Shut the Door and Teach
I’m reaffirmed in my stance on math education. I’ve been a math interventionist, math coach, and worked with advanced learners. A few years ago I was working with a gifted learner because he couldn’t get the correct answer to a multiplication problem. He had spent three fourths of the page trying to solve the problem with the box method/area model. With our current math education we teach multiple strategies to learners. You can do it this way, or this way…..or this way…whatever strategy works best for you. Students end up with so many strategies they can’t find their way out of a paper sack! Even when I sat with this particular child and showed him the “old fashioned” way of multiplying double times double digits, he still wanted to gravitate towards the area model. Another child this week was confusing two different strategies and was not able to get the correct answer because of it.
Last week I went to visit a former students who had left to go to a private school. He was excited to show me his sticker collection, his cats, and how he was leaning long division. Guess what?! No 15 strategies to arrive at the answers, and he was getting it right. Why are we making math difficult for students when it doesn’t have to be? At my school by the way, math fact drills are forbidden unless it’s covert. I’m of the ask forgiveness and not permission on the math fact drills. I will continue. Why do we have to make learning so difficult when it doesn’t have to be?
My Favorite First Grade Spider Lessons…
Since my original post here., I have honed and improved my spiders lessons. Here’s the simple approach.
Lesson 1: I read the Hey Little Ant book and we talk about the perspective of ants and spiders. Should you or should you not squish the ant? What if it was a spider? The students do a short writing piece and draw a picture about what they would do. I tell students to be looking for spiders and ants on the playground. We sing the spider song in Deanna Jump’s spider unit. (I repeatedly sing this every time I come while teaching spiders.
Lesson 2: I share a spider power point with lots of different spiders. We talk about which ones are poisonous and which ones aren’t. We also discuss spider body parts.
Lesson 3: We build the spiders which you see pictured in this post. I give the children labels for the spider body parts. If students do everything correctly, I give them a bow (Deanna Jump’s idea) which they can turn into a girl spider’s hair bow or a boy spider’s bow tie.
The children really enjoy this, and it brings happiness to the hallway which in turn makes me happy!
Cheer Up Your Colleagues!
When morale is low, I like to surprise my coworkers with a surprise treat in their mailboxes. It doesn’t take much to grab some cookies and candy from the grocery store and put it in a little sack with a kind note. This gives someone something to look forward to eating all day. Here I picked up some pumpkin cookies, threw in some candy corns and attached a cute note. On the note I included a riddle…What makes jack-o-lanterns so smart? A candle makes them bright!
A Hug? But like This?
Many times the best ideas come fromm the students. This year I was teaching the kinder students how to say hello to me in the hallway. I tell them to tap their head when they see me. I tell them that this is like our secret handshake. Many kinder children cannot contain themselves and want to hug me in the hallway and jump out of line. I can’t be disturbing the teacher who has just herded kittens to travel someplace, and I warn the children accordingly.
Well, enter grand idea! So I notice this one kindergartener tapping her tummy. I asked why was she tapping her belly. She said it is a secret hug! Oh my goodness!! How precious! Love this!
Children have the best ideas!
Coordinate Grid Update
This great resource had an update due to a customer request. Someone asked for an alpha numeric version, so that is also now included in the document. I still like the true coordinate grid version best. Check out this popular resource!
Don’t Miss this Deal!
I recently discovered my love for flair pens. I bought a few with school money, but didn’t love every color and didn’t love the price per pen on Amazon. I was minding my own business and found some beautiful colors in Walmart in a “teacher pack”. I really like how almost all of the colors are darker and would stand out on paper for grading or for notes. These were only $9.98
Cheap and Easy Classroom Decor
A while back I told about the decorations I bought from Amazon, but I was not yet at school to hang them from the ceiling. Well, I hung them up with bent paperclips from from the ceiling in an X fashion from corner to corner with them crossing in the middle. I picked the silver circles for the fact that they would reflect light from the window in a fluorescent light classroom. I am still in the process of searching out lamps to make it feel warmer in the room. I very much like the decorations! The children even commented that they liked them! Win! What do you think?
Eeew! Gross! What you should be collecting this summer!
I tend to find the weird and yucky science things to intrigue my students! I’ve seen these before– cicada shells, and collected one, but never had enough to do anything with. Since my students commented one of their favorite lessons was when I taught them about insects, I decided to capture keep each one that I found in the yard. Then one night, I found one cicada shell freshly discarded on my screen door as the new insect had just emerged. I have now collected about six shells! I hope I inspire you to make your own cicada collection. Few things capture studegnts’ attention like living things!
Happy Independence Day!
Happy Independence Day from Teacherblog.co. I hope you have a wonderful day!
