Memories Made in First

8 Math Games Hacks...

...or tips or tricks or whatever you call 'em! Just keep reading for eight ways to make your teacher life a little easier! And, they're all for math class.

The first two weeks of school, we primarily learned math in a whole group setting. Then, during week 3, we started following our whole group lesson and guided practice with some games. We practiced playing games independently and in pairs, but everyone played the same game at the same time. Tip 1: MATCHING GAMES/CARD GAMES are great introductory games to start with because there aren't a bunch of components. There's only cards. We learned to play War!. War! is great practice for comparing numbers and teaching the kiddos to use math talk.

Reagan Tunstall's Guided Math Unit

Reagan Tunstall's Fundamentals and Friendships Math Centers

TIP 2: When there isn't time to laminate, bust out the sheet protectors. Laminating is great for durability and you can write on it a dry erase marker. But, I've been using more and more sheet protectors as an alternative to lamination because it's faster AND the dry erase marker actually wipes off more easily and leaves less residue behind. In this picture, the kiddos are playing an addition game called Roll & Record. Roll two dot cubes and find the sum, then write your answer on the recording document. The recording sheet in this picture comes from an old textbook adoption called Investigations.

Week 4 we began practicing playing different games at the same time. So while some teams played games with dot cubes, others played card games. By Week 5, we were ready to begin guided math rotations. We play lots of math games at the teacher table. Tip 3: Learn games at the teacher table first, then transition them to math tubs. Before I switched to a Guided Math model, I tried teaching games whole group and then putting the games in tubs, but there was always someone (or more than one someones) who had been playing the game wrong for the first ten minutes by the time I made my way around the room. Then, after the time it took to re-taught them how to play correctly, time was up and we had to move on. Arghhhh. Now, I teach the kiddos in a small group as part of my teacher table lesson. I rarely stumble upon a group that is playing a game incorrectly. Knock on wood!

The following pictures are all addition games we learned at the teacher table BEFORE the game went in a tub.

Intro to Addition Games

Tip 4: Use clip art as math manipulatives. This does require a little effort and some ink, but my firsties loved these fireflies and frogs.

Tip 5: Erasers and random dollar store goodies make excellent math manipulatives. I have a drawer of random toys I've collected from various places, so I don't know where I got these frog pencil toppers or the fish toys, but the frogs are super popular. Everybody wants to play Inside/Outside with these frogs!

Inside/Outside is a great game for learning combinations of numbers. In the picture below, there are four frogs in the pond and six frogs outside the pond. So, one combination of ten is 4 and 6.

Intro to Addition Games

Tip 6: Think outside the toy box. The bats in this picture are actually cup-cake toppers that I found at Dollar Tree. I just snapped off the sticks. We played How Many am I Hiding? with the bats. This cave work mat is from Reagan Tunstall's Guided Math Unit. I repurposed the mat for this game. One student places some bats on the cave, and hides the remaining bats in a cup. His partner uses a strategy, such as drawing the missing bats or counting on, to figure out how may bats are hiding. It's essentially a missing addend game.

Reagan Tunstall's Guided Math Lessons

Tip 7: Use magnets on the back of manipulatives. I own a million little round magnets. Well, maybe not a million, but A LOT. I hot glue or ticky tack them onto the back of all kinds of manipulatives. I primarily do this during whole group math lessons, so I can gather the class on the carpet in front of the white board. In the picture below, I ticky tacked two sided chips (mine are red on one side and yellow on the other) to magents to demonstrate how to use two ten frames to Make 10. If you're not familiar with Make 10, place red dots in the top ten frame to represent the first addend. Place yellow dots in the second ten frame to represent the second addend. Next, move some yellow dots up to the top frame to Make 10. Finally re-write the addition equation and find the sum. I take volunteers to come up to the board to move the magnetized chips. For some reason, my students really like moving around magnets on my white board! After a few demonstrations, we took a baggie of two-sided chips and two tens frames to our desks to practice independently...

...which brings me to my final hack. Tip 8: Keep dry erase markers inside old children's socks. I don't have a picture of this one, but I have a bucket of markers inside socks. We write on our desks with dry erase markers, then erase our work with the sock. So, when my students worked at their desks to Make 10, they had two frames, a baggie of two-sided chips, and a sock with a dry erase marker in it.

Here are links to the math resources referenced in this post.

