Come on over to my new Blog!

I want to formally invite you to the grand opening of my new blog!

Join me at Mrs. Rhodes' Scholars!

Come on over and join me on my new journey!  Don't forget to become a follower.  I hope to share more as I settle in and you don't want to miss out!

Be On the Lookout! The Rhode Has Detoured.

Wow! 

I feel like I have been gone forever.

As many of you know, I was reassigned this year.  I am no longer a Kindergarten teacher. (Boohoo!)  I am now a Second grade teacher.  I have entered an entirely new world.  I have been BUSY learning a completely new set of standards and teaching skills that I haven't taught in years. I have been in survival mode these last few months.  I am just now starting to feel like I know what I am doing.

I have not been making many items, except those that I needed specifically for my class.  I did not want to confuse anyone by adding second grade items to a "Kindergarten" blog.  

I do not plan to close this blog because I still love Kindergarten and will try to make items occasionally that I think will help Kindergarten students prepare for future grades.

I do want to let you know that I will be opening up a new blog soon. The template is actually already up but I haven't posted as of yet.  I want to make at least 1 item for each category before I introduce it!  Expect to hear from me soon! 

Jayne

ClassDojo!

I have discovered a true lifesaver!  My class of 25 exuberant second graders have definitely been a challenge.  They are all lovely children but also some of the most social children I have ever seen.  I feel guilty if I take a breath because several will start talking to fill in the slight pause.  I have tried so many different things to help them focus on being quiet and doing their work that I was about to run out of ideas.  Then I heard about ClassDojo!

I heard about ClassDojo last night and I signed up for a Beta account.  In a few short minutes, I was entering my students names and the information I would need to start this morning.  I rushed up to school and started the system on my desktop and projected it on my smartboard.  I then left to go meet my students at breakfast.  We returned to the classroom to find that ClassDojo had logged out.  I quickly tried to log on but it said that I was not enrolled.  After several tries, I quickly emailed Liam (one of the founders).  Within a few minutes Liam had corrected the problem and I was up and running.  THANK you Liam!!!

I introduced it to my students and we were off! Suddenly I had a class of cooperative and eager learners.  They stayed on task and were rewarded with "points".  When they would "stray" from proper behavior they would lose a "point".  WOW!   They were so eager to be rewarded with "points" that they did everything they were supposed to do....and even more shockingly....quietly!!!!

  I set up my Ipod touch to work as a remote and was able to document points during restroom breaks, lunch, specials, and transitions.  This was fabulous.  My para, who was out this morning, returned in the afternoon and could not believe that these were the same children!!!!

I highly recommend giving ClassDojo a try because it has truly been a FANTASTIC day in my classroom!!!! 
The website is:  www.classdojo.com

Oh........and THANK you to Sam and Liam!  You have changed my classroom in one day!

Helping Your Students to Measure Up!

Measurement has become my absolute FAVORITE concept to teach in the last several years.  I have actually presented several sessions at Regional and State Conferences on measurement.  Most of my sessions have been on FREE resources that you can find on the internet to make measurement fun.  Most of the materials have come from the free printables available on the Math Learning Center website or my website.  I also found many ideas in Elementary and Middle School Mathematics: Teaching Developmentally by Van De Walle, Karp, and Bay-Williams. 

I am placing my handouts on Scribd so that you can look through and see if you can find anything that you can use.  Each handout has pictures of the activities and links to where you can find any of the printables that are recommended. ( I will say that I haven't checked all of the links lately so some may have changed.)

TRC Handout 2010 Final

This is the Making Measurement Fun Handout from our Regional Kindergarten Conference (KTOT).  The activities can actually be used in higher grades too.

Making Measurement Fun! Handout


I'm sorry that I can't put all of the activities on Scribd, but there are just way too many that I have created.  I also have many of the activities that I made or adapted on my Shutterfly website:http://kindergartenrhode.shutterfly.com/ in case you want to see them. Just look in the sidebar for Math Ideas for Kindergarten (not just for Kindergarten though) and Measurement Workshops. 

Hope you can find some wonderful measurement ideas that will help your students to measure up! Let me know what you think about my materials.  It encourages me to create!

