Math Monday - Math Game Resource

Welcome and thank you for stopping by Math Monday, I hope you will consider joining the conversation.

Math Games for Independent Practice by Jamee Petersen is a great new resource from 2013.  Jamee is a consultant for Math Solutions and created this resource after working with teachers and seeing them being overwhelmed with the thought of pulling together games to use during math workshop.  You have to love Jamee for taking action to make our work easier!

If you are familiar with using math games during math workshop or for a Family Math program you will find some familiar games.  What I love about Jamee's collection is the additional insight for using these games with our students.  Each game is explained with four components; the connection, the teaching, active engagement, and the link.  This organization puts your math teaching into a workshop format and there is lots of guidance here for you to be successful.   Each game also has teaching tips, differentiating your instruction tips, a workshop summary, and tips for assessments related to the game.  There are plenty of new games too for those already using math games.

Jamee makes finding games a snap based on your needs.  There is an index organized alphabetically with grade level indication, by grade level and standards, and then by different materials used.  I easily found a game for addition that involved strategy and addends to 25, last week.

I've spent the first half of the year pulling 15 games from various resources and feel lucky to have this resource to use for a bit.  Everything is in one place and reproducibles are included in the back.  

Leave your link within a comment and 
don't forget to check out other blogs to see what they are thinking mathematically!

To help build our community and support other bloggers, 

it would be nice for you comment on at least three other blogs before you. 

Also, if you tweet about your Math Monday post, don't forget to use #mathmonday!

New to Me - Big Plans by Bob Shea and Lane Smith

My second grade-reading journey is very exciting because I am continuously discovering new books to me.  

The other morning my friend @JoEllenMcCarthy tweeted some suggestions of picture books for the beginning of a new year.  Many of the titles I didn't know.  I ran to school and our school library didn't have them so I favorited her tweet and thought I will have to explore these later and next year I would think through goal setting, revisiting our thinking about learning, and/or resolutions with more thought.  Then later that evening @missmac100 shared a sheet she used with her students about one goal and three learning interests.  I loved her sheet because it combined goals and interests.  She also had the students think about an action they could take to pursue their interest.  I've borrowed her idea and reviewed @JoEllenMcCarthy's selection of books but didn't see one that was just right for this.  Then I used google and discovered Big Plans by Bob Shea and Lane Smith.  

I'm not surprised that Big Plans is filled with humorous illustrations and lots of opportunities to read the story with inflection.  A little boy begins brainstorming plans, goals for life and is very excited to share his ideas.  He shouts them at the top of his lungs.  He has large ambitions.  He has a bird for a side kick who is a good follower and provides helpful feedback.  What I like about this book is the willingness of this little boy to dream big and make plans for huge ideas.  I found myself needing to read this book twice to follow the story line with all the dialogue and would recommend reading it twice before talking about generating goals with your students.

I had taken a winter break from Twitter and thought it was a bit nice but the power of our PLN for ideas and fostering our thinking can't be ignored.  

Slice of Life - Dashing About for Reading

It's a snow day and how will I start my day?  It's cold and chilly.  The house is quiet and I'm 60% through a book on my kindle.  I realize a cup of warm tea, a half made bed, and my kindle are calling my name.  

I "sneak" downstairs because I don't want the dogs to know I'm awake.  Realizing they can both see me while I make my cup of tea but I make NO eye contact with either of them.  I dash back upstairs, make my bed and crawl in on my side with propped pillows just right for a cozy reading spot.  

I begin reading in on my kindle and not too long into my reading the 15% battery power message lights up.  Bummer.  My cord isn't long enough to recharge and stay in this little cozy spot I've created.  I really don't want to change spots so I think about just reading until it runs out and then start my day with something else.  Then I begin brainstorming and pretty quickly realize I need an extension cord and my reading plans can continue.  

I leap out of bed.  I quickly dash down two flights of stairs to the basement.  I quickly pick up my green extension cord.  I quickly dash back up two flights of stairs and try out the extension cord idea.  All the while hoping my dashing about will go unnoticed by two dogs who can still see me.  Perfect!  I was able to stay in that cozy reading spot and finish reading my book and that is how I started my day.

Thank you to Two Writing Teachers for fostering this writing community.

Slice of Life - Dashing About for Reading

It's a snow day and how will I start my day?  It's cold and chilly.  The house is quiet and I'm 60% through a book on my kindle.  I realize a cup of warm tea, a half made bed, and my kindle are calling my name.  

I "sneak" downstairs because I don't want the dogs to know I'm awake.  Realizing they can both see me while I make my cup of tea but I make NO eye contact with either of them.  I dash back upstairs, make my bed and crawl in on my side with propped pillows just right for a cozy reading spot.  

I begin reading in on my kindle and not too long into my reading the 15% battery power message lights up.  Bummer.  My cord isn't long enough to recharge and stay in this little cozy spot I've created.  I really don't want to change spots so I think about just reading until it runs out and then start my day with something else.  Then I begin brainstorming and pretty quickly realize I need an extension cord and my reading plans can continue.  

I leap out of bed.  I quickly dash down two flights of stairs to the basement.  I quickly pick up my green extension cord.  I quickly dash back up two flights of stairs and try out the extension cord idea.  All the while hoping my dashing about will go unnoticed by two dogs who can still see me.  Perfect!  I was able to stay in that cozy reading spot and finish reading my book and that is how I started my day.

Thank you to Two Writing Teachers for fostering this writing community.

Math Monday - Math Workshop, First Day Back

Welcome and thank you for stopping by Math Monday, I hope you will consider joining the conversation.

Today ends our winter break and we return to the classroom.  I know how exciting it will be to have our classroom community together again.  I know we will need time to reconnect with each other.  I know we will need time to remember routines and adjust to a full day of learning.  Let's be honest - holidays, winter break and being at home does not have the same demands of living together with twenty plus friends.  

Over the past two decades, I've learned that a new year and a fresh start can be very exciting for me.   I know my students can do more but have learned that when I over plan or throw new learning at any pace on the first day back from an extended vacation, our classroom community can get run down and tired before lunch time.  

I realized this post would of been more helpful last week but I wasn't thinking about today last week.  So, how am I starting our math learning in 2015?  The students are going to meet with their new math learning partner.  They are going to share the answers to three questions with them.

1.  What do you enjoy or like about math?

2.  Is there anything you don't like about math?

3.  What's one thing you think is important for math partners to do to be successful?

Then they are going to have the opportunity to select and revisit any of the dozen math games we played the first half of the school year together.  I think revisiting something they know together will help create a safety net for them to take risks with each other.  I also want to foster conversations between math learning partners while remembering routines and content we have previously worked on.  I recently saw this information about play at our local art museum and think it's important in our classrooms, in any discipline.

Leave your link within a comment and 
don't forget to check out other blogs to see what they are thinking mathematically!

To help build our community and support other bloggers, 

it would be nice for you comment on at least three other blogs before you. 

Also, if you tweet about your Math Monday post, don't forget to use #mathmonday!

Nourish - One Little Word 2015

Happy New Year 2015, better late than never and I wanted to share with you my One Little Word for 2015.  Instead of creating a New Years Resolution and always wanting to have many I've chosen to participate in the One Little Word project and ideas from scrapbooker/storyteller Ali Edwards.  If you haven't read anything by Ali, I highly recommend you stop by her blog.  The past seven years I have chosen enjoy, aware, nuture, discover, change, create, and embrace. 

This year before winter break, I wrote a Slice of Life title - It's dead, but wait....!  I didn't realize that was the beginning of my One Little Word selection journey.  With some nurturing and some nourishment that thought for dead, plant is making a great comeback.  Green shoots keep popping up.  Green shoots keep growing taller and I'm anticipating some buds might appear soon.  Then I went succulent plant shopping with my oldest.  She's all giddy about succulent plants and it was so fun watching her ooo and ahhh over these cute little plants.  I walked around the indoor plant area of this store and I realized I use to have more plants in my home.  I have lots of live plants in my classroom.  I then began to wonder if I have been ignoring some things in my home and my life.

