Composing and decomposing teen numbers the fun way!

The past two weeks, we have continued working on composing and decomposing numbers. Earlier in the year, we worked on making numbers to 10. Now, we are adding how to make numbers from 10-20.

To do this, we have used double ten frames to show that a "teen" number is just a combination of 10 and some ones.

To give the students practice in composing these numbers, we played a little game.

                                                  

The students were given partners using the random chooser application on our smart board. This is a great way to mix up partners and have children work together who may not ever choose to work together.

Then I used the program to randomly choose a number between 10  and 20.

One partner made the number using unifix cubes on their double

ten frame while their partner wrote the number sentence to represent their number on their dry erase board.

The students took turns making the number using the double ten frames and writing the number sentence to show the number.

Was this a fun way to learn math?! Yes!!

Fun with Rhyming Words

This week in Letterland we have been working on word families. We have looked at -at, -an, and -op. We discussed what makes a word rhyme and how to decide if words rhyme or not. We practiced rhyming words many different ways. Sometimes I would give the students a word and they would have to then generate a word that rhymes with that word. Sometimes we would just compare two words to see if they rhyme. The children learned to recognize these word families so that they don't have to sound them out every time they see them. Every time they see a word ending with -at they know what sound to make.

One fun game that we played was memory. We started out matching the words to pictures to practice reading the words. After a week of this, we made it a little harder by matching words that rhyme. The children turned over two cards and got to keep them if their words or pictures rhymed. It was a really fun way to practice rhyming as well as word and picture recognition.

Another fun game we played on Friday that is pictured is "Tractors, Trains, Airplanes, and Helicopters". We put all of the words that we have been practicing in our pocket chard and the children got to take turns coming up and pointing to words as the children read them. The fun part was that they got to choose how to do it. Tractors went slow and steady down the columns, Trains went at a good pace down the columns, Airplanes went really fast down the columns, and Helicopters went crazy all over the place, pointing to any word in any order. The children had a great time deciding how they wanted to do it and then pointing out words to their classmates.

All of these activities help increase fluency in reading, which is very important as we move on into First Grade!

 

Math Fun: Whole to Part

Over the past two weeks, we have been learning how to compose and decompose numbers. What does this mean you ask? This is how we put numbers together and break apart numbers. How can we make 10? We can use 4 and 6 or we can use 2 and 8. We have also been practicing writing number sentences to represent  the ways that we make numbers.

This is a lot of brand new information all at once, so I decided to give the students a very concrete way to remember how to make numbers by breaking whole numbers down into their parts.

 

We took divided party plates and used the big section for our whole number. I gave the students a number and they had to find the number card to match. Then they had to figure out how they could break it up into two smaller parts. 

It was very interesting to see how their minds were working as they were doing this. Some immediately used the number and zero as their parts, others moved their kix by sharing them equally...one here, one there, etc... until they had two parts. Others just randomly moved some to one part and some to the other. The fun thing about math? ALL of these ways are correct! You don't always have to get to the answer the same way as everyone else in your class; you just have to get there!

 

Here are some ways that the children "made" their numbers. 

 

 

This was a great way for the students to visualize the concepts of whole and part. They were able to see how their number could actually be decomposed into two smaller parts because they were literally moving the items from the whole into the parts. 

100th Day of School...take 2!

 To get us ready for the 100th day of school, we read lots of books about how other classes celebrated the 100th day of school. We learned about different things that different fictional characters did to celebrate this fun day. We read about what Fancy Nancy did for her 100th day of school as well as what Stinky Face did for hers. We also read a book called 100th Day Worries.  In the story, the main character is a girl named Jessica. Jessica's class is making a collection of 100 items to share on the 100th day of school. Jessica is a worrier who worries about everything...especially what to bring for her 100th day project! To build on this story and to practice making text to self connections, each student in our class brought in their very own 100th day collection. In the story, Jessica ends up with several groups of objects because she can't find 100 of one particular thing. We did the same thing ! We have been practicing counting by 10's, so each of our posters had to have 10 groups of 10 items.

Here is what we came up with!

Happy Belated 100th Day!