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Common Core

Counting to 1,000 Idea – 2.NBT.3

Common Core, Math February 25, 2014

One of the standards in 2nd grade specifically 2.NBT.3 is that students are able to read and write numbers to 1,000.  Now, this seems like a large task and can also seem a bit monotonous.  I didn’t want it to become that way for my kiddos so I came up with a challenge for them. The challenge is they have to take their blank hundreds charts and write the numbers from 1 to 1,000.  Then, when they are finished they get to turn it into a book with a cover that they get to decorate and take home to share with their families. I know this doesn’t sound overly exciting to us since we’re adults – but the kids ate it up!  The other thing I did is limited the time we spent on it each day. If we spent a half hour on it every day the kids would get bored and it would never get finished.  Two to three days a week after we’ve cleaned up math stations we have about 4-5 minutes until we start math. During that time students can work on their counting to 1,000.  Funny enough they even ask to work on it when they have finished their math work early.  Below are a few pictures of my student’s book – he was the first one to finish…

 
Happy Counting!

New Favorite Kid’s Books!

Books, Common Core, Reading February 23, 2014
I came across these books on Pinterest and recently bought them for my unit on Point of View and Comparing and Contrasting Fairy Tales and had to share them!  I loved them and so did the kids! These authors did a wonderful job of updating fairy tales.  These books work great for the RL2.6 and RL2.9 standard, but they are also just great to have in the classroom.  I highly recommend purchasing them for your classroom library.  I purchased the three below and they also have a few more – one for Snow White, Rapunzel, and Jack and the Beanstalk.  I’ll be adding those to my Amazon cart ASAP!
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What are some of your favorite new kid’s books?  Share in the comments below…

Addition and Subtraction Strategies

Anchor Charts, Common Core, Math February 13, 2014

We spent 2 full weeks working on adding and subtracting double digit numbers with borrowing and regrouping. This is definitely a tough one. Having never taught this in first grade, this was definitely a learning experience for me and for them.  But, on a happy note, my kids aren’t freaked out by it.  I used my CGI (Cognitively Guided Instruction) training from my previous district, we worked on strategies to make it concrete and they’re getting it! 

The three strategies we’re focusing on are….

Place Value – using sticks as the tens and dots as the ones – great strategy for kids who struggle.  Helps them to see it out like the base 10 blocks – great way to take it from manipulatives to no manipulatives.  Below, the student took the nine ones from the top and the one one from the bottom to make a ten – see the arrow.

 
Empty Number Line – starting with the larger number on a empty number line and counting up by 10’s, then 1’s

 
 
 Break Apart Strategy – this one is my favorite – see 2 different ways below of breaking the numbers apart…

 
 
Here are our anchor charts that we made for Adding and Subtracting Double Digit Numbers with borrowing and regrouping – each strategy is listed with an example.  I let students practice all of the strategies then they can pick the one that works best for them.

All About Penguins Book

Common Core, Informational Text, Thinking Maps, Writing February 12, 2014

Our most recent National Geographic Kids focused on penguins lend itself nicely to a little penguin unit study.  We researched penguins using a Brainpop clip, reading our awesome Nat Geo which provided a lot of great info for my 2nd graders, and using a few nonfiction easy readers.  After reading/watching, we’d add facts to our penguin circle maps. Then, after our circle maps were full of wonderful penguin facts we then moved them into a tree map to organize our facts.  For our penguin tree map, we had four branches – looks like, lives, eat, and predators.  The kids organized their facts under the specific branches to make writing their penguin book easier.  I decided to focus the kiddos instead of just letting them write. I’m finding on report writing at 2nd grade level in a highly ELL population, we’re really struggling at knowing what to write, how to sequence, and how to focus on important information, so I’m using this writing assignment as a way to scaffold their learning.

Here’s our tree map and planning…

 

Below are some pictures of their finished books…..

 
**Sorry for the sideways pictures, BlogSpot and my computer weren’t working with me :-).

Double Digit Addition and Subtraction

Anchor Charts, Common Core, Math January 20, 2014

My kiddos had struggled a lot with double digit addition and subtraction. Some had learned the straight algorithm, but had no idea what they were doing or why they were doing it, and some were trying to draw 44 circles and 23 circles and then count them all up one by one.  So…I decided we needed some strategies.  We started with straightforward double digit addition and subtraction – no borrowing, no regrouping.  We worked on 3 strategies.  One each day as to not overwhelm students. After exposing them to each strategy and letting them practice each one, they got to choose the strategy that worked best for them.  We worked on place value, empty number line, and break apart.  After we went over these, they really started to get the hang of it and problems weren’t taking 8 hours to solve like the drawing 44 and 23 circles :-).

