covered up all of their numbers (2-12).

I've just finished my progress reports and tomorrow the hubs and I are off to stay at a resort to celebrate our 2 year anniversary! Have a great Labor Day weekend!
xoxo

Welcome to Noun Town!

We have been working on nouns for the past two weeks and have done some fun activities! Some of these great activities were inspired by my team mate Jenn, former ELD teacher/ grammar queen :) We started out by introducing nouns as a person, place, thing or animal. Every day we made a circle map for each type of noun. After brainstorming the circle map, each student got an index card to write and illustrate that type of noun. The kids got really creative! We did this 4 times, one for each type of noun.

The following week we did a different noun activity each day. Monday we sorted nouns. I borrowed 4 hula hoops from the PE teacher and we used picture cards from our reading series. I gave each student a card and we went around in a circle reading the card and deciding if it was a person, place, thing or animal. Next I got out the index cards that they students had illustrated the previous week (mixed up) and partnered the kids up. Each pair got a stack of about 8 cards and they had to decide which hoop to place their cards in. We sat back down in a circle and checked the hoops, making changes if necessary.

Tuesday we made a tree map of People, Places, Things, Animals. The kids were cute and listed each other as the people and their favorite places such as Wal Mart, Circle K,  and McDonald's.

Wednesday we used the tree map to create silly sentences. I modeled by making a sentence using one noun from each category. For example "The teacher took her frog to Mc Donald's and ate donuts."  Then the kids were able to make their own sentences using the tree map. They really got a kick out of this. We wrote the sentences in our journals and underlined the nouns.

Thursday we got out our reading series anthology book and read the stories we have read so far chorally. We made a list of the nouns from each story and made tally marks next to the nouns that were repeated.

We'll start verbs this week, I see a lot of kinesthetic activities in our future!

Three For Thursday

It's finally Thursday! I can't wait for September where I have 3 four day weeks in a row! Labor Day aka my 2 year wedding anniversary! Growing as Professionals district conference Sept. 16 and traveling for a wedding Sept. 23. Plus September marks the month that it is acceptable for me to put my fall decor up in the house, my FAVORITE season!

Ok, speaking of favorites...here are 3 of mine for my link up at Blog Hoppin.

Favorite Font

As you can tell from my header. It is Lettering Delights Gel Pen Alphabet, and it's free (pretty much the only way I roll)

For the classroom I prefer something a little more kid friendly, courtesy of Lettering Delights I use

and hello stone age, I just learned how to download fonts on to my Mac, thank you Meghan!

Favorite Blog

How do I put this without sounding like a total stalker? I am SO obsessed inspired by Babbling Abby. Seriously this teacher is bananas. B A N A N A S.

Not only is she super talented, creative and completely genius, she is totally real! I'm a huge fan of her personal blog Babbling Abby. Creeper alert, I feel like we could be friends in real life...we have a similar story about how and when we got into teaching and I just feel like we'd be friends. At least that's what I tell myself :)

Favorite Online Resource

Ummmm...blogs? Does this count? Other than all of your amazing blogs, I love Pinterest but I have to limit myself because my "eyes are bigger than my stomach" and I decide that I can undertake all of these projects and I take on too much and nothing gets done :( I have a couple of "summer" projects left, then I'll devote what's left of my life to Pinterest :)

It has been cah ra zee hot, heat advisory aka no recess all week, 117 degrees, yuck! The hubs and I are going to try to beat the heat tonight by possibly seeing a movie (on a weeknight??? I know) or maybe just a bite out where I don't have to cook or clean it up. Tgialmost Friday (Right Abby?) Stalker stalker stalker...

Where It All Goes Down Wednesday

Here is is...the place I work 40 hours a week and volunteer the other 10 ;) I'm Blog Hoppin' for Where It All Goes Down Wednesday. I've been so busy with cleaning my classroom to take these pictures school and writing the posts, I have barely had a chance to stalk everyone else and discover new ah ma zing teachers/rooms/ideas. So here goes nothin!

This is a 360 view of my classroom

 Carpet area/ reading group table

 Whiteboard and projector area

 Math wall, computers, cubbies and writing wall (student work)

Door to playground, library/center and cabinets/counter top

This is where the magic happens. Reading groups, small group math, writing, you name it! The "Rainbow Readers" (based on Rainbow Fish) focus wall has our story of the week info on the pocket chart, spelling words, phonics focus and vowels that stick words together like glue (from Lindsey @ The Teacher Wife).

This is my Eric Carle word wall and easel area. The easel has all of the activities we use during our whole group instruction and I can turn it around for math/writing and hang chart paper or use the whiteboard. This is my first year with a 2 sided easel and I'm obsessed.  

