Welcome back, to me! :)

Hello everyone!

I know I’ve been out of it for a few weeks! 🙁  So sorry.  Between battling a beginning of the year flu bug, adjusting to common core and firsties…and then this problem with my tummy–which is the reason that I’m posting in the middle of a school day.  (I’m having an endoscopy and a colonoscopy tomorrow.  Hopefully the docs will get to the bottom of why I have such bad abdominal pain.)

So, in an effort to show my sincerest apologies for my incommunicado status…I am offering a giveaway & a sale on Sunday, October 21 – Tuesday, October 23! 🙂  This is my first giveaway & sale ever!  I’m really excited to share some of the products that I’ve been working on in the last few weeks! 🙂

Common Core Aligned ELA and Mathematics Scales and Rubrics for First Grade

These have been great sellers on TPT. I’ve used this since the beginning of the school year, and the students are really embracing it now!  They can tell me if they are a two or a three on the things I’ve taught, and they are constantly asking in small group what they need to do to get to the ‘next level’.  It’s amazing! 🙂  I was skeptical in the beginning about how relevant this would be to instruction, but the other day, when I didn’t mention how my lesson fit into the rubric, one of my students asked me, ‘Based on my paper…am I a three now?  You didn’t say at the beginning, so I’m not sure.’  I don’t forget to mention to the kids what they need to do to achieve a three anymore! 🙂  If you are here in Florida, this five point rubric is Marzano-esque, and would fit in for your scales and rubrics objective in Domain 1.

Collaborative Grouping Activity

My goal for instruction this year is to be more intentional with collaborative grouping.  I created this set of cards for students to work on subtraction in pairs.  The kids really had a good time using it.  You’ll need to pair them up using your data though–to make sure that students can really assist one another…rather than having two students who struggle working together.  They are leveled questions, so you could actually give your advanced students something a bit different to work on if you chose to.  There are four questions for each theme.  Two that are easy and two I considered hard.  If they had to find the difference for something when the difference was not in a ‘predictable’ spot, I considered that more difficult.  Also, if I used more abstract language like…fewer…or difference…I rated that more difficult.

I am super excited about this!  I just wrapped this up with my kids and it went great! 🙂  We had a fireman visit the classroom to do a brief presentation.  It was great!  There is a read aloud lesson plan in here for a book that the students can access online.  There’s a science experiment and even a writing extension.  Check it out!  Fun stuff here!

I have been doing some research on how to help my students with mastery of their addition and subtraction facts and at the top of almost every list is the concept of ‘subitizing’.  When you play with dice, do you have to count the dots anymore?  Probably not.  That’s because you recognize the pattern.  So instead of counting then adding…you just add the two numbers together in your head.  That’s actually a kindergarten and first grade skill!  This has been particularly helpful in working towards having the students ‘count on’ to solve math  problems.  First you need to have the students become familiar with subitizing through 5 comfortably.  Then, go on to subitizing through 10 and so on and so forth. Start off by giving them five or six seconds and then go down to one or two once they are fluent.  For this one, I had my students just put up a hand to show how many apples they saw.   I have a powerpoint for this on my TPT site.  If you download it and like it, please leave a bit of feedback or pin it to your pinterest board. 🙂 Thanks!:)