Here are two anchor charts we made to document our strategies.

 
 
 
 
This week we’ll be tackling regrouping.  I plan to go back to these strategies and also have some fun games that I bought from Amy Lemon’s Double Digit Addition and Subtraction Games pack added in for practice.
 
Hope everyone enjoys the day off!
 

Text Features Anchor Chart

Anchor Charts, Common Core, Informational Text, Reading January 16, 2014

Over the first half of the year in 2nd grade, we have spent a lot of time working with informational text.  While some of the text features have been easy for the kids to identify and use, some have been more difficult.  So one morning we worked together to make a Text Features Anchor chart using clippings from National Geographic for Kids, Time for Kids, and the regular Time Magazine.  What I love about this is the kids have been referring to it while on their text features hunt at literacy stations.  I love anchor charts for this very reason and it’s even better when the kids remember to refer to it on their own!

Some Geometry Ideas – 2.G.2

Common Core, Math January 16, 2014

Well I had this great post about everything we did the first week back and then the internet went down, it didn’t save, and I lost it.  I was so frustrated the other day that I’m not posting some of those neat activities until now.  I will do better with  my resolution about blogging, but it’ll take a bit to get back into things after the craziness of trying to get back into school mode.

Last week we worked on the Geometry standard – 2.G.2 – where students have to partition/divide rectangles into smaller shapes.

The kids loved the introductory lesson.  I got a packet from The Common Core Creations on TPT called 2.G.2 Activity Pack.   I highly recommend her packet.  On the first day of teaching this standard we did the first lesson called “Cover Up.” Students had a large size rectangle and square and had to cover it up.  Now, the fun part of this and the part all the kids love and will remember is we didn’t use tiles, we used Cheeze-It’s like the packet suggested.  Anytime you give the kids food to work with engagement always seems to occur.  Here are a few pictures of this activity…

 
 
Then, we made a new Geometry vocab book. In this book, we wrote the definitions and drew pictures/examples for the words – row, column, equal, partition, and divide.

Then, later in the week, we did another great activity.  I got this activity from K-5 Teaching Resources (a great website with lots of math lesson ideas and games).  There were 25 different rectangles/squares and I labeled each with a different letter for tracking purposes.  Then, I made my own recording sheet where students could record their results.  Students then picked a rectangle and filled it with tiles.  After filling it, they wrote down the number of rows, columns, and how many tiles total filled their shape.  They had a great time with this activity!

 
 
Hope everyone is having a great week so far! Only 2 more days until a long weekend!

Skip Counting Activities and Stations

Anchor Charts, Common Core, Math, Math Stations, TPT November 25, 2013

We’ve spent the past week in my second grade class working on 2.NBT.2.  They are doing a great job skip counting and below are the activities and stations we did to practice.

To introduce skip counting, we spent time with counting collections.  I used pom pom balls, snap cubes, unifix cubes, highlighters, popsicle sticks, straws, etc.  Each item had a different number and was given to the partnership on purpose – to help with differentiation.  Higher kids had numbers in the hundreds – lower kids had numbers in the 40s-80s.  The first direction was just to count and tell me how many the had.  I stopped them about halfway through and we talked about how they were counting.  Most weren’t organizing the items and most were counting by ones, so we discussed was this a good way or is there a better strategy?  I had two groups who had already figured out a strategy.  One group was counting by 10s and another by 20s.  So, we tried this with an example and decided skip counting was easier and it was easier if you grouped them. We went back to the counting collections and now counted while putting them into groups of 2’s, 5’s. and 10’s.

Next, we worked on a skip counting chart to help us.  We colored all of the numbers that were by 2’s yellow, circled all of the numbers by 5’s in orange, and underlined the 10’s in green.  The kids did a great job with this and then had a resource to use throughout the week (especially with the Skip Counting Task Cards (more info on this below)).

 
After making our own skip counting resource, we worked together to create a Skip Counting Anchor Chart.
 
Throughout the week, I introduced the activities below and then on the last day we used each activity at a station.
 
