Glow Day 2023

Welcome to GLOW DAY!  The kiddos were surprised when them came to school today to see our room transformed!

Everyone got a vest and a pair of glow glasses for the day!

Mrs. S. and I were just as excited to start the day!  

We played glow Jenga.  Students played this game with Mrs. S.  Each Jenga piece was covered in 1 of 4 colors of neon black light tape.  After the child successfully placed the Jenga piece on top, he/she had to take a math question card that corresponded with the color on the Jenga piece.  Every student had to write their answer to the question on their whiteboards.  

At the math table we worked on the make 10 strategy with our special glow thinking caps. 

I head many of the kids say, "This is the best day ever!" and "I love this class!"  This is exactly why I love my job!  They were sad to see this day end, but I told them you just never know when another special day will pop up! I have many more tricks up my sleeve!

We had so much fun and did so many glow activities, including finding evidence in the text with highlighter, which glow of course!  We used invisible ink pens that only showed up with our special lights from glow day.  We also played with our fun glow boards to practice writing our words.  We had so much fun, Mrs. Wanke forgot to take more pictures!  SORRY! Below are some more random pictures from our day. 

What is the Make 10 Strategy?

We have been working on the Make 10 Strategy for adding.  I am sure many of you are wondering, what is the Make 10 Strategy?  Please take a few moments to watch this video about the strategy.  

I am sure many of you must be thinking...oh boy Common Core math strikes again!  To be totally honest with you, I felt the same way when I first learned this way of teaching.  However, since teaching it, I have come to love it! 

At first glance this appears to be a ridiculous way to add two numbers together by making students do a bunch of unnecessary steps to get the answer.  However, this strategy is actually preparing students to mentally manipulate and add numbers.  I bet many of you do this and don't even realize it! 

We want students to start thinking strategically and move away from counting on and using their fingers.  SO, we teach students make a 10.  It is super easy to add a number to 10!  At this stage, most first graders are not ready to mentally decompose numbers to make a 10 in order to add.  So, we have students write each step of the process down.  This will prepare students to mentally add numbers when they are ready. 

This week we moved counters around.  We were able to see the originally equation and the 10 fact on our work mats.  The kiddos really seemed to like doing this in group because it made sense and they were able to physically manipulate the "number."

Once students get really good at making 10 and showing signs that they can mentally manipulate the numbers, we move to apply this strategy to larger equations.  For example, 7+5=  (10+2=12)  moving toward the equation 27+13= (30+10=40)