A Love of Paper: Big and Small

What seems like forever ago (but it probably wasn't) I wrote about the EDExpo2015 and that I did formulate some ideas from this trip.  There were so many products and so many ideas floating around that my brain had to clear a bit before I could "act" on any of these thoughts.

Well Spring Break has come...my house has been purged, reorganized, the girls have been playing/dancing/singing.  My head has started to clear.

When I was walking around the Expo I came to Pacon's exhibit.  There is just something about paper.  Notebooks, post-its, graph paper, notepads....it just does not matter...I love them all.  My eyes immediately fell on a small composition book.  The representative was so kind and offered to send me one in the mail.

Well, they did not send me one, but TWELVE!

Currently I use composition books to take running records on my students during guided reading.  Problem. They are pretty thick, take up quite a bit of space, and I waste a lot paper. 
These have only 24 sheets of paper in them.  They are skinny and just the right size for my guided reading groups.  But I could not wait until next year to try them out.  So I have been using them with my new RtI group.  It has been perfect.  It fits right into my binder that holds all my materials.

So my thoughts for next year....I want to use these in my guided reading groups with all my students.  Maria is thinking about also using these for her writing notebooks because she feels that the students need a smaller composition book that is more manageable. 

I am always so grateful to be able to try out new ideas in the spring.  It allows me to get excited about the changes I will make for the upcoming school year.

When I received this box of small composition books another long, tall, skinny box came.  Inside I found four rolls:

They are backdrops from Ella Bella Photography and Pacon thought I might like to try them out.  Oh my goodness!! I had never thought about using backdrops before.  But my team has already decided that we are going to have these backdrops up next year at Open House with props for families to enjoy. 

I could not wait to next year to bust these puppies out!  We had a writing celebration on Friday to show off all the great animal research our firsties have done.  We decorated with a zoo/safari theme.  I set up the backdrop with some props for students.

 
 My firsties thought it was so cool that it looked like real wood planks. I think I need to come up with some more creative ways to use these backdrops.  Do you have any ideas?

Thanks to Pacon. You have sparked my creative juices!

Looking for Some Classroom Tested Ideas?

It has been in the works for awhile but today is the OFFICIAL launch of a new collaborative blog, Classroom Tested Resources.

It is filled with teachers from around the country that are ready to share the ideas and resources that they have tried out on their students.  To celebrate this new collaboration, you can enter to win one of three teacher swag bags!

Please hop over to the new blog and enter to win some goodies!  It all ends on April 1st!

French Lick Teacher Tool Swap

Last weekend marked the second annual French Lick Meet Up in Indiana.  And I got the opportunity to spend the entire weekend with two LOVELY women: Amanda from A Very Curious Class and Jennifer from Stories and Songs in Second.  After reflecting on the weekend, I realized that I learned a great deal from both of them through our dinner talks, long car rides, and sleepover time.  I am so THANKFUL for the time that I got to spend with them.

But more about that in a later post.

Today, I want to share the teacher tool swap with you.  This year we broke into grade level bands to swap tools.  Each teacher had the chance to watch their tool be opened and then got to explain it.

Just to set the scene (a little)...I was sitting in a large group of first grade teachers that each had a small gift waiting to be used in a first grade classroom.  Oh!!! I just love teacher stuff.

I brought some colored masking tape, sharpies, and chocolate.  But I also stuck some Mavalus tape in the bag.  This was a new product to me that I discovered at the EdExpo.  The guy LITERALLY hung up a steel iron on a wall with this tape.  It seemed like a must-have teacher tool to me!! :)

When I opened my gift bag I found the perfect gift from Stacey at Teaching Ever After:

So I took a little shopping trip this week.  First of all, I really needed a new binder to hold all the leveled passages that I bought but had no "home" for.  Why do I love new binders?  So clean, shiny, and pretty!

Second purchase with my gift card...balloons.  These are for our Zoology Writing Celebration on Friday.

And last...but ABSOLUTELY the most important...purchase was chocolate.  I think these are my new dangerous love.  Twix eggs.  I do not understand what makes them so amazing.  But they make me happy!

