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!

Bunk Beds - Early Number Sense

What a great day back at work. We lost most of our February break due to Hurricane Sandy - amazing how 4 months later we are still feeling the effects of that super storm. (Not to mention how my family and friends are still without homes and other necessities.... but that's a story for another time!)

Anyway, we had a lovely 4 day weekend and I SO needed it. I really needed to recharge my batteries and reset myself and the 4 days off did the trick. I loved spending my free time with my little peanut, I cannot believe how big she is getting. We went on play-dates, dinner dates and even on a ride on a 100 year old carousel that I used to ride as a kid. It was an amazing long weekend and I am very grateful for the extra two days off.

Since it was only 2 extra days off my kiddies did a pretty good job transitioning back into the swing of things and we really had a great day. One of my current favorite parts of my day is our math period. We are approaching the 100th day of school and my kids are so excited about it. We have spent the whole year building our hundreds chart and showing the number of days in school in various ways. The anticipation of what the 100th day will bring is exciting to them, I just hope I can live up to their expectations.

Aside from looking forward to the 100th day of school we started a new math unit last week. On average we are using Investigations in Number, Data, and Space ©2012 published by Pearson. I find it to be a very intriguing program. It's a center based hands on approach to math that I find both challenging and rewarding all in one. To help keep the kids engaged we spend two weeks in the middle of the year doing a Math in the City unit called Bunk Beds and Apple Boxes. Why do I love this unit so much? Because it's all about exploration. I am a firm believer that young children do the best learning when they are left to explore, experiment, and figure things out on their own - of course all of this is happening with a watchful eye from a teacher who is there to guide and nurture them.

So let me tell you what we have done so far:

Day 1 - I read the provided book which sets the stage for the first few Bunk Beds lessons. Through this story and an arