Starboard!!!

A while back, I mentioned that my principal had ordered some interactive whiteboards for our school and one was for me!

I now present my new best friend!

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaamazing. Before today I didn't even have an overhead in my class. This is a big deal in my life.

Basically we played on it all day in between doing stuff we REALLY HAD to do. Only Scholastic News games though!!! All CCSS aligned. :)

I haven't actually used the software yet that came with it (it's a Starboard) and it seems sort of confusing. I'll figure it out though!

Moving on, in first grade we are learning how to add and today we worked on number stories!

We were only technically supposed to be learning how to write a number sentence based on a word problem, but they really wanted to draw out the problems. Definitely doable!

Do you like our little chalkboards? In Scholastic News this week, we learned that "long ago" kids wrote on slates with chalk. It made me laugh because I have a whole stack of these bad boys in the closet and the kids love them!! Not to mention the erasers I made. :)

And last, today I gave the first graders an emergent reader that I downloaded from Mrs. Wills. They went crazy over it! Our reading program is designed to be very challenging, which is fine for my high students but painful for anyone who doesn't read way above grade level. My kids felt so good and confident to be able to read the emergent readers! On the back page, they had to write something that they like to do, and I felt really happy when saw this:

I like to gow to the porc! Otherwise spelled as "go to the park", haha. Anyway, I feel absolutely PUMPED that my first graders are applying letter sounds to write phrases!!!!!! I think Writer's Workshop is paying off big time!!

Math With M&Ms!

I am coming to you in the midst of my weekend full of church.

Yesterday we had school Mass, as usual. Today I went to my twin nephews' first Communion. And tomorrow is one of my second graders' first Communion. The other four have theirs later this month.

Here's a picture from the first Communion after-party today!

Onto what this post is about!

Yesterday was M&M Math Day. While looking online for good ideas to use, I found a bunch of great M&M Math activity pages! There are a lot of different ways you can use M&Ms for math (graphing, probability, mean/median/mode, and so on), and the activities are written out super well. They aren't the cutest sheets ever, but they fit a TON of different things on each work page.

For first grade, I used Math Activity Page 1, which focused on sorting, counting, greater than/less than, and adding. With a little help from me to get them started, they were able to do the sheet very independently. And they had a lot of fun!

For second grade, I used Fraction Fun with M&Ms, which was a good review of fractions of a set. It also covered greater than/less than.

For both grades, we also did Math Activity Page 2, which actually focused on division with remainders. It didn't use those words, but that's what they were doing. It made me think that next year when I introduce division to the second graders, this would be a good way to do it. They were really into it! They all LOVED this page, especially because at the end they got to eat a few and write how many were left over. :)

I don't think the students expected to do quite so much math with their M&Ms... but they did really well with all of the activities.

One last little story...

My reading curriculum focuses on... I think 10 kids. All the stories are about those 10 kids. In first grade, there isn't an overarching plot that connects the stories together. There are just a bunch of stories about random stuff the kids do. The last unit I'm teaching is about the kids going to Super Happy Fun Land. In second grade, the stories take place within the context of a school year and it follows the trials and tribulations (and drama) of the kids in school.

Recently in our soap opera reading book, the kids' teacher got the flu and they had a substitute. The substitute had the students write get well poems for their teacher, and in my students' workbook, there was a little section for them to write their own get well poem for the pretend teacher.

One of the girls came up to me afterwards and said, "Read my poem I wrote... but don't read it out loud..." and I was like, "Okay?" So here is what it said:

Aw, I'm the best teacher in the world!

Hope you're having the best Saturday in the world today!!

The Facts

Today in first grade math, we learned about fact families. My book's lesson was incredibly terrible and I know that fact families are something I've seen a million times in blogs!

I meant to look up a good activity a few days ago but I totally forgot until 1:15. First grade math is at 1:30.....

So I did a mad Google Reader search, scanned through a few people's posts, and threw this little fam together!

This was based off of Gladys's guest post at Frogs, Bees, and Under the Seas (now known as Playing with Pixie Dust!). I'd like to cutesify this up a lot but, like I said, I was a little strapped for time...

I told the first graders that I wanted to introduce them to a family - the Fact family. There is a dad, a mom, and a baby. Then I assigned numbers and explained who is who. I asked if they wanted strangers in their house - they said NO! So I said, "Neither does the Fact family! Don't let any stranger numbers come in to their math problems."

Then we wrote out our problems, making a note that Dad comes last in adding and first in subtracting.

They really got it! And they even referred to the numbers on their practice sheet as Dad, Mom, and Baby. Haha!

And on a related note, here's our math quilt for February!

It's looking a little tiny this month. Some friends didn't feel like they needed to do their quilt square after they cut out every triangle. I really need to stop scheduling math quilts for Mondays.... oh wells. I still LOVE it and I love Reagan!!!!

Aaaaaaaaaaaand another set of q's from the lovely Jessica at apples and papers!

1. If you could meet anyone in the world, living or dead who would it be? This one is hard! Mmmm.... I'll say Joakim Noah! Love him.
2. If you weren’t teaching what would you be doing? Honestly, I would be working at the bank I've been working at since high school! But if I had another career, I've always wanted to be a delivery nurse for some reason. I think it sounds better in my head than it might be in real life.
3. What was your favorite thing about school when you were a student? I looooved my teachers and I loved big projects. Maybe I should start doing some of those...
4. What do you wish you were better at? In my classroom, organizing and classroom management. I hope I get better with time on both of those! In my life, I wish I was better at athletic things, like running!
5. What is your favorite store to shop at? I'd approximate that 95% of my clothes come from Old Navy.
6. What is two things you need for your dream classroom? A Smart board!!!!! Or whatever brand, I am not particular. I'd also like a document camera. And a big rug. :)
7. Where do you want to travel to? Somewhere like Fiji or something.
8. Favorite TV show? Right now my two favorites are 30 Rock and Seinfeld.
9. What is your least favorite chores? Laundry and washing dishes. When I was little I said I wanted to have 7 kids so I'd never have to wash dishes. Haha!
10. Would you rather be an actor, singer, or athlete? Well I'm not a good actor AT ALL, and I am incredibly not athletic. But I love singing! By myself in the car, of course. So I'll say singer!!
11. Who or what inspires you? All of the amazing teachers in the blogging world! I want to be all of you someday.
12. What’s your favorite children’s book? Anything by Mo Willems. Also I just read Hooway for Wodney Wat (thanks for the recommendation, Tammy!!!) and my kids were DYING LAUGHING. So that's one of my new faves. Plus I do a good Wodney voice. :)