With Great Risk Comes Great Rewards

What a great day I had! Today was my formal observation and boy have I been panicking!! We had a choice this year to pick 6 informal observations OR 1 formal observation with 3 informal observations. I opted for the 1formal/3 informal because I really had no idea what the administration was looking for. I figured by doing the 1 formal observation I'd be able to meet with one of my administrators and really get a good idea of what they are looking for. Well it worked!!!

First I met with one of my Assistant Principals and discussed his expectations for me for teaching math to my kinders. To my great surprise and delight I was given the go ahead to take my math teaching to a whole new level. I was allowed to do a center based approach to math using the teaching point from the book but not actually using all of the workbook pages! WAHOOO!!! Next I handed in an outline of my proposed plan. I handed that in on a Friday and got it back at the end of the day with 2 pages of suggestions and ideas. Now most people might have seen all of those notes and gone a little looney. Not me! I was excited to see all those notes because they were there to help me become a better teacher, NOT to put me down. Let me back up and explain that before my AP handed me my lesson plan back with all his notes he made it VERY clear that he added suggestions and things that he has seen in other classes that he liked.

Here are some of the things that he wrote down:

• Safe environment
• Clear directions
• High expectations
• Accountability in each center

Clearly some of these things are not things that can been seen in a written lesson plan. With my two pages of suggestions I was given an extra week to get my act together for my observation.... which I was truly grateful for since the day I was originally supposed to be observed I was feeling quite under the weather!

I made sure that 4 of the 6 centers had some form of accountability. The other two were self-checking centers. I made sure my routines were down pretty good and I made sure I had a clear directions.

Well, right after lunch my AP came in for my observation. I won't lie... my knees were shaking and I was a bit nervous. I had such a rough/bad/terrible/rotten difficult year last year with my administration that I wasn't sure how today was going to go. BUT in the end it went awesome!!

Here are some of they key components that I feel really helped make my lesson rock. We started with our normal calendar routine and the moved on to the game Mingle. I cannot take credit for this awesome game, one of my fellow bloggers (sorry I forget which one of you lovely ladies it was) posted this awesome video not too long ago and I KNEW I could use it to help children count and learn their basic numbers. So to whomever shared this video on Facebook THANK YOU!!! You totally rock because my AP LOVED this game. He loved it so much that while we were playing he called the other AP in our building to come down and check out what we were doing!! I was super excited about that!

I also had some awesome centers that were from some other awesome bloggers.

• I used Mrs. Hoffer's Spot's Mega Sort Bundle {Numbers 1-10, 10-20, and Letters} for my cut and paste center. The students only had to complete the page that matched the number 9 since that was the number we were working on. This activity was great because I had a tangible product that I could see if the students understood the various ways to show 9!
• I used The Moffatt Girls' Fall Math and Literacy Packet (Kindergarten) for another center. I used the fall leaves ten frame page. Which was perfect because the students needed practice writing the numbers using ten frames. 
• I made a center with drawing and writing each number in various ways. I made this center based on Crystal over at Kreative in Kinder's Zero the Hero Classroom Counting Fun!
• The last item I used from another great blogger, Abby at The Inspired Apple, is Babbling Abby's Kindergarten RTI: Number Sense #0-20 This packet I used in three different centers!! SCORE! 
• I printed and made binders with the majority of the pages in this packet for the numbers 0 to 9 since that's all we are up to right now. I will add the other numbers are we get to them. I use these binders for my RTI groups.
• I printed the number writing pages for the numbers 0-9, put them back to back in sheet protectors and used binder rings to hold them together. The children used dry erase markers to practice writing the numbers.
• I printed and cut apart the number "puzzles" pages and the students sorted the pieces after they finished the ten frame fall leaf page from the Moffatt Girls!

All in all the centers and lesson went AMAZING!!! I saw my AP at the end of the day and we will formally sit down on Friday and discuss it BUT he said he had a few suggestions but was proud of me and thought it was awesome!

I want to give one last shout out and thank you to all the wonderful bloggers and TpT teachers whose products helped me do an amazing job today!!! I hope everyone else's day went as awesome as mine did!

Collecting and Organizing

We started our second and final Math In The City unit this past week. In my school this unit is typically held for the first graders but our math coach encouraged us to modify it and give it a whirl. I was really excited to try this new unit. I like the Math In The City units. I like that the kids learn through exploration and that it isn't a teacher direct lesson. 

Anyway after reading over the plans I had to find a way to organize 12 bags of stuff in such a way that the items wouldn't get mixed up. Did you ever have one of those DUH type moments where something so simple hits you right in the head and you wonder why you never thought of it before? Well for the past few years now we have been using Math Investigations one of the centers that's comes up frequently is inventory bags. This center drives me nuts! We use brown paper bags and put items in the bags and without fail by the time the first group is done with the center all the bags are mixed up and the centers is a complete mess! I can safely says I hated doing inventory bags. Well the other day I had my AHA/DUH moments and I couldn't believe I hadn't thought of the idea sooner. I went into my supply closet and pulled out gallon sized baggies and a permanent marker. I then thought of 12 different items, one item for each bag. Here are the items I chose:

1. Index cards
2. Pencils (not sharpened)
3. Black pens
4. Blue pens
5. Binder clips (large ones)
6. Binder rings
7. Large paper clips
8. Snap cubes
9. Popsicle sticks
10. Small glue sticks
11. Pencil top erasers
12. Gh

On each bag I wrote the name of the item that was in the bag. Then I made an organization sheet for them to use. It had two columns. The first column listed the name of the item and the second column said Amount. This was the simplest fix to inventory bags and yet it took me years to think if it. The kids did and amazing job with the bags - we only lost two Popsicle sticks over the course of two days!

On the first day the kids were divided into partnerships and each group got one bag. They had to work together to count the items in their bag and record it on their sheet. The best part - my students who struggle with reading could match the word on the Baggie with the word in their paper and fill in the sheet without any support! I let the kids get up and swap bags with one another on their own, which between you and me I thought was going to be a complete mess and what have you, but yet again my kiddies surprised me. They shared and took turns without any problems. They did a really great job with this activity. I did find that they needed extra time for this so we ended up doing it over two days but they had fun and were enjoying it so it worked out perfect. I had my fast finishers help the groups that were workings slower by organizing and getting the bags they needed. So the slower groups didn't waste time walking around to get the supplies they needed. Oh I should add in that when I made the baggies I picked specific numbers for each item. With 12 bags of items I focused in the teen numbers and then threw in three bags that were whole numbers, 20, 30, 40. I printed an extra copy of the student recording sheet I made and I wrote down exactly how many of each item was supposed to be in each bag. This was very helpful because as I circulated I could quickly see if any group counted incorrectly and work with them.

The next lesson was a bit different. I again made a sheet but this one had four columns: item (which I had filled in), total amount, how many bundles if ten, how many singles. This part of the lesson worked on getting the students to think about making groups of ten to organize their inventory and count it. I have to say almost all of my kiddies did a great job with this activity. I had a few kids struggle with it but most of them got it. They enjoyed counting the objects and then I showed them that since we can't physically bundle some of the objects we could make piles of ten.

I'm really enjoying this unit. I think it's working on their counting skills and organizing skills. I think I would consider trying this unit in the fall. Not necessarily the counting out and making piles of ten but the simple idea of counting the objects and recording them! I know I will be using baggies and an organization sheet for inventory bags in the fall! Such a quick and simple fix I can't believe I didn't think of it sooner!!!!!!


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