What's in a Place? And Spread the Valentine Cheer

For the past couple of weeks our mathematical focus has been on place value. Understanding place value is HUGE! First graders need to be able to understand that the two digits of a 2-digit number represent tens and ones. They need to be able to compare 2 digit numbers using greater than, less than, and equal symbols. And they need to be able to add within 100, including adding a 2-digit number with a 1 digit number (56+5), and adding a two-digit number and a multiple of 10 (56+10). Like I said....HUGE! 
The great thing about place value though is that it is very hands on. This makes learning tangible and concrete. We use base ten blocks, unifix cubes, and mats to build and represent 2 digit numbers. We model numbers using drawings of our representations. We use multiple "tens frame" mats to show growing numbers. Place Value is also embedded in our daily calendar as we count the days of school. Read on to learn a bit more about how we're learning what's in a place  (of a digit that is)!


Anchors Away!
I like to anchor learning with an anchor chart. We revisit this chart at the start of almost every lesson. By doing this I am reinforcing important vocabulary and linking old and new learning.

GAMES!GAMES!GAMES!
It's no secret that children learn best while having fun. Most of our hands on practice involves games with partners. Here is a place value favorite!

Math partners are playing base ten concentration. They flip over cards to find a match.
They are matching a 2 digit number with it's model (see model form in the anchor chart)

Here's our newest bulletin board. Children used cut out tens and ones to
build the first letter of their name. Then they added they're ones and tens.

Add caption

Calendar Link

Each day we count the days of school. Here a first grader is adding "1." Then he'll
write the total in expanded form (90+5=95)

Valentine's Celebration!
Thank you (once again!) to our room parents for a great Valentine party. The kids had a blast!

Have a wonderful vacation!!!

What We Learned About Dr. KIng

Despite our short(er) week we packed in a lot of learning about Dr. Martin Luther King. We started last week by reading a few of my favorite picture books about MLK. Each author wrote about MLK in a unique way and we learned important information about Martin's childhood and his teachings. One of our favorite books was written by Doreen Rappaport and is called Martin's Big Words. In this book we learned all about Martin's big dreams of peace, equal rights, and love.

A second favorite book of ours was written by Martin's big sister, Christine King and is called My Brother Martin. Christine shared lots of experiences from their childhood and we learned that Martin loved school, liked playing with his friends, and like pulling pranks!

Here are a few of the ways we demonstrated our learning:

Once we read all of our books and had some great class discussions we made a web to demonstrate some of the big ideas we wanted to hold onto.

At the art center we made mini Martin Luther Kings. Then during writing time we talked about Martin's big dreams and then shared some of our own dreams in writing.

We were inspired by Martin's words. I love that this is the first thing you see when you walk into our classroom!

The Tale Of The Gingerbread Twins

I'm so excited to share this blog post with all of you! Over the last few weeks we have been spending time reading various versions of the gingerbread story. The characters we read about ranged from a gingerbread baby to a gingerbread cowboy and the settings spanned a forest in winter, the wild wild west, a busy city and many more.
We were so inspired by these stories that we joined a Gingerbread Family Collaborative with the help of our librarian, Mrs. Groden. We created our own version of the gingerbread story using an IPAD app called Little Bird Tales to share via Skype! Our original plan was to connect with another classroom in Pennsylvania. However since that did not pan out Dr. Quigley came to the rescue! We were able to Skype with him and share our story!

Getting ready for the Skype session...children sat with their partners
 and read over their pages

Connecting with Dr. Quigley! Each pair stood in front of the IPAD
and read aloud their page.

Listening while each pair reads to Dr. Quigley. Our Skype session took
place in the library.

The proud authors!

Now you can see the story we created by clicking on the "Little Bird Tale" below. We hope you enjoy it!!

• Click to view my tale.
• 

Happy New Year!

And we're back! Happy New Year! I hope everyone enjoyed their holidays and breaks. I sure did...maybe a little too much hence the "break" in blogging :)
Well here we are with so much to share as we get back into the groove in 2014!
I wanted to start off with a big thank you for the class gift that was given to me by my generous First graders and their families. You are all so thoughtful and I truly appreciate the gesture. A night off from cooking and a yummy Bertucci's dinner is in my very near future!
A couple of reminders too...
If you haven't logged into RAZ kids please take some time to do so. If you haven't visited in awhile (because like me you were on a mental break) go back and encourage your child to rack up some more points in the name of reading! It's too good of a resource to not be used!
Also we are continuing to go through many supplies during our Daily 5 rotations. If you have extra holiday (or other) cards, stationary, envelopes, stickers, stamps...anything to enhance the writing center we would be oh so grateful. Also if you have an extra game of Scrabble and are willing to part with it (or the letter tiles) we'd put them right to use in our working with words center.

Now to the meat and potatoes of our first official week back!

Class Behavior
I am really very lucky to have such a great group of kiddos. But everyone can always benefit from visual and verbal reminders about behavior. Intro our new classroom Clip Chart. It's pretty simple; good choices allows for clipping up and not so good choices will have you clipping down, Children can clip up and down throughout the day depending on behavior. Every day children will start on READY TO LEARN. If they stay there all day-all is good and they've done their job! Most kids will stay here on most days and they should be proud of that!!

Social Thinking

Mrs. Goldstein came in for another visit. This time she talked to us about expected and unexpected behavior. We learned that when you demonstrate expected behavior the people around you feel happy and safe. Expected behavior gives people good thoughts (or green thoughts) about you. Unexpected behavior makes the people around you sad, scared, or uncomfortable. People might not want to be around you. They have bad thoughts ( or red thoughts) about you.

Math

We are continuing to work on strategies for accurate counting, addition, and finding multiple combinations for the same number. Children are becoming more fluent with their ability to count on and manipulate numbers. In one of their math activities children were asked to come up with several ways to make 12. When we recorded all of their answers we realized that we could use what we already know to expand our thinking. If you know that 6+6=12, you can decompose 6 to create another equal equation such as 3+3+6=12. So smart!

Making combinations for several numbers using "Dot Cards"

Finding equal "Dot Card" combinations

Playing a game of "5 in a Row" in which children flip over 3 cards and find the sum of 2
to cover on their game board.

Our First Mystery Reader of the New Year!

2013 Happy Holidays!

I couldn't help but include my family holiday card and photo shoot with Santa! You share your kiddos with me on a daily basis so I wanted to share mine with you! I hope you each have a merry and bright holiday and a happy and healthy New Year!