Setting Up Your Math Centers

Recently, I posted about my independent math centers for Valentine's Day and decided that I would do a how to post for a quick start up to math centers. If you are interested in mixing a few math centers in while maintaining your regular, whole group teaching... then this post is for you! Last year, I did not use math centers in my classroom. I knew it was something that I wanted to implement, so of course I went to Debbie Diller's Math Work Stations: Independent Learning You Can Count On, K-2 for advice. I highly recommend it for anyone who has not yet read it. After reading the book several times, I met with my fabulous professional development coach and she helped me devise a plan that works best for my classroom. I was able to start disaster free math centers in my classroom 2 days after we met together!

How to Group Students
This was my first big issue. I knew that I wanted students to visit my teacher directed center in groups based on level. I also knew that grouping students based on level for independent centers was just not the best idea.  Eventually I decided I needed to take the teacher directed math center off of the math center rotation chart. Instead of students visiting a teacher directed station as part of the center rotation, I call students out of another center to work with me. The down side to this is that each student misses one independent work station, but my students have never complained and we revisit many stations throughout the year.

This is how I group my students:
1. Examine Think Link results, while keeping my knowledge of student understanding in mind.
2. Group students into four groups based on domain or even one particular standard. Groups are: High Group, Med High, Med Low, Low.  This is how students will visit me in my teacher directed center.
3. Mix students up into four groups for independent math centers. Since I have 16 students, I have four groups of four students.  I take one child from the high group, one child from med high, one child from med low, one child from low and I have an independent math center group!

How to Gather the Supplies:
Most likely, you already have everything that you need to set up your first math centers. In our first math centers my students used: 1. Picture books with math concepts 2. Numbers dry erase booklets 3. File folder games  4. Pattern bears for counting, making patterns, and sorting.
I use some containers I found in the kitchen area of  Dollar Tree for center storage.

   Since I was setting up my math centers in a hurry,  I made this very boring chart using materials I already had. I move the numbers for each center rotation. They are attached with velcro. The sentence strips are wipe and write so I write the names for the students on them with dry erase markers. 

 Hope this is helpful to some of you! Happy teaching!

Valentine's Day Math Centers and a FREEBIE!

We've been working hard to master those common core addition standards so we are practicing them with our Valentine's Day math centers. Here's what we have going on this week!

CCSS.Math.Content.K.OA.A.3 Decompose numbers less than or equal to 10 into pairs in more than one way, e.g., by using objects or drawings, and record each decomposition by a drawing or equation (e.g., 5 = 2 + 3 and 5 = 4 + 1).

I got this idea from Fairy Dust Teaching Blog's post: Addition Made Easy. I first taught this lesson in whole group. We did Ways to Make Seven using cards and paper clips. (See the step by step instructions from FairyDust.) It definitely worked like magic and every single one of my kinders was successful! Praise the Lord! They had a great time with it too. I found the adorable little heart clothes pins on the dollar isle at Target.

CCSS.Math.Content.K.NBT.A.1 Compose and decompose numbers from 11 to 19 into ten ones and some further ones, e.g., by using objects or drawings, and record each composition or decomposition by a drawing or equation (such as 18 = 10 + 8); understand that these numbers are composed of ten ones and one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, or nine ones.

     This particular standard has been a real doozie for my babies, but I think we are finally getting the hang of it! I love the look on this girl's face! You can tell she is proud of her work, can't you? In this center students simply model the addition fact using Sweethearts candy! I gave my students their own labeled candy bags. The students knew ahead of time that I would give candy to eat if they could return these bags with ALL the candy hearts still inside. If candy won't work for your students you can always use heart shaped erasers, pompoms, or even dry erase markers! Just visit my TPT store for these great Valentine's Day Playdoh and Counting Mats #1-19.   If your babies have struggled with this standard too you may also want to check out my Number Sense and Operations Math Pack! 

   

Valentine's Addition Sort Freebie

 

Long time no post....

I have been so busy working in kindergarten that I haven't had the chance to post in while! Last week we studied penguins... I put together the entire unit using freebies and a few ideas of my own! Here are a few pics of what we did! 

  My wonderful mom was here last week making seat sacks for my babies and a how to post is soon to come!

Time

I thank you for this day. I thank you for this time. This is how we start many prayers at The Neighborhood School, students and faculty alike. I'm not sure when or who it started with. It's just an unsaid thing that we do and rightfully so. Time. Not everyone has it, at least not earthly time. Today my prayers are with the family and friends of the dear little ones who lost their lives at Sandy Hook. I cannot imagine the grief. I pray that you are comforted by The Lord, who sent his little son that he might die for us. While I do not know your pain, I know that He does. Let us all thank God this Christmas for the time we do have with our loved ones and most of all for the gift of Jesus. Merry Christmas from my family to yours!