Intro to Addition Math Games & Activities

Fundamentals and Friendships Math Centers

Guided Math Lessons

Classroom Tour 2015 & Peek at My Week

Welcome to my 2015-2016 classroom! My name is KaSandra Elvir and I teach first grade in a suburb of Houston, Texas. When my campus opened in 1980, it had an Open Concept floor plan. Since then accordian walls have been added, so I have two real walls and two accordian walls if you're wondering why the walls look rippled. I apologize for the quality of these photographs. I do not have any windows or natural lighting in my classroom.

This year I replaced my chevron fabric with black paper. I want the room to have pops of bright color, but still look clean and organized. I can't stand clutter! (at school...my house is a different story altogether;-) I want the classroom to be print rich, but not look like I vomited words and patterns all over the room. The accordian walls help because it's IMPOSSIBLE to get anything to hang from them that weighs more than ounce. I've tried hot glue, push pins, ticky tack, Command hooks, velcro, tape....forget about it!!! Nothing stays for long. The two hanging boards behind the small group table are hung from the ceiling using fishing line. I can get an anchor chart to stay using push pins as long as no one touches it!

Let's get started...

ABOVE: The view from the doorway. All my chairs are still stacked by the door.

ABOVE: The view from the back of the room looking toward the white board. The door is to the right of the little wall behind the American flag.

ABOVE: The view from the front of the whiteboard facing the back wall.

ABOVE: The right wall has floor to ceiling storage. Happy face! The cabinet doors will hold a clip chart, a reading goals chart, the student work display, and a super improver wall.

I did not snap a pic of the left wall. It is a blank accordian wall and I will hang anchor charts on it.

My small group table is at the back of the room (almost in the middle) offering me views of almost the entire room.

ABOVE: I took this picture while sitting at the small group table. On the other side of the shelf that holds math manipulatives is a computer table with two computers.

ABOVE: The shelves to the right of the small group table holds student book boxes, math tubs, word work drawers, and math goodies.

BELOW: All the monster lables seen here are free in my TpT shop.

ABOVE LEFT: The super improver wall seen here is my spin on a Whole Brain Teaching technique. Our school wide theme this year is, "Shiver me Timbers...Where our students arrrr our treasures." The name of my campus is Timbers. I found these pirate themed reward cards at Office Max, so for level one of our super improvers wall students will collect gold doubloons (stickers) each time they show improvement (on work, behavior, reading level, etc.).

ABOVE RIGHT: I still need to add ribbon to my clip chart and print letters to label the GOALS chart. Each student gets a monster that starts out on their beginning of year reading level and then climbs the chart and he/she levels up. The chart on the cabinet goes to Level 20. After that your monster moves to the ceiling! It's kinda a big deal!!

BELOW: Also, at the back of the room is a filing cabinet that I'm using as a magnetic job board. I hot glued magnets to the back of the laminated monster job cards. The white space on each card is where I will write a student's name using a dry erase marker. The marker wipes off easily with a tissue.

BELOW: This year I am switching from I Can... statements to a magnetic focus wall. I hope this will be more purposeful and interactive than just posting statements. I forgot to write "Launching Reader's Workshop" under Reading before I took this picture.

ABOVE: To the left of the small group table is the classroom library. The books are semi-leveled which means there is a range of levels in each of the colored baskets. The red baskets are Levels A-D, the blue baskets contain Levels E-F, the pink baskets hold Levels G-I, and the green baskets hold more advanced books. These are the books students can shop for their book boxes. The books I use for small groups and homework are not included in the classroom library.

ABOVE: You may have spotted the paper lantern monsters around the room. Aren't they adorable? I was going to hang them from the ceiling above the table groups, and that would've been super cute, but, again, I'm trying to declutter and simplify, so I tacked them to the walls instead. I purchased the monster cut-outs from School Girl Style.

Tomorrow is the first day of school! Here is a skeleton lesson plan for the first week

of school.

Here are the links to the products shown above:

Writing Centers with REAL Pictures

Math Centers

Math Journals

Are you on Periscope??? I'm totally hooked! Follow me @memoriesmadeinfirst.

Back to School Resources, Quote Banners on TpT, and a FREEBIE

Tomorrow I'm headed to school to start setting up my classroom. I am excited about my new classroom decor which I'll reveal in a classroom tour post when it's ready! But first something for your Pinterest...

I know some of you have already started back, but I don't officially return to work until August 17th and the kiddos arrive August 24th.

If your looking for resources to start the year off, check out the annual TpT sitewide Back to School Sale for up to 28% off teacher created resources! Use code: BTS15.

Here are some of my Back to School resources that will be on sale!

Back to School Writing Center with REAL Pictures

Writing Center with REAL Pictures BUNDLE

My Friendship Book

Monster Classroom Job Cards

And this one's a FREEBIE!

