Out in Out!

Out in Out is a fun addition or subtraction game that I changed up a bit from (Adventures of First Grade).  The students in my room have a fast finisher folder (click here to learn more about that), inside I made a sheet that simply says: out, in and out.  then on the other side I put three blank lines.  The students pick up 10 cubes, and drop them down on their sheet.  They could how many landed out, how many landed in, and then add how many there all altogether, writing the addition sentence.  Then they switch to subtraction, pick ten up, and drop them.  How many do you have altogether, minus how many fell out, equals how many are left in.  They love it!

Math Centers

I have been working hard on one of my personal teacher goals for this year, and it's going just great!  I pledged to do more with math centers, and I have succeeded!  I am proud, so I am going to show off a bit, but I hope this gives you some ideas more than anything!  Anywho... my students eat breakfast in the classroom starting at 7:10 (yea, insert loud YAWN here) (*yawn*) and I was toying with many different ideas on how to handle that...well, as soon as students finish breakfast, they head off to their centers! Wahoo!  They love it.  They get their breakfast on and then head to the center chart see below, and then off to math mania land!  I put together a little power point to show the importance of math centers, and how it works in my room...

Math Centers by Kelly

Math centers by kelly

View more presentations from BrannanKJ

Math centers are a big help in getting my 20 minutes of math pullout time.  I do 45 minutes of math in the afternoon + calendar time, so this works perfectly!

Pinnnnnnterest!

Have you heard of it?  If not you have to go check it out!  It has honestly inspired me to do a lot more little things in my classroom!  Here is my board, go check it out, and have fun!

How Did It Get So Late So Soon!?

Ah Blog, happy blog.  I think of you often at home and school, but my fingers, and brain, and whatever is makes us go as teachers, is so exhausted these days!  Wow these kiddos are given me a run!  Anywho, I am going to start off with my pumpkin day!  I got this awesome all day Pumpkin Day idea from Inspired Apple & Fabulous in First, two of my all time favorites blogs!

So we got started out just coloring, and using words to describe the outside of the pumpkin.  Fabulous in First has some great worksheets.

  We then moved on to weighing the pumpkin, which I was surprised to see it was 9.5 pounds!  Wow!  Some of them thought it might weigh more than them.. whoops!

 I then filled a bucket of water up - and the kiddos got to find out that pumpkins float!  Amazing!  Some were cracking up about this!

  We then guessed how many pumpkin seeds were in the pumpkin.  The black butcher paper, and crayons worked really well to put their guesses down.  This was a great estimation lesson!

  On to the carving!  Color and write about on your observation paper what the inside of the pumpkin looks like.

  Count the pumpkin seeds, we are finding out it is easier to count by 10's!  Whew! 

  There were over 600!

  Then we raffled off the pumpkins, and three kiddos got to take them home, they were so excited!

  Time for the Halloween Party!

  The set up.  Napkin, plate, word search, and treat bag!

  I got home, and then cooked the pumpkin seeds, so we could graph whether or not we liked the taste!

And just because I love him, this is our yellow lab Max, loving fall more than we do!  Raking, stinks!

"I'm done Mrs. Schultz!"

Oh no!  Teachers I am sure you cringe like me when a student says "I'm done, now what!?" Oh yeah.  I have been reading up at Teacher Tipsters and he really has some wonderful ideas!  I came across...the fast finisher folder!  Ya gotta love the kids for wanting to keep on going, keep on learning, but man I really dislike having to hear "I'm done!"

  So behold "The Fast Finisher Folder!"  (Teacher Tipster calls them his chart folders... he uses them a bit differently)When the students finish an activity they now know they can take out their Fast Finisher Folder.  They heart it, and so do I!  It's a three ring binder, with teacher chosen sheets put inside of page protectors, and then explained to the students.  They then are given a tissue, and dry erase markers.  Go to Town boys and girls!

  Here is it in action.  I actually added our Envision Math part-part whole work mat to it, so the students can quickly work on addition and subtraction... I caught one of my ELL students using his free 5 minutes of fast finisher folder today doing addition!!

He almost got it!  He was so excited that I took his picture.  Next to his fast finisher folder sheets is what we call our Data part of the folder.  I will get into that later!  More to come on the sheets I included in the folder!  Tata!

Making Words

It's been...um...forever...

So sorry!  We have been in school for 29 days, and I can offically now say I feel like my students have a schedule down & I have the management down.  WOW.  That took a long time.  I think I need to keep a big poster at the beginning of the year that says "IT GETS BETTER! I PROMISE!"  Lot's of changes have happened:

• I got my first donors choose project funded!
• We went on our first field trip
• I have a whole 25 students! (Whoa!)
• THE BREWERS ARE in the playoffs!
• The Packers are 5 and 0!

Okay so the last two are a little off topic, but I have to give a shout out when I can!  If you haven't gotten to donors choose, make sure you check it out.  www.donorschoose.org  It is seriously a wonderful site.  Make sure you tell as many people as you can about your page, and let them know it's a donation!

Our first field trip was to the Max & Ruby show, the kids loved it!

We now how a class load up to 28 students here is Wisconsin... yeah.  28.  I am teaching in a first grade inclusion room so we also can have up to 8 students with special needs.  Every day is a totally different day in my classroom!

And I would like to share....  my kiddos!  THANKS to donors choose we got a set of books & all those blue book bins! Wahoo!