My Favorite Books Linky Party

Runde's Room

Runde's Room is having a "My Favorite Books" Linky Party!  If ever there was a book "hoarder", it would have to be me.  I have thousands of books in my classroom, on my shelves at home, next to my bed, in storage,.....I think you get the picture.  My daughter is the same way.  She reads CONSTANTLY.  This year she actually made the 2 million AR club because she read and tested on books that had at least 2 million words.  Here are a few of my favorites:

Childhood Favorite:  A Wrinkle in Time by Madeline L'Engle 

I read this book nearly every year.  I don't really know why I liked this book so much, but I did.  Another book that really affected me as a child was an autobiography of Freddie Steinmark.  Freddie was a football player at the University of Texas at Austin who was diagnosed with cancer.  The book I Play to Win was written about his struggle with cancer. It actually helped me to deal with and better understand the death of my grandmother and aunt from cancer.  I actually was able to purchase a copy of this book several years ago off ebay.  It is currently in my treasured book collection.

Classroom Favorite:  When I taught the upper grades, one of my favorites was Save Queen of Sheba by Louise Moeri.  It is the story of a boy and his sister who must count on each other to survive after their parents have been killed in the ambush of their wagon train.  The subject is a little rough but the story is very touching.  My kindergarten students this year LOVED the Tacky the Penguin stories.  These books by Helen Lester are charming.  Tacky is an odd bird but his differences are what make him special.  The message is a good one for young students and Tacky is just funny too.

  

Reading to My Own Children:  As small children, both of my children enjoyed the story And the Cow Said Moo! by Mildred Phillips.  This repetitive book is darling and my children wanted it read OVER and OVER and OVER again!  They also loved Brown Bear, Brown Bear and  Polar Bear, Polar Bear.  I was lucky enough to get them a personally autographed copy of these books shortly before Bill Martin, Jr. died.  Hopefully they will share it with their own children someday.

          

Professional Favorite:  Goodness.....too many to name.  Elementary and Middle School Mathematics: Teaching Developmentally by John A. Van De Walle, Karen S. Karp, and Jennifer M. Bay-Williams would have to be my current favorite. This book has forever changed the way I teach math to my students.  Debbie Diller's Math Work Stations is a VERY close second.

      

Guilty Pleasures:  You will usually find me reading Professional books, but every once in a while I stop and just read something for fun. The authors who I have read nearly all of their work are: 

Tony Hillerman.................I love the southwest culture and Tony Hillerman wrote about it from the heart.

Patricia Cornwell (the Scarpetta books).............I love a good mystery and Patricia Cornwell adds lots of scientific information to the mysteries.  Not for the faint of heart!

Gosh.....I think I need to go read a book!

Check out Runde's Room for the Links.  You just might find some NEW favorites!

I'm Late to the Party!

The Geometry Party that is!  I have not had much time this week to create, but I do have several activities that I had created in the past for geometry that could be used in math work stations.  I'll start with the most basic.  This is an activity that I would introduce at calendar in the very beginning of Kindergarten.  We spend lots of time developing the vocabulary of position words in Kindergarten.  I wanted a quick way to practice it daily, so I created the dragon fly jar activity.

It is simply two laminated jar graphics that have a ribbon attached to two dragonfly graphics pasted back to back.  I hold the jar up and hold the dragonfly in a position.  The students have to give me as many position words as they can think of to describe where the dragonfly is.  I make a "big deal" out of multiple ways to give the position.  Ex. The dragonfly is above the jar.  The dragonfly is on top of the jar.  The dragonfly is over the jar.  As the students get the hang of it they often go home and try to find new ways of saying the position words.  I had one student that said it was "hovering" over the jar.  After they get the hang of it, I would add it to a math station and have the students write stories or talk about it with their partner.  I think you could even add several dragonflies so that they can write addition and subtraction stories with it.  Ex.  There were three dragonflies over the jar, and two dragonfies under the jar.  How many dragonflies were there in all?

Click here to get the printable.

As a former Gifted Specialist, I am a strong believer in teaching students about the history of what we are learning.  At the Primary level, I don't try to bombard them with too much, but I do like to introduce a few names and facts whenever I can.  I developed a game of Geometry "Old Maid" called Geometry "Old Euclid".  Euclid is often referred to as the Father of Geometry.  This at least introduces his name to students so that later on when they hear his name they might associate it with Geometry.

What I have the students do as they play the game is to first name the attributes of the shape and then name the shape that they are looking for.  After repeating these attributes enough times, hopefully they will remember them.  Click here if you would like the printable.

Another activity that I had created was for three dimensional shapes.  Several of my students needed repeated practice with this concept so I created a 3D shape sort using pictures of real life objects.  I included one set of labels to put on the sorting mats that have the name of the shape and a picture of the shape, and I also created a set of labels with out the picture....name only.  I glued these to the front and back of sheets of construction paper and then laminated them.  As the students become more familiar, they can flip over to the name only side.  You could even use the cards to sort by ....does it roll or slide, etc.