Monster Math Bin Labels

And finally, you may have noticed that some TpT sellers have been jazzing up their stores by adding a banner in the quote box. Well, I found this super simple tutorial from Teacher Resource Force on how to do it. This tutorial will tell you how to upload a picture to your quote box. It does not, however, explain how to insert a link so buyers can click on the picture. I know it's doable...I'm working on it. Here's my new Quote Box Banner:

FREEBIE Back to School Writing Center with REAL Pictures

#2 on my summer to-do list is do ~~revamp~~ enhance my writing center. One thing I really felt my classroom was lacking was REAL life pictures that could be used for inspiration. I have tons of clip art, but I wanted something different, so I've created some new writing centers that are delightfully lacking in clip art. I'm almost ready to upload an entire year's worth of Writing Centers with Real Pictures, but let me introduce the first two today. These two are must haves for the beginning of the school year and one of them is absolutely FREE for a limited time!

The Back to School Writing Center with REAL Pictures includes color photos of buses, a school, a teacher and her students, a classroom, a backpack and supplies, library, computer lab, art class, playground, and cafeteria.

The Fall Fruit Writing Center with REAL Pictures includes color photographs of apples, an orchard, apple blossoms, parts of an apple (Granny Smith), yellow apples (Golden Delicious), apple juice, apple pie, apple sauce, candy apples, bobbing for apples, pumpkins, parts of a pumpkin, squash, vines, baby pumpkin, pumpkin pie, pumpkin bread, Jack-o-lanterns, pumpkin patch, and costumed children with pumpkin buckets. This center is perfect for September and October!

I'll be back in August with a post about my completed writing center. I plan to print the pages with color photographs and labels at a small poster size. I will hang the posters above my writing center so it can be used for inspiration and as a picture dictionary from across the room. I will also print and laminate about 5 copies to add to my picture dictionary basket which holds many thematic clip art picture dictionaries already. I can't wait to share it with you!

Organize Your Math Centers

Recently I read a post from Amy Lemons about how she re-organized her math centers. She created some really beautiful labels which inspired me to create my own set that complemented my classroom decor. If you have a brightly colored classroom, you'll love these labels. Check them out HERE.

Here the lables are taped in two Sterilite (14 1/4" L x 9 5/8" W x 6 7/8" H) and backed with scrapbooking paper.

Here I laminated the labels so I could adhere them to the outside of the box. I think I like this way better. And, the hot glue will peel right off the plastic if I need to change the label!

Happy organizing!

Intro to Addition Math Games and Activities

This is week 3 of the TpT Seller Challenge! This week's theme is:

I'm late to the party because ~~I like to make a grand entrance~~ I spent the first half of the week beachside in a cozy cottage and it was fantastic! Now, about the challenge...

Last year my school district adopted the Pearson enVision MATH 2.0 Grade 1Texas edition. I wonder how it differs from the Common Core or Florida edition...or is it just a label? Before enVision, we used Investigations. My district does not require that we use or follow any program exclusively, but does provide a scope & sequence and suggests and references materials from the adopted programs. I like some things about enVision (like the short introductory videos for each lesson), but I still like to use many of the Investigations hands-on activities. So, I added hands-on math games and activities that complement enVision to my summer to-do list.

Even though, enVision does provide some math centers, they are generally a black and white worksheets. There is nothing wrong with back and white worksheet games, per say, but I like to promote engagement and buy-in and a "This looks fun!" mindset with colorful or thematic games and activities during math class. As a result, I've began creating math games and activities (perfect for the teacher table and math tubs) to supplement the enVision program.

Of course, you do not need to use the enVision Math program to utilize these fabulous math activities! Here's a peek at some of what's included.

This is one of the games that will help students recognize the quantities of structured arrangements. Play with dots, ten frames, tally marks, or combine all three.

The lighting in this pic stinks...that is a bright neon green paper, not the pea soup color seen here.

Inside/Outside games are fabulous way for students to use objects to represent addition problems. Use the cut-outs included in the packet, or seasonal manipulatives, or snack foods, or whatever you have on hand.

Use the cut-outs included in the packet, dollar store manipulatives, snack foods, erasers or whatever you have on hand. It is not lost on me that the fish out of water will die :-(

I love story mats. I have children tell the story out loud. My daughter prefered dinosaurs to birds, so the story sounded something like this, "5 dinosaurs were picking flowers. Then, 5 more dinosaurs came to pick flowers. Now there are 10 dinosaurs picking flowers." At the beginning of the year, we work on oral story problems. It helps us with writing story problems later.