New Work Station, Winner, and Class Updates!

Congratulations Liz! You are the Winner of "Dot Cards for Math Workstation" Packet! I will be emailing you shortly with the goods! Sorry I did not get to announce the winner earlier, I was busy cheering on my Tigers for a victory against Oregon! 

I also have a new Math Workstation to introduce you to! This week we are learning how to make numbers from five to ten. Therefore, looking to Debbie for inspriation I found a workstation that would help my littles understand this concept! 

 This workstation deals with the beginning process of introducing addition to your students. Students will  use the Dot Cards to create the numbers five through ten. Therefore, if a student is making the number five they would put one color of one Tens train on one side, and another color on the other side of the same card. They would then use the Math Talk Bubble to state, "Four and One is the same amount as Five". See the pictures below to check out my kids working on this workstation today. (We started with just making five today)

Included in the Packet:
-45 Dot Cards that make the numbers five through ten
-3 Math Talk Bubbles
-Recording Sheet
-Instructions and Pictures of how to implement this workstation!

If you would like to check out this Math Work Station click here!

In other news, like I mentioned before this weekend I went to the LSU vs. Oregon game. So I was *forced* to leave my littles with a substitute. Luckily, she was their teacher from last year who is retired, so I trusted her fully! The day before I left I did the "Miss Nelson is Missing" activity I saw on another blog! (which I cannot remember whose blog, so please let me know if it is you) Not only did the story scare my students into good behavior out of fear of Miss Swamp coming to school, but their Miss Swamp pictures came out adorable! Afterwards, I had the students write "I can show Rock Star behavior by..." I chose Rock Star in our writing since I call my outstanding students Rock Stars and we have the Rock Star Rules! 

Here is some pictures of my trip to Dallas! Have I told you yet that I love football season! 

More exciting news.... my planner came in. Dear Lord I was beyond thrilled to see it at the door! And she is perfect. Just look at her with her hot pink stripe. Makes me so happy. I did somehow convince Ms. Thomas she needed one as well... but she swiped that credit card all on her own! 

Lastly, here is one of the anchor charts I created about being a good writer. When Ms. Thomas and I went to the Debbie Diller Workshop this summer one suggestion she told us was to tell our young writers is to write about what you KNOW about and what you CARE about. Great advice.  

Hope you are having a great short week!

Treasures: Stormy Weather Theme

So, I'm not sure who else out there teachers Treasures... but yawn! I could give a list of things I dislike about this Reading Series. However, I cannot change the fact that this is what we use for our series... so my teacher bestie, Ffion (or Ms. Thomas), and I try our best to make it more engaging for our students. We have found the stories usually to be typically blah in the students books, so we have opted for trade books to cover the skills of the week instead. 

This week our skill is Compare and Contrast, which I discussed with my students today. I will post a picture of the anchor chart I created to use with my students as a reference for this skill.  Ffi and I decided we would use the stories "It Rained Hearts" and "Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs" to implement this skill!

Since it was Valentines today I decided to read the story "It Rain Hearts" with my students first. We then completed a Readers Response "I wish it would rain...."

* I will post more pictures of my students responses! So funny! One student wanted it to rain "Diamond Chains", only in the Park. 

(He only wanted $25.00... modest lil thing! So sweet!)

Tomorrow I will read the story "Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs" and as a whole class we will complete the compare and contrast graph made by Ms. Thomas.  

Afterwards, the students will complete the Reader Response "Would you rather it rain hearts or  meatballs?" inspired by the adorable Babbling Abby (who had this whole lil' cute Vday activity... which I want to do next year. I mean I am a girl who is now on a school budget, so I have to pick and choose from her Tpt! Boo.)

Today we also create a chart with our schema about the weather and what we are have learned. It was funny to see my students thoughts on the weather, wow the misconceptions about snow! Duh, I guess Louisiana doesn't teach us too much. 

*I forgot to take pictures, so I will re-post in the morning when I return to school.

Coming up this week: Weather Cycle and Weather Poems courtesy of The First Grade Parade.