Donors Choose

I recently submitted a project on the website Donor's Choose and our classroom was funded!  We are so excited to use our new materials for math! I cannot say enough about the generous people out there that donated to our classroom.  It really means a lot to the kids and to me.  I have been meaning to get pictures up of the great projects the kids are doing in my room but for some reason the time just seems to fly by and I forget to take out the camera...anyone with me :)?  Here's a little prayer, a wise fellow teacher gave me, to leave you with on a Monday evening...

Hundreds Chart Puzzles

As we start the year in Everyday Math, you can tell the spread of my 2nd graders abilities start to show.  Some are trying to master sequences on the hundreds chart while others are ready for a more challenging experience.  To try and enrich the students who are done early I created this word document in the style of hundreds chart puzzles found in our Everyday Math journals.  The students who are at a high level will have the opportunity to create puzzles for friends to solve and I, the teacher, can create puzzles for those students who need practice in certain areas.  Click here to get this document for free from my TPT store.

A Hippo Ate the Teacher

As I get ready for the school day tomorrow I needed to share my latest creation.  In second grade we start off with the story A Hippopotamus Ate the Teacher.  We read the first part of the book and then create a drawing of our ideal teacher.  We talk about things that good teachers do and what the kids want out of me this school year.  I think it is fun to see the ideas they come up with and the things they see that I don't always notice.  We then proceed to feed their drawn teachers to the hippo that I made.  Lastly we predict what is going to happen in the story after the teacher gets eaten and then finish the story.  At the end of the story the teacher gets burped up and comes out of the hippo so of course we then shake the teachers out.  The kids love it. 

Here is how I made our class hippo.

1- draw a hippo on a piece of tag board.  You could also use a trusty overhead if you don't feel like you could draw one well enough.  

2-color your hippo for your desired look.

3- cut out the mouth of the hippo and then lay your hippo on the bag and trace where you want the cutout of the mouth to be.

4-cut out the traced part of the paper bag and glue your hippo to the bag so the mouth fits over the hole you cut.  

You now have a perfect teacher eating hippo for your class to enjoy :) Happy teaching this year everyone! I plan to post more pictures of my classroom but still have yet to remember my camera.  I think I may just have to many other things on my mind at this point in the school year :)

Easi-Speak Recorder

I was checking out some blogs this morning and ran into this awesome post about the Easi-Speak Recorder.  I instantly thought of ways I could use this in my classroom with my reading kids.  I can see my class using it to share their learning in so many ways.  It could be used to have students share writing, read books to model fluent reading (that others could then listen to), to record students as they read for AIMS Web testing that we do in our district, man the possibilities are endless!!

Click on the picture below to see the original post by 2nd Grade Shenanigans :) She has some great ideas!!

Greg Tang Math

My mother (a fourth grade teacher) sent me an email at the end of the school year about a great website that helps get students thinking differently about math.  I used some of the stratagies with my second graders at the end of last school year.  It really seemed to click with them.  Greg Tang does a great job using riddles and books to teach math concepts.  I signed up for a year subscription to his website for just 19.99.  I can add all my students to the website and they can then play the games and do activities after logging in.  I plan to use this website to boost my students understanding of math concepts this coming school year.  I like how the games and worksheets help the students think outside the box.  I think this will be especially beneficial for my high students in second grade as a way to challenge them to think differently about math.  Go check it out teachers I think you might find it beneficial :).....click here to go to the Greg Tang website

Here are some examples of the games I plan to use with my students...