Tuesday, September 24, 2013

Two digit addition in kindergarten? Well, yes!

What do you do when you have 10 kids in your kindergarten class that have mastered addition and subtraction facts to 18 and yet some students have never seen a plus or minus sign and know limited numbers? Well, you differentiate! However, being 28 places at once is not easy. I still need to teach the basics of number concept to 10 too.

I made a video for these students that need to start 2 digit addition. I needed to make sure they understand the concept place value first. Then I can go from there by teaching them to add 2 two-digit numbers and eventually regrouping.

Here is the video. Nothing fancy and easy to make. I referenced the straws that we use in our calendar math as well to tie in the "old" piece with the "new"piece. This is made with an ipevo camera and quicktime. Don't be intimidated. They are super easy and fun to make and you can use them year after year.


Sunday, September 15, 2013

Introduction to taking notes in kindergarten-using text evidence

Today when I read the nonfiction text from the FOSS Plants kit, I had a set of students model how to take notes during a read aloud. This text was about 5 pages long about what plants need to survive. On each page I had one student draw. I gave some guidance. We did talk about what we should put on each page after this educreations recording.

Model taking notes on educreations

Then I had the students all get their iPads and I reread it while they drew on their iPad on the rug.

Saturday, September 7, 2013

Students teaching tally marks

As promised, I am working on students creating more and not working on so many learning apps.
On the 8th day of school with only two days of tally mark instruction and practice, the students created their own videos (using Educreations) teaching their friends about tally marks.

Student A teaching tally marks

Instruction began with a pre assessment about tally marks. Only one child really demonstrated that they had any previous background with tally marks. There was a mini-lesson about tally marks. Students worked on educreations (used as slates) to make tally mark that was stated by the teacher. On the second day of instruction, students played a dice roll tally game (EM). Homework on the second day was to teach your parents how to do tally marks with a reminder to use their words and the number 1-10 listed on a page. All students brought the page back with the correct tally marks listed on the page. On the third day, the created these videos. This homework was handed out as a reference for the students. I do not believe students used it though (or I didn't see any of them use it).

This is also a great opportunity for me to assess their knowledge of tally marks.

For student A--this child wrote 3 as a reversal and 4 and 9 incorrectly. The student incorrectly wrote 10 tally marks wrong. I can see how they made their mistakes through the video. If it was a pencil-paper task, I know that it is just incorrect but not what they did and how they counted the tally marks.
I am also sending the links to their parents.

Student B teaching tally marks

For student B--this child wrote no corresponding numbers, just tally marks. It is very jumbled but you can clearly see that he is making the tally marks correctly and even has to redo 6 as he makes 6 marks and forgets to cross the 5 and then fixes it. Obviously, we can work on the "jumbled" tally marks but he clearly understands how to make tally marks to 10.

Student C teaching tally marks

For student C--one can quickly see the child's error for numbers 6-9. This is a short mini lesson to fix. Interestingly, this is the one child that has previous knowledge of tally marks. Did my mini lesson give him this misunderstanding?

Encourage Reading - Real World Commitment

Just found a great resource from one of my student's parents (who is a librarian!). Here is the link:
We Give Books. This is an organization that gives books to children all over the world. They have free books that can be read online. No cost. Anyone with a device can read these books and get books into the hands of children. Every time you read a book online, they donate books to children. They have a cause each season and this seas is JumpStart.


I was thinking of incorporating this website with Real World Commitment for my students. How can they help make a difference?

I am interested if anyone else has integrated real world problems into their classroom.


Monday, September 2, 2013

New School Year--New Common Core Standards--New Planning

After taking a hiatus, I am back and ready to blog in full force. I attended some great iPad conferences and presented at some too this summer and am excited about the new school year. I am planning on blogging with my students full force. I will join Twitter Tuesdays at my school as we tweet with other classrooms. I am also committing to have my students do more creationary apps, like iMovie and Book Creator. Stay tuned as I dive in to these new exciting adventures.

This weekend I spent much of the sunny days inside and working on planning for the new school year. I have two residents (like student teachers) this year which I will take with me on my teaching journey for the year. They were probably enjoying the sunny weather. With all this planning going on, I didn't want them to miss out on my planning. Therefore, I actually thought out loud and recorded it for them and my colleagues.

I am teaching a new curriculum as my kindergartners embark on an accelerated curriculum. Here is my planning of my first quarter of social studies. It is integrated with literacy. The one thing I will change is the progression from family to school community to city community. I am not going to do city but rather neighborhood. This will be more powerful for my kindergarten students and offer rich opportunity for students to share with their classmates where they live. The students do not live in school boundaries.

Social Studies Unit Plan-Family and Communities

Because I am changing city to neighborhood, one of the family projects is for students to take a walk with their families in their neighborhood taking pictures of different stores or businesses. They will email me the pictures or print them out and bring them to school. Students will determine the neighborhood's needs and wants. They will report this information and then share out with the class.

I was able to order a free map of the neighborhoods by a local real estate agent so we can reference their neighborhoods on a map.

I am excited about this plan and hope to increase the project based learning in my classroom. Stay tuned for more.