The bookshelf houses my math centers, math books and various math activities (most of which are still stored away, I'll leave it Feung Shui for now). My calendar math wall that I really condensed this year, I wanted everything to be used daily and be meaningful. We have calendar, place value, and skip counting. Everything else I do on the whiteboard next to it. This way I can change the activities based on what we are learning. We do our daily graph here as well as the weather. The whiteboard also houses my agenda and spelling words (for lack of a better location currently). Under the wall are my teacher read aloud books (beginning of the year theme) job chart (pocket with index cards that I rotate weekly) and behavior chart. Only 3 yellows today!

We have 2 classroom Macs which I love for Accelerated Reader and I also use as a center (Starfall, PBS Kids, Sight Words with Samson etc.)

Cubbies (so unorganized I am noticing, I'll have to get my kids on it in the am!) and "Great Writers Grow Here" (Mrs. Spitzer's Garden themed writing wall). This is student work from the first day where I only had 14 kids! I'm up to 20 now, perfect round number. The colored trays are for turn in and the red folders are for reading rotations.

Various literacy activities at Center 1, I used a desk this year because I find that it keeps the kids more focused (missing: objectives...don't tell!)

Center 2 Word Families, the kids build 3 word families, use the step board to build cvc words and read the "at" word family book :) Next week this will be a vowel center.

Center 3 is "Rainbow Words" a fun center that I learned from fellow blogger and my mentor teacher http://tickledpinkmandy.blogspot.com/ The kids use mulitcolored letter magnets and place them on the alphabet arc. Then they use the spelling word list and recording sheet to write the words using colored pencils. The color of the pencil corresponds to the letter magnet that was used to build the word. Very fun and the only thing I change weekly are the words, love that part.

Center 4 is in the library, "Oh the Places You'll Go, Reading Will Take You There" (Dr. Seuss of course!) The kids read the big book of the week and write or illustrate 4 things they saw/read in the book. There is also a pocket chart activity and leveled books available. I made the pillowcases out of towels so I can take them off and wash them, a great idea my teacher gal pal Lauren saw on a blog somewhere.

This is my teacher tech table, I can use my laptop or document camera to project things onto the whiteboard or screen. No smartboard yet!

TV and teacher wall, I need to get more photos up and my ASU pendant!

My phone area where I keep my student info and parent communication log so I can write down every time I talk to a parent. Very helpful! I also stole this little cubby like set up from Lauren :)

Clutter free (for now) counter top, I'm working on it! Ok so maybe I cleaned it for this picture but I'm really going to try to keep it clean!

There you have it, the place my kids and I go wild for! Thanks for stopping by...I can't wait to check out all of the other amazing rooms or hear if you like mine (so I won't feel so bad for myself when you read about Babbling Abby or Deanna Jump, seriously how do they get more hours in the day??)

Teacher Talk Tuesday

I'm back with another post for teacher week at Blog Hoppin'. Today is Teacher Talk Tuesday, advice for new teachers (or things we all need to remember sometimes!)

My first piece of advice is to be confident in yourself as an educator. It is easy to think that someone else may know best (sometimes they may) but you should feel confident in your ideas, lessons and teaching style. In my 4th year I am still reminding myself that while my teaching style may differ from my team's, it's what makes me unique and successful.

Set time limits for yourself. Don't stay at school past a certain time or dedicate HOURS to one single project. This will help you prioritize and keep you sane! I spent countless hours on projects my first year that were just not that important or meaningful for my students.

Justify your lessons. Always ask yourself if the activity is meaningful for your students and identify what they will get out of it. You want to reach all students and make the MOST of the time you have with them. Bang for your buck!

Accept that you may fail. Sometimes a lesson will flop based on how it is presented, who the kids are or even what time of the day it is. Wrap it up, learn from it and move on...we've all been there.

Be consistent. There is no such thing as "somewhat" consistent; you are either consistent or inconsistent. Kids need to know what to expect and if they get (or don't get) the same reaction every time, they'll learn that they can trust you and your world is 100 times better.

It goes without saying buuuuut don't say anything to a kid you wouldn't want their parents to hear you say. I also won't say anything that I wouldn't want them to say to each other. If you tell someone they're "silly" and a kid turns around and says it to someone else, it can sound very different.

ENJOY the kids! We get very caught up in holding them to the highest standard and expect them to read, write and compute but we need to remember that they are little people and have only been alive x amount of years. Listen to them tell you about their step dad making chicken for dinner every night or their daycare van getting a flat tire, you'll be glad you did!

"Teaching is the profession that teaches all the other professions." ~Author Unknown

Meet the Teacher Monday, on Tuesday :)

I'm linking up with Blog Hoppin' for Meet the Teacher Monday (forgive me for being a day late, I had trouble with my Mac yesterday, not suprising!)

Tell us a little something about you...

My name is Rachel Sarti, I am married to a wonderful man named Dan, who is an airline pilot. Needless to say we like to travel :) We have a 2 year old White German Shepherd named Hannah. I love being domestic, cooking, baking, sewing, and of course reality tv. The rest of Dan's siblings live within a few miles of us so we are lucky enough to spend a lot of time with family. We are also hoping to have children very soon :)

How long have you been teaching?