Click here if you would like the printables for 3D Shape Sort.

I hope these activities can help someone.  I have found so many things that people have shared online that I can only hope that some of the things that I make are helping others too.  Thanks for following along and have a TERRIFIC weekend!

The Value of Place in the Math World

Welcome back!

This week I have been very busy.....I'm still purging and cleaning my classroom!  Actually I have had to purge and clean the classroom that I am moving to, AND my old classroom.  After seeing what all I have been keeping in my classroom, I am surprised that I have not been featured on the TV show....Hoarders! YIKES!  It has been really hard to get rid of some of the items, but I just don't have room to keep everything.  Personal things that are still in great shape and that simply won't work at my new grade level will be going to storage, so I am trying to get all like items together.  I am trying to label EVERYTHING before I put items in place so that I don't have to rearrange everything.  Hopefully this will end soon.

I also started trying to think of things that I could make to share so stick with me here.

How do you support math vocabulary (math talk) at Place Value Stations?
I will be using the math talk cards/printables to increase use of correct math terms.  I already have a labeled drawer where I will keep the blank printables, and will just pull one out everytime I introduce a math station.  The students will help me create the actual math talk and sentence stems that will be useful for that station.

What student activities help support your student's understanding of place value?
In Kindergarten, one of the things that I found that worked well for my students was to cover up numbers on the hundreds chart.  Once we had the 100th day, each day I had 5 colored cards with the letters A-E on them.  I would place them in front of 5 random numbers on the 100s chart.  During calendar the students would tell me what number was hiding behind each letter.  We didn't stop there though, I also made students tell me different ways that they figured it out.  I always tried to have at least 2 to 3 different ways they could find the answer. (Ex. For 25, students might say:  It's one more than 24.  Its 10 more than 15.  Its between 24 and 26.)  I also really stressed what each number means on the 100s chart.  (In the number 78, how many tens?  How many ones?)  We did these things all year, so the students really seemed to catch on to place value.  We also stressed use of the correct vocabulary.

This next year, in 2nd grade, I am still toying with a variety of ideas.  We have not received our new calendar component (Number Corner from The Math Learning Center), so I don't know yet how it is addressed and if I will need to add this concept to my calendar routine.  I had thought about maybe using the math puzzle idea in my calendar routine where I could just change the number daily and have the students find the missing numbers. We should receive our materials in the next week or so, so I will be checking that soon.

What is your student's favorite place value work station/activity?
I would have to say the missing number activities.  I would always tell them "Be like Scooby Doo....find the missing numbers!"  They would giggle and get right to it.  They loved solving "mysteries" like Scooby Doo. 

Thank you for sticking with me through the questions and answers.  Now for the fun stuff......the FREEBIES!  I really tried to think of items that we could all use.



 So my first freebie is:

Missing Number Puzzles

I made these puzzles without the numbers so that you can program them with any set of numbers.  Run several sets to differentiate for your students.  Remember that if you laminate them first you can change the numbers however often you need to.

My next item is:


Expanded Notation Go Fish 10 -99

I also created a more advanced version for the older students.
Expanded Notation Go Fish 100 -999

I also wanted to use the Monopoly type money that Debbie talks about on page 144.  (For those who may not have the book yet, it is simply put bills in a paper bag.  Each student takes turns picking out 3 bills.  They place their money on a HTO chart and find out who has the most each turn.  Whoever has the most gets to keep his/her money from that turn.  The first person to $999 wins.)  I didn't have an old Monopoly set soooooo, I created Place Value bills. (1s, 10s, and 100s)

Place Value Bills

I also needed a set of Place Value Charts so I created a new set of those.

Place Value Charts

I hope that you can use some of the items that I have created.  Let me know if you like what you see. I apologize that they are not all embedded.  I have been having nothing  but trouble with Scribd.  Two of the five items embedded fine, the others did not .....even though I did nothing differently.  I have tried everything that I know to do so if you still can't download any of the above items, you may visit my website to download the items.  They are on the Math Station Page.

Kindergarten Rhode

I hope that you are enjoying your journey through all of the fabulous blogs that are involved in the book study of Debbie Diller's Math Work Stations.  If you haven't been following this book study, you really should because it has been absolutely fantastic.  This week the host is Ms. Arnold at Oceans of First Grade Fun. So click on the link to visit and find links to lots of blogs who are also joining in on the fun.  You never know what you might find awaiting you on these wonderful blogs.

Oceans of First Grade Fun

Have a great week!