I'm Back!!! Place Value, Roles, and an Easy Hallway Display

Okay bloggy friends, I am finally back! I apologize for the lack of posts this past month. With school starting and all the craziness that goes along with it (you know what I'm talking about!), I've had a hard time keeping up with everything. Now that we're into somewhat of a routine, things are slowly getting back to normal.

Let me start by saying that I have the MOST wonderful group of kids this year! I am so excited to be teaching these sweeties. Every day they make me smile... :) It's going to be a great year!

The past couple of weeks have been challenging since switching to the new Common Core standards in Math. Our district is currently using the Everyday Math program which doesn't align very well with the new standards. My team decided to meet after school yesterday and spend some time mapping out the year. Whew... what a task! Now that we have a long term plan, though, I feel so much better about where we're going. I'm even excited about it! With so many fewer standards, we are able to really go in depth with each skill. To start the year, we decided to start with teaching all about place value. This is such a foundational skill for all of the other skills in math. The past couple of weeks, we've been teaching about the different places (ones, tens, hundreds), expanded form, number form, and word form. I've been using lots of games to help reinforce what we're learning about. The kids have LOVED these games so far! Below is a free copy of the Race to 100 game that I created. This game helps the kids learn how to exchange ten cubes for a long and 10 longs for a flat. Click on the picture below to grab yours!

Last week, we also learned about the different roles that we all have in the community. Whether it be a student, friend, brother, girl scout, dancer, church member, etc- we all have different roles. To help them understand this idea, we made "Community Roles People" (I don't have a very creative name for this!) Each student got 3 blank outlines of a person (only one had a head- this one went on the bottom). They had to color the face and hair to look like themselves and then write one role that they have on each sheet. When coloring, they were supposed to decorate their clothes to match the role. (Example: If they wrote about being a girl scout, they drew a girl scout vest on their person.) After they were finished, I staped all three parts together. These turned out really cute. Here are some pictures to show you what they looked like:



"I am a dancer. It makes me flexible." (check out those ballet shoes!)

"I am a friend. My friend is Grace."

"I am a student. I go to school."

 These turned out so cute and look great in the hallway hanging up! Speaking of hallways displays, I decided to simplify the display that I use this year by using border, laminated sheets of paper, and mini clothespines. Here is a picture of the hallway display outside my classroom:

It is so easy because you can just change out the students' work by clipping and unclipping the clothespins. Name tags let you know whose work is whose and the laminated black paper gives it a nice background. This was super simple!

Well I hope everyone is off to a great start to the school year. TGTIF (Thank goodness tomorrow is Friday!)