Writing Reviews, Accountable Talk, Subtraction and More!

Well, this momma is full swing back into teaching mode! My first graders and I are getting used to one another again and trying to continue our learning without skipping a beat. It is an interesting transition to come back after maternity leave. My classroom was in someone else's hands for longer than I had them, so in many ways this is her classroom that I am sort of "stealing" back. I am so grateful my sub kept my students safe, made a fun learning environment for them, and helped my students build their knowledge so I can come in and pick up where she left off! Now, it's my turn to grab the reigns and get my kids to where they need to be by the end of the year!

I wanted to share a little of what we have been up to in our cozy classroom.

In math, we have been finishing up subtraction and number bonds before we head into some geometry:

I will admit, I did miss making anchor charts!

A little number bond review thanks to Kelley Dolling's freebie: HERE

After we reviewed number bonds, we worked on missing addends in a number bond and completed my solve the room activity from Leprechaun Math.

In reader's workshop we spent the week reading Dr. Seuss books and practicing our fluency through partner reading and reader's theater! We have also been focusing A LOT on our accountable talk:

my little first graders need lots of help learning to be respectful listeners and we have been having great discussions through these sentence stems. Plus, it's pretty adorable to hear my littles speaking like such kind, mature adults.

In phonics, we are focusing on vowel teams! 

"igh" was on the agenda this week and it is a tricky one! We used my phonics poetms and real or nonsense sheets to help us decode and become more fluent with igh words. We are slowly building up our poetry journals that my students love to read during reader's workshop!

Writing has been all about reviews! We are learning to express out opinions through writing reviews and I have to say, I am impressed. These are the four parts of a review from my Writing Reviews Unit:

 We focus on one part each day, add it to our shared writing, and then I challenge my kids to add it to their individual reviews.

 Teacher modeling/shared writing

"Are you looking for something to eat? Well, not anymore! You could try Fridays!"

A catchy lead?! I think he nailed it! I love writer's workshop!

Well, that's just a little peek into my room as of late. I will go more into depth with some lessons and units we are working on soon :)

Happy weekend!

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Dr. Seuss Subtraction Freebie!

Have you heard?! It's Dr. Seuss' birthday and we celebrated all day!

I snagged all these Dr. Seuss books at Target and we will be reading them alllllll week! My littles were begging to get their hands on some Dr. Seuss books. Today we just explored and read them independently. Tomorrow we will read them with a partner to practice our fluency and reading with expression :)

In math, we have been studying subtraction within 20, so I thought I would make a quick little fish game to go with One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish:

Students just pick two fish cards from the pile and put the larger number of fish in the bowl. They then subtract the smaller number and complete the number sentence. Erase, re-pick, repeat! It was an easy center to help my students use some manipulatives and practice subtracting. I just wish I had some cute fish manipulatives! Maybe next year.

You can click the picture to snag that center if it works for your kids!

Happy Read Across America week :)

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Subtraction for 1st Grade! {What's the Difference?}

My first graders are elbow-deep into subtraction!

We are learning all sorts of subtraction strategies and practicing some hands-on math!

Students practice building and removing counters or cubes in this easy subtraction center. You may have seen the addition version of this center for free here on my blog.

After learning how to visualize the problem and draw pictures we practiced lots and lots of story problems! Some are more basic and others are multi-step challenges for my firsties! Check out this one below... after lots of practice... my kids rocked this one!

We have also been playing lots and lots of GAMES! We play all sorts of hands-on, dice rolling, paperclip spinning math games for about 30 minutes a day. My kids loveeeee to learn a new game and literally clapped for this one - ha!

I also made some anchor charts to display in the classroom when teaching different subtraction strategies:

I compiled all these activities, games, printables, and anchor charts in my new pack:
What's the Difference?

There is a lotttttt more in this new pack, so click above if you would like to download the preview.

Also, this pack is on sale for only $4 from now through Black Friday (11/29).

I am wishing everyone a happy, happy Thanksgiving and I hope everyone counts their blessings... I sure am :)

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Pumpkin Math!

We have been having a pumpkin-filled week!

After a relaxing, longggg weekend we came back to school Tuesday and went on our first field trip to the farm!

Beautiful

We picked pumpkins, fed animals, ate pumpkin spice donuts, and went on a tractor ride. The kids loved every second of it.

I thought I would keep the pumpkin theme going and practice some math skills at the same time! I put together some math games and activities to help my students review and reinforce the skills we have been learning since the beginning of the year.

Here are a couple of the games in action:

 Pumpkin Pickin' Students practiced making 10 with this game. My kids would pick a number from the pumpkin basket (thank you, $1 spot at Target) and place that many counters on the pumpkin. They would then have to solve how many more they would need to make 10 and record.

Recording sheet.

We recently learned how to use a number line as a strategy to solve addition and subtraction problems, so I thought I would make my kids their own pumpkin number line! They used it to complete this Math hunt activity. I don't know about you, but I always turn my "hunts" or "read-the-rooms" into a silent race. I also made 26 problems for this hunt, so it bought me a good 20-30 minutes of silent math time.... tehehehehe.....guilty........

 

While it was wonderful quiet time for me, it was a great way for me to see who could accurately use their number line and solve these addition and subtraction problems within 20.

 

I created 4 more activities that we will be completing throughout the next few weeks in school!

