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Educational Resources for Educators

Morning Routines

As a parent and a teacher, I know how important it is to have consistent routines in place to help the day run smoothly. It also adds an element of predictability for students (especially for special needs students who thrive with consistency).It's important to implement your classroom routines on the very first day of school and to be consistent with them for the rest of the year. Of course if a routine isn't working it's okay to change it but make the change with careful consideration. Think ... Read the Post

Community Helper Celebration and End of the Year Awards

Every year, I hold an awards celebration with my students at the end of the year. I have always done the candy bar awards that you see floating around Pinterest. This year we did our community helpers unit at the end of the year so I decided to combine this unit with our end of the year celebration. I created some community helpers awards and had the students dress up like the award that they were receiving. I didn't tell them in advance that they would get an award but I sent a note ... Read the Post

Materials, Objects, and Everyday Structures

To introduce my students to the concept of different materials (and that materials have different purposes depending on what they are being used for) we began with a hunt around our classroom. I wanted to see if students understood what "materials" meant and also how many different ones they could identify. I was impressed with the list they came up with!To get us thinking more about different types of materials we did an image sorting activity:Then we did a fun little "Mystery ... Read the Post

Rekenreks Are a Great Math Manipulative!

It's got a funny sounding name but it sure is a powerful tool to use in the primary classroom! A Rekenrek (also known as an arithmetic rack) is a tool that was developed to help students subitize numbers (see numbers in groups). Seeing numbers in groups allows students to add and subtract more efficiently rather than counting by ones or counting on. A Rekenrek is a row of beads that are grouped into 2 groups of 5. Typically one group is white and the other red. See the image below:I've ... Read the Post

Google Apps for the Primary Classroom!

We were blessed at my school to be able to trade in our computer lab for chromebooks and ipads! We received 2.5 chromebooks for every computer we turned in! So now I share a class set of chromebooks with 2 other classes as well as 8 ipads.I was also lucky enough to attend a weekend long Google Apps for Education (GAFE) Summit last spring where I learned a lot about how to use these amazing tools with my primary students.The login process can be tedious for first and second graders who are still ... Read the Post

Place Value Puzzles

We've been working on place value this week (and decomposing/composing numbers) using base ten materials.I had various centers set up around the room so that I could work with a small group of students on problem solving.One of the centers was technology based where they played this cute game called Fruit Shoot:I had my students use the easy level for the most part but there were a couple students who were able to do medium.  A set of base ten will appear on the screen with floating fruit ... Read the Post

createdreamexplore Filed Under: Math

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