These two recent plant events led me to dictionary.com with lots of thinking pondering and thinking over nurture and nourish.  I purposefully didn't want to pick nurture because the definition involves a strong message about teaching.  My life needs to be more than teaching in my home and out of my home.  I also didn't realize I had even picked nurture previously until I started researching my blog for this post.  I think that sends a strong message that nurture didn't work back then very well if I can't even remember selecting it.

If you follow me on Instagram you will see a video of my first documentation with nourish and how I've gotten to know my word for the year.  Parts two and three of the definition really solidified this word choice for me this year - to cherish, foster, keep alive; to strengthen, build up or promote.  I discovered lots of words in the thesaurus but three words made my heart flutter; cultivate, sustain, and encourage.  I think nourish is an invitation for many areas of my life; writing, reading, creating, playing, relationships, and health.  In my previous six years of choosing One Little Word, relationships never came up within my selection process.  I need to do some exploring, mending, and adjusting with relationships and myself.  I hope nourish will help me continue to find balance, let go, be present, and do things I enjoy.  

I've kept my journey with my One Little Word quite private during the year but hope to write about it monthly.  I'm always inspired by Maria's monthly updates.  I was also listening to two podcasts at the gym this week from the Elise Gets Crafty show and found some inspiration to keep nourish present in my life.  Crystal Moody was a guest and shared her goal of sketching all last year and how posting and sharing her sketches on Instagram was encouraging and motivating.  So, I hope to share ways I keep nourish alive with the hashtag #olwnourish and I think it will be fun to see the different areas in my life nourish is thriving.  

Nourish - One Little Word 2015

Happy New Year 2015, better late than never and I wanted to share with you my One Little Word for 2015.  Instead of creating a New Years Resolution and always wanting to have many I've chosen to participate in the One Little Word project and ideas from scrapbooker/storyteller Ali Edwards.  If you haven't read anything by Ali, I highly recommend you stop by her blog.  The past seven years I have chosen enjoy, aware, nuture, discover, change, create, and embrace. 

This year before winter break, I wrote a Slice of Life title - It's dead, but wait....!  I didn't realize that was the beginning of my One Little Word selection journey.  With some nurturing and some nourishment that thought for dead, plant is making a great comeback.  Green shoots keep popping up.  Green shoots keep growing taller and I'm anticipating some buds might appear soon.  Then I went succulent plant shopping with my oldest.  She's all giddy about succulent plants and it was so fun watching her ooo and ahhh over these cute little plants.  I walked around the indoor plant area of this store and I realized I use to have more plants in my home.  I have lots of live plants in my classroom.  I then began to wonder if I have been ignoring some things in my home and my life.

These two recent plant events led me to dictionary.com with lots of thinking pondering and thinking over nurture and nourish.  I purposefully didn't want to pick nurture because the definition involves a strong message about teaching.  My life needs to be more than teaching in my home and out of my home.  I also didn't realize I had even picked nurture previously until I started researching my blog for this post.  I think that sends a strong message that nurture didn't work back then very well if I can't even remember selecting it.

If you follow me on Instagram you will see a video of my first documentation with nourish and how I've gotten to know my word for the year.  Parts two and three of the definition really solidified this word choice for me this year - to cherish, foster, keep alive; to strengthen, build up or promote.  I discovered lots of words in the thesaurus but three words made my heart flutter; cultivate, sustain, and encourage.  I think nourish is an invitation for many areas of my life; writing, reading, creating, playing, relationships, and health.  In my previous six years of choosing One Little Word, relationships never came up within my selection process.  I need to do some exploring, mending, and adjusting with relationships and myself.  I hope nourish will help me continue to find balance, let go, be present, and do things I enjoy.  

I've kept my journey with my One Little Word quite private during the year but hope to write about it monthly.  I'm always inspired by Maria's monthly updates.  I was also listening to two podcasts at the gym this week from the Elise Gets Crafty show and found some inspiration to keep nourish present in my life.  Crystal Moody was a guest and shared her goal of sketching all last year and how posting and sharing her sketches on Instagram was encouraging and motivating.  So, I hope to share ways I keep nourish alive with the hashtag #olwnourish and I think it will be fun to see the different areas in my life nourish is thriving.