 

I put them altogether in this little math pack, Pumpkin Math!

 There are 6 different math activities included in this pack. Click the picture above to download the preview and see more :)

This pack is on sale through Friday the 18th

Happy hump day!

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A little bit of this and a little bit of that!

Happy Sunday folks!

My life has been crazy-busy lately! Parker and I put our first offer in on a house here in Vegas - EEEK! Wish us luck! We have heard that you are likely to put in about 10 offers before you finally get a house here, but our fingers are crossed nonetheless!

The day we made our offer, we stopped and got some smoothies to help us make our decision ;) 

You can't beat some fruit smoothies on a gorgeous day!

Inside the walls of 41B, we have been busy, busy, busy! I have some major thanks to give to a lot of my blogging pals for helping me through this crazy week. Here are some quick pics:

Gladys from Teaching in High Heels helped us out with her St. Patrick's Day O' Fun! pack. I put her non-fiction, St. Patty's Day book up on the smart board and we read it together. Well, the kids actually felt like they were watching a movie, so I played it up and read the book over the microphone. I then picked a few readers to read each page over the microphone, too! After the book, we recorded some facts we learned!

 

My fabulous friend, Kelley, has a super fun and easy project for the kids to practice their story elements. We read Fin M'Coul and then recorded the characters, setting, problem, and solution on the Story Element Shamrocks!

 In math, my kids are working on double-digit addition and subtraction.

 Here are a few of my kiddos playing a subtraction BUMP! game with multiples of 10. This game is in my Spring Math Games pack.

Last, but not least, my pal, Katie, has a ton of fun games in her Sporty Kids Common Core Math Games pack and my own sporty kids have just been LOVING Tennis Top-it!

This next week is Nevada Reading Week, so I will have loads of fun pictures to share! I don't know about you, but I am hoping this week flies by! 5 more days until I am lying by our pool reading home design magazines! That is how I plan to spend my Spring Break ;)

PS - We should find out by Tuesday if we get the house!

Have a great week!

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Photo Friday! {and FREEBIES}

A little bit of this and a little bit of that!

Here is a quick peek into our classroom on Photo Friday:

[Our sweet little Star of the Week!]

I left that smile in there because she was CHEESIN' all week long! As our first star of the week she was thrilled to be our line leader and helper. She was also beyond happy to take home this little book we made for her today and to quote my little lady "ohmigod, my mom is going to be SO proud of me!!!" Warm fuzzies all over!!

The inside:

"she is a really nice friend"

"because she is special" lol

and

"she is fun and funny"

My {Star of the Week} booklet is always a BIG hit and is in my store for FREE!

If you want to download, just click on the image below:

Next we have the Investigations math game, Counters in a Cup.

We have been working on subtraction and finding missing parts and my students loved this game on Tuesday. Naturally, I brought it back for "fun" Friday (A.K.A. regular day but Ms. Moran smiles a lot and keeps saying over and over that everything is so FUN! - kids are so easy to trick)

 

Start with 10 counters. Students work in pairs to hide some of the counters under a cup while their partner isn't looking. Partner turns around, records how many counters are outside the cup and tries to figure out how many are underneath. Easyyyyy and fun!

[Happy Birthday!]

I am not.that.fun.

 I don't have a huge birthday display or a cape or a party for my birthday kids.

No time.

I do, however, draw a little puppy with a party hat on a card and throughout the day I gather quotes from the other students about the birthday student! I compile them into one card, read it aloud and we sing our hearts out. My favorite quotes of today were "I have a big crush on him" and "He is crazy in a good way!"

Lastly, we learned a wee bit about our 5 senses today!

First we read this book and had a pretty thorough discussion about our 5 senses and how they help us to be aware of our surroundings.

Then we completed a 5 Senses flipbook I made:

 They had to write down three things they could see, hear, taste, feel, and touch. Pretty simple? Yah, but it was a quick formative assessment to let me see who was getting it and who wasn't.

If you'd like the flip book I uploaded it to googledocs. Just click below!

Happy weekend!

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Art & Academic Night & A Math FREEBIE!

Our Art & Academic Night was last Thursday night and we had so much fun!

Here's a little peak into our night:

A few months ago I found these adorable little owls on pinterest and since our school mascot is the owl I couldn't resist doing them with my students!! It is funny to see each of their personalities in this lil craftivity.

We displayed our poetry books on our desk (from Natalie Kay's poetry pack here) and our non-fiction books we created (from my All About Book templates). 

On our board I kept our poe-tree anchor chart which I stole(borrowed?) from Cara Carroll and my inspector fix-it who helps us with all sorts of grammatical errors! 

There is also our pasta butterfly life cycles I posted about here.

I meant to take a lot more pictures but I was running all over the place like a crazy person before the parents came... whoops!

Last week we also worked on this Balancing Equations freebie I made.

After our testing (why did I notice this AFTER and not before?!?!) I realized my students had a very difficult time solving equations like this:

4 + 7 = 5 + ____

So I pulled out the balances and some cubes and we practiced, practiced, practiced, until their light bulbs turned on! [*We used this term all year & the students loved helping their classmates turn their light bulbs on... it is kinda adorable!]

 Click on any of the worksheet examples below to download my freebie!

Now I must go eat breakfast and lay by the pool for the rest of this lazy day :)

Have a great SHORT week!

Susan

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