Station #1 –  Skip Counting Task Cards. I created these and have them in my TPT store here.  We used these whole group first and then they were put into a station.  This provides students with multiple chances to practice counting from and to different numbers.  It also goes up to 1,000 and has a few harder cards to provide differentiation.
 
 
Station #2 – School Bus Bump – I found this on TPT here at Lory Even’s store. The kids love bump and now they can play it while practicing skip counting by 10’s.

 
Station #3 – Ordering the Numbers – I found a ton of great skip counting resources on TPT.  Here is a sports one to practice skip counting by ordering the numbers.  This one is from a Series of First Grade Event’s store, which you can access here.

Station #4 – Skip Counting Puzzles.  The kids loved putting these together. I found some cute Home on the Range ones in Haley O’Connor’s store here.

 
Station #5 – Counting Collections – More counting practice with manipulatives – they were told to practice counting the items while grouping them in 2’s, 5’s, and 10’s.

 
 
Thanks for checking out my skip counting ideas. Be sure to check out my Skip Counting Task Cards in my TPT store.

Place Value – 2.NBT.1

Common Core, Math, Math Stations, TPT November 17, 2013

Last week, we studied place value specifically the standard 2.NBT.1.  I found a ton of great games and ideas on TPT and even created a few to help my kiddos out.

To start off, we made an anchor chart with some place value examples and things to remember. 

 
Then, after a 4 day study and introduction to the different activities below, we had place value stations on the fifth day. The kiddos loved it!
 
Station #1 – Show Me the Number – this is an activity I created and can be found on my TPT store, here.  This activity offers chances for kids to practice working with 2 digit and 3 digit numbers.  Students can build the numbers using base 10 blocks, draw a place value model, write the number in word form, expanded form, etc.  This provides students with a chance to practice working with multiple numbers.

 
Station #2 – Write the Room – Place Value.  Students got to get some movement in and find the different values of the numbers around the room. I found this on TPT at Shuna Pocket Full of Kinder’s Store – this activity is called Place Value Rock.

 
Station #3 – While this picture is upside down, the station was still too great to not share.  This game was called “Mystery Number” and can be found in Love to Learn’s TPT store, here.

 
 
Station #4 – Roll It, Make It, Expand It can be found at Rebecca Anderton’s TPT store, here.  Great chance for students to practice writing the number, modeling it, and expanding it.

 
Station #5- Digit Game – This is a game from our Everyday Math Unit. Students play with a partner and each turn over two cards.  With the 2 cards they have, they need to make the largest number possibly (for example, 28 or 82 – they’d choose 82). The student with the larger number wins.  You can also differentiate this game by having students flip over 3 cards so they need to make the largest 3 digit number.

 
Station #6 – Miss V – Students were put into groups based upon levels. When students met with me, we worked on place value skills that they needed practice on or started to challenge with expanded notation.
 
 
Thanks for checking out my place value ideas.  Be sure to check out – Show Me the Number in my TPT Store.
 
 

Learning about Settings

Anchor Charts, Common Core, Literary Elements, Reading, Thinking Maps November 14, 2013

We’ve continued our study of Common Core Standard 2.RL.1 and have moved on to focusing on the where question – the setting.  For setting, I found some great picture books that have a very descriptive and easy to identify setting to start with.  I’m teaching mainly ELL students so I didn’t want to confuse them with too many settings.  Even though the setting was semi-easy to identify I still wanted my kids to use text evidence to back up their setting choice.  To show text evidence, I used a brace map (thinking maps) and then also had students write a sentence response. 

The first story – Library Mouse we read whole group and discussed the setting and evidence together.

The second story – Gingerbread Cowboy – we read whole group, discussed, and completed a class brace map together.

The third story we used was Owl Moon.  To scaffold, we read the story and discussed whole group. Then, the students helped me fill out the brace map.  After filling out the brace map together, students copied the brace map and then had to fill in parts of the sentence on their own.
 


For the last story, for now, I used The Tickly Octopus. Now, I thought this would be a good one to see what kids could do independently on their own, but they struggled a bit.  I’m not sure if it was because of being ELL or just not having a lot of background knowledge, but kids had a hard time saying the setting was the ocean or the sea and they had difficulty coming up with evidence – fish, water, sand, octopus, coral, etc.  But, we move forward and will come back to setting again to re-teach as necessary. Below are a few samples of student work and the chart we filled out after they completed their student work.

 
Stay tuned for some plot ideas coming up in the next few days!