Glow Day 2022

 Welcome to GLOW DAY!  The kiddos were excited to see our classroom transformed!

Mrs. S., Mrs. Wanke, and Mrs. Christiansen were super excited to start the day!

Everyone got a pair of glow glasses and vest! 

To start our morning off we rotated through GLOW math stations!  One of those stations was glow bowling!  Students took turns throwing the ball.  After the pins were knocked down, everyone had to write a subtraction equation to represent how many pins fell down or how many pins were still standing. 

Another math station was 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.  

After math was over, we grabbed our baggies of books and laid around the room reading our books by flashlight. 

The last GLOW activity we did before going to lunch and recess, was make some GLOW ART!  We used neon oil pastels to draw some fish.  After all our classroom is under the sea! 

After lunch we read the story Martin's Big Words, since Monday next week is Martin L. King Jr. Day.  We focused on the main idea of the story and the supporting details.  We all filled out a graphic organizer.   The best part about this was, we wrote our answers in highlighter...because it would glow of course!

When it was time to work with me at the reading table, students had to put on their reading detective hats.  We have been working on reading and find evidence in text to support comprehension questions.  Yes, we got to use highlighters again to highlight the evidence. 

Unfortunately the rest of my photos from student's work at the Guided Reading table, came out blurry. I must have been too excited to take the pictures. 

While Mrs. Christiansen was working with groups at the table, students got to play spoons with Mrs. S. and Mrs. Wanke.  Instead of trying to get 4 of a kind in a deck of cards, students had to get 3 word cards before they could grab a glowing neon spoon.  (1 noun, 1 verb, 1 adjective)

Lastly, to end out day we painted secret messages with invisible paint that could only be seen under black light.   

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!

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.  

Now 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) 

Thanksgiving FUN

Monday, November 22nd

We started off our morning with some math hop fun!  We had to go around the hallway finding turkey number bond cards.  Each card had a number bond with a missing part.  We had to figure out which part was missing. 

Late in the day, we read about how Thanksgiving became a holiday in the United States. Did you know it was all thanks to a woman names Sarah Hale?!  Below is a link to the story about Sarah Hale.  

Did you know that after Thanksgiving was declared a holiday by Abraham Lincoln Sarah Hale published recipes for turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes and gravy, and cranberry sauce?  That is why so many of us have made these foods part of our Thanksgiving tradition.  I bet if she published recipes for pizza, we might all be eating pizza today for Thanksgiving.  

Next up for the day was a STEM challenge!  

Mrs. Wanke told us that the turkey was coming to our house as a guest for Thanksgiving dinner. We were challenged to make a chair, only out of the materials that she gave us, that could old our "turkey,"  which was a 3 pound weight.  She only gave us craft sticks, binder clips and clothes pins.  

We worked very hard to come up with a chair that could hold our turkey. 

At the end of the time only one partnership was able to make a chair that could hold the turkey. 

Great job Ryne and Gabe!

Mrs. Wanke told us that tomorrow we would be able to try again and that she would give us an additional item to use.  

Tuesday, November 23rd. 

We started our day with some Thanksgiving math stations. 

Station 1:  Was called, Turkeys in the Tree.

We started off with 20 turkeys in our tree.  We would roll a dice to see how many turkeys to remove. 

We would use this to write a subtraction sentence.  

We would continue this until we made all the turkeys disappear from our tree.  Sounds easy, until you get towards the end and there are 3 turkeys in the tree and you roll a 6!  That subtraction sentence is impossible!  Sometimes it took us a lot of rolls to get the turkeys to disappear!

Station 2: Gobblin' up Seeds

We played this with a partners.  We had to put 20 seeds in front of our partner.  Then, our partner had to close their eyes while our turkey gobbled up some seeds. After our turkey ate some seeds, our partner opened their eyes.  They had to write an addition equation that would show how to find the number of seeds the turkey ate.  

For example:  There are 20 seeds out.  When my partner opened his eyes, there were only 12 seeds left.  My partner would write 12+ ___ = 20.  They they would count on to find the missing part. 

Station 3:  Was a fun game online called Gobble Squabble!  You can click on the words Gobble Squabble to play the game at home. 

Station 4: Was a board game that helped us review addition and subtraction!

Back to our Turkey Chair STEM challenge!  

Today Mrs. Wanke gave us the same items as yesterday, but added in 8 snap cubes.  This really help!  All of us were able to make a chair that could hold the 3 pound weight...I mean turkey!

We did some more reading today!

Mrs. Wanke read us a nonfiction book about Thanksgiving Traditions  We read about the Macy's Day parade, the pardoning of turkey, the wishbone, and watching football.

Mrs. Wanke showed us the video of President Biden pardoning the turkeys Peanut Butter and Jelly.

Then, she read us the story Balloons Over Broadway!  This is the true story of a puppeteer name Tony Sarge, an immigrant, that designed the Macy's Day parade balloons. 

Mrs. Wanke challenged all of us to watch some of the Macy's Day parade!

Lastly, she read us one more Thanksgiving story, called How to Catch a Turkey. 

In the story, the turkey ran through a maze in the library.  Mrs. Wanke gave us Legos and challenged us to make a maze. 

The once our maze was done, we were each given a marble, I mean turkey, to try and get through our maze.  We swapped mazes with other groups to see if they could get the turkey through our maze. 

We had a fun 2 days together exploring Thanksgiving!