Math Freebie and Gameplan for the New Year

So I haven't blogged in what seems like eternity (over a year!!). My new (school) year's resolution is to post at least once a month. That sounds doable, right?

Correct?

Answer me!...

Aw, there's probably nobody reading this poor blog anymore. I'll have to work on that with a little freebie! :)

I helped with a little math PD at my school this week and I shared some things I'm using for fact fluency for my little firsties. I've loved many of Kathy Gursky's ideas from www.theschoolbell.com for many years. Go check her out (click on number families for math stuff). I've used her fact booklet with my kids for years but this year I changed up the order a little so I thought I'd share it here. My kids keep their fact booklets in their take home folders so it goes home with them every night (no excuse for not practicing those facts!). When they pass a set of facts I mark a smiley face in the box so parents will know to move on to the next set. If you want details on how I assess math facts I can post it later but you'll have to wait a month as I'm fulfilling my quota of posts for this month :) Click each picture to download.
**Disclaimer- That parent note that will be on the back of the booklet once it's folded is pretty specific to my classroom/school. You may want to type up your own and paste it on top. Sorry this isn't editable.


Now for my gameplan for this year.

At the end of last year I was thinking of how much my kids needed to practice and use polite manners. After a little searching for a manners unit I decided to just make my own. I finished it just in time since we start school next week, eek!!! I made an interactive student booklet that will go along with 2 weeks worth of character ed. lessons on manners.

 

I just posted it in my teachers pay teachers shop and I'm going to mark it down 20% for the big back to school sale! I'd love for you to take a look at it (click image)! And if you like it follow my shop so you get notifications when I post new things or have sales. Thanks, you're awesome :)

 

 

 

P.S. - this post is for you Amanda, my apologies for making you wait on the edge of your seat for over a year :)

Back to School Class Book

Hello blog! My goodness, it's been a month and a half since I last visited blogland. I'm so out of the loop and have lots of catching up to do. I hope everyone's been having a wonderful summer. I'm officially in back to school mode thanks to Target putting out their school stuff. Why I bought 3 more mini-pocket charts I don't know. Did everyone see the star student chair covers? I got a few! I'm in such a mood I might even run up to school this afternoon to piddle around a bit. In Alabama we're starting school 2 weeks later than usual, so I've still got 4 solid weeks to plan and prepare. Maybe this will actually be the year that I get a few weeks completely prepared before hand (but I won't hold my breath).

Anyway, I've updated a little class book I posted last year. I plan to use it during the first week to help students learn names and to proactice writing their own name. I just posted it on TPT (free). Here's the link if you want a copy.

Also, this summer I helped with a math common core workshop for my faculty and I created some I can charts for the practice standards. I'm hoping to post those tomorrow. I'll be on a roll if I post 2 days in a row!

I forget every year...

just how tiring the first weeks are! It's like I must black it out in my memory. I know to expect super long hours, endless repetition of setting routines and procedures, and sore feet from standing all day as opposed to lounging on my couch, but I'm always amazed at how worn out my body is. I seriously napped and lied around ALL day yesterday. I never even put on real clothes, sad I know. I'm also fighting some kind of infection, thought it was strep but thank goodness it wasn't (yes I've already been to the dr. for shots and antibiotics and we're only 12 days into this year).

I've been too busy or too tired to post anything and to be honest nothing we've done yet has been very worthy of sharing. But here's a super cute 1st day of school picture that I took of each kiddo. The kids were so funny, when I explained how I wanted them to hold the speech bubble to look like it was coming out of their mouths a few of the boys exclaimed, "It's like we're in a comic book!".

Which leads me to another idea... If your kids are doing any kind of book extensions or writing their own stories they could make themselves into the characters, write speech bubbles for themselves(using a dry erase surface would be easy), take photos, and put them together comic book style. That's a lot of work but it integrates technology and would be so much fun (especially if you have older kids who are more independent with tech. stuff). So that's my spur of the moment teaching idea.