I hope you find some more teacher tools through the link up.  I know I havena "must-have" list just from watching my group open their little packages.

An InLinkz Link-up

Place Value Game

I explained earlier this week that after much foundational work, we started to officially, explicitly, directly teach place value.  It all started with some candy.  We quickly moved on but wanted to still make the lessons meaningful to them since place value can seem so abstract to our firsties.

Jess and I handed each kid a cup filled with black beans.  We told them that we needed them to count the beans out to determine how many we had for a special game we wanted to play.  As they had learned in the prior lesson, the best way to probably count the massive amount of beans was to group them by tens.  We asked them to glue the beans down on Popsicle sticks to make ten sticks.

 They were so excited to glue these little beans onto sticks.  Plus it made it much easier for them to count their groups of ten and loose ones.  And as a Friday activity, the sticks had the weekend to dry.

When our firsties came back on Monday, we explained that we wanted to use their bean-ten sticks as a manipulative for a place value game.  Yep...they were beyond excited to use the materials that THEY had made!

Each group got a bag of numbers cards, bean-ten sticks, loose beans, and two tiles.  One tile said "10 more" and one said "10 less".  Students were asked to pull a number card.  Build the number with the manipulatives.

Then pull out a tile and either add ten or subtract a ten.

It turned out to be a pretty effective game (minus the fact that some beans fell off the stick). We were able to observe the students that had difficulty building a number or adding/subtracting from that number.  Then we pulled those students over and worked with them one on one.

Is every student on board with the +10 and -10, yet?  Nope.  But we are getting there and we will keep working at it!

Place Value: Too Much Candy

Really we have been working on place value all year.  We set up our number of day sheet so that Jess hit it daily.

But our firsties did not know that.  And we have not explicitly taught it.  On purpose.  We wanted our firsties to have a strong number sense foundation built up before we expected them to break apart these bigger numbers.

So it was time to get started on explicitly examining the tens and ones of a number.  But how?  We wanted so badly to make it connect to real world.  We needed them to see the importance.  What better way to do that than with...Candy.

Our problem: We didn't know how much candy we had and if it was enough for the whole grade level.

 Our question: How can we count these suckers in the most efficient way?

After some suggestions of counting by ones and twos, it was suggested that we put the suckers in groups of 10.  The lesson began!! 

Each student got their own bag of goodies to count on their own.  Jess and I were able to work one on one with the kids that had some difficulty.

They wrote down their number and they worked together to compare and contrast their numbers.

It was a good start and now we just need to move forward!

100 Days Smarter

 Our first official "100 Days Smarter" celebration occurred on Friday.

My teammate, Jess, organized the event.  6 classrooms of first and second graders were to participate in the rotation.  Each classroom would have a different theme.  The activities were organized.   We dressed the part and decorated the school. 

When the kids arrived to school on Friday, I was AMAZED!  There were more children dressed up than I have ever seen before.  The day was off to a great start and I was so excited!

Each room was set up with different activities.  The students were thrilled to rotate to first and second grade classrooms!

Room 1: Students read a 100th day book.  Then created 100 paper chains.  Each chain had the name of someone that believes in them (referencing Believe Week).
 

Room 2:  After reading a 100th day book, students brainstormed reasons that they love our school.  Then they wrote it on a heart to be displayed in our hallway.

 Room 3: Students were asked to construct structures with 100 blocks and complete 100 piece puzzles.  This was fascinating to me!  The puzzles were a REAL challenge and I will be diving into this subject later.

Room 4: 100 day hats were created in our fourth room. 

 Room 5: Our classes also estimated and counted the number licks it took to get through a lollipop.

Room 6: In the sixth room, students completed movement in sets of 100, read a 100 day poem, and made a bookmark.

The day was such a success.  So much for the kids and teachers, while so much learning took place.  When you hear many children saying: "This was the BEST day ever!"...

You know you did something right.







P.S.  We were very inspired by so many other bloggers and ideas for this day of festivities.  I just want to refer to some other sites that may help you to gather more ideas:

First Grade Fairytales
Mall-ard's First Grade
Wards Way of Teaching
Welcome to Room 36
First Grade Critter Cafe