Sparkle and Shine

Does anyone else feel slammed this week? We take Think Link on Thursday followed by our class party Thursday afternoon  and we have a Christmas program on Friday. Did I mention my kiddos think its Christmas break already? Good thing I got to take a break from work and just enjoy my babies yesterday afternoon! Here's a little tip I just discovered that will hopefully help cut back on your classroom chaos. GLITTER. Yes, glitter. I used to fear it, now its not so bad!

Step 1: Pour glitter on paper plate.

Step 2: Apply STICK glue.

Step 3: Lay paper face down in glitter.

Step 4: Rub. 

And voila! All done! Less mess glitter tactics!

The Great Commission in the Classroom

Matthew 28:19-20: "Go therefor and make DISCIPLES of ALL nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of  the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age."

Last week we had a professional development meeting after work. Here is what we talked about:

Did I mention how much I LOVE where I work? Investing in our students, making disciples in our classrooms, this is what we are working on at TNS. I was reminded of David Platt's Radical as we discussed the differences between the American church today and the example Jesus set for us in the Bible. Jesus was focused on close personal relationships, on discipleship. So how do we create disciples in our classrooms? We take the risk and spend time with a few of our students OUTSIDE of school in hopes that what we do with a few will create a domino effect in our classroom and our world. According to our speaker, if Christians discipled one person a year, and those disciples in turn discipled one person a year... it would take only 35 years to reach the world for Christ. WOW!
I felt so convicted by this message. Last year I spent significantly more time investing in my students lives, taking them to church, doing zoo trips on the weekend, etc. We had some great times.

I'll never forget loading these babies into my car and opening a discussion on church rules... only to be reassured, "Miss Peden, don't worry, I already know how to act at church. You can't say no curse words, you can't say 'I'm gonna cut you with a knife,' and you cant cut nobody wit a knife either! And don't say the f word, or the b word, or even the d word!" Needless to say, I hadn't planned on covering any of the above in our discussion! Thankfully we survived just fine and had time for peanut butter sandwiches in the car before I took them home! :)



Since I have been lacking in this area this semester, I got a head start on my New Year's resolution to spend more time focusing on and investing in my students.
So this afternoon I had ice cream with one of my kinders.

Tonight, I went out to the Visible Community Music School to hear this adorable kinder play the piano...
















and hear our Middle School students perform Mighty to Save.


As always, I am certain that spending time with them did my heart as much, if not more good than theirs. Isn't it funny how it always seems to go this way?

Sw a in Sweater! Sale and a Freebie!

Today it was all about Christmas sweaters in kindergarten, where we are learning the consonant blend sw. I introduced the blend using The Christmas Sweater: A Picture Book by Glenn Beck. The Christmas Sweater is a heartwarming tale of a little boy named Eddie who realizes that what his heart wants most for Christmas is a Christmas sweater, knit with love from his mom. Even though this is a longer story, my kids were absolutely mesmerized and wanted to hear it over and over. We took time after reading to create an anchor chart for the story, identifying characters, setting, and the main events in the story. (Forgot to snag this pic today, but I'll have it up soon!)

We made connections with the text in "share circle" by discussing  our own Christmas memories, not memories of gifts we received, but memories of time spent with our family and friends. After our share circle, we drew pictures of our Christmas memories and created these adorable snow globe crafts! Too cute!

After completing this craft, I turned my students attention to phonics where we began to focus on the consonant blend sw. I displayed a sw as in sweater sign and we located the sw blend in the title of the book. Students received paper sweaters with "sw" words on them. Students cut out the sweaters, colored them, read the word for the class, and hung them on our classroom clothes line! Students also received sw as in sweater badges to wear home to remind them to tell their parents what they learned about at school today! 

Learning continued in math where students completed leveled journal prompts involving sweaters and other sw words. Students first searched the prompt for the sw blends. They circled the blends and then used a combo of writing and drawing to respond to the math prompts.

Click here for my Sw as in Sweater math and literacy mini-unit, which is on sale for just $3.75 for a limited time! Did I mention this unit also includes my Christmas playdoh mats? Because it does! :D Click here for a Christmas sweater freebie! 

In The Christmas Sweater, Eddie thought a sweater was what his heart needed most for Christmas. Although I did not include this in my sw as in sweater pack, I clarified with my students that what our hearts need most is indeed a Christmas gift, but it is NOT a sweater. What our hearts need most is the gift of Christ Jesus, God's own Son, "in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. (Col. 1:14)."