I have been teaching in my own classroom for 4 years. I taught Kindergarten my first year and 1st grade for the past 3. While I was going to school for my teaching certificate, I substitute taught for almost a year. I learned a lot and made some great teacher friends this way. 

You might not know...

Teaching is my 2nd career, it's crazy having a second career being a whopping 28 years old but here I am! I graduated from Arizona State University in 2005 with a degree in Human Communication. I worked for a design firm as an administrative assistant and eventually a project coordinator. After a couple of years, I decided to go back to school to become a teacher, I wanted a career where I feel more stressed fulfilled :) I substitute taught and served at Chili's to put myself through a post bac program for my Elementary Ed certificate and I have since gotten a full SEI endorsement and an Early Childhood Endorsement. Looking back on it, I wish I had done a masters program in the first place but whatareyougonnado? Hopefully I'll start my masters soon :)

What are you looking most forward to this school year?

I'm really looking forward to creating units and printables for my class a la the blog goddesses who have inspired me. Our math program is not ideal so my team and I supplement A LOT with teacher created materials. I've been inspired to make them cute, fun and meaningful for my students. I could use a tutorial if any dear teacher would like to volunteer their time and expertise (wink, wink).

What do you need to improve?

I need to improve my writing block, including grammar. Our school uses Thinking Maps and I love them. They are a great way to brainstorm ideas for writing and I'm trying to incorporate them into my daily writing.  I would like to work on developing great prompts and have the students generate lots of ideas so they can write and write. You always have the kid who takes 10 minutes to write 1 word and the other kid who is done in 2 minutes, this drives me crazy!

I am a piler. I make piles of paper and lists and they tend to take over my life counter top. My goal is to get better at filing or recycling papers as I use/copy/receive them. We'll see how this works out!

What teaching supplies can you *not* live without?

I have to write with a Sharpie extra fine point in black. I also keep fine point markers around for writing names on folders, name tags etc.

I was hoarding a pack of Mr. Sketch smelly markers that I finally decided to bust out and I am obsessed.

Two words; pocket charts.
  
Magnets; I love to put magnets on things and put them on the whiteboard. This way they aren't permanent and I can change things around frequently.

Notepads to make millions of lists.

Post its; to make mini lists.

Books, books, books!

Thanks for stopping by!

Post Traumatic School Disorder

What a day! Day 7 brought lots of changes to our lil ole school (and teachers) that have survived a merger, dust storm, bulletin board destruction and most recently "classroom reassignment".  Due to the merger and the district changing boundaries, our enrollment was lower than projected, leaving other schools in our district bursting at the seams.

This resulted in "condensing" grades 1, 2 and 4 :( Basically one teacher from each grade was reassigned to teach another grade at another school in the district. Thank goodness there are jobs for them all, it's hard enough as it is! This means that the other classes will "absorb" the other students. A little difficult to do a week and a half into the school year, but I'm not complaining...I easily could have been a "reassigned" teacher and thank the elementary school gods that I'm not one of them. I will however, miss my new teammate :( and the other 2 teachers headed for new adventures.

The trials we have all been through during the past year have been frustrating and and trying on the nerves but despite all of the upheaval, we managed to become the 2nd highest achieving school in the district! Second only to the traditional academy I might add ;) This brings me to my conclusion, dear dear district...please close the doors (turn down the ac while you are at it) and leave us alone until May! I promise you will not be disappointed! 

I'll get off my soap box now, thanks for listening!

Any words of encouragement will be appreciated :)

Number Sense Activities

Here are some fun number sense activities that we have been doing in 1st grade a la Sarti.

Rock, Paper, Scissors, Math - this game has many variations but we start by using one hand to show a number (instead of the rock, paper or scissors), then the partner has to name the other person's number and vice versa. We say "your number is __". "Your number is __". "Your number is more". "Your number is less". You can use 2 hands to show numbers through 10 or have the students add the numbers and the first one who name the sum wins. We play this every day after calendar.

Number Necklaces (musical share)- I make number necklaces with the number and number word (#s 0-20 at first) and the representation on the back. I'll turn on music and they walk around until the music stops, then they find a partner and read their number. Like R,P,S,Math, they decide who is more/less etc, count up to the number, count back from the number, name the number before/after and so on. I also have them line up in number order without talking, only viewing the number on others necklaces. Eventually we will sort by number patterns, odd/even, before/between/after, the possibilities are endless! (I got the number necklace/musical share idea from my team mate Ruth, she is genius!)

 

Ten Frame - students need to understand that numbers are more than symbols, we use the ten frames to represent the numbers and eventually transfer this into place value. We use ten frame mats and counters and I provide the number for the students to build. 

For independent practice I use the ten frame printable from the teacher resource guide and either write a number and have them draw to build or draw the circles and have them write the corresponding number. I also let them select their own number by rolling dice or choosing an number magnet from the tub. They then write the number and draw the representation. I love using manipulatives for hands on learning!

 What are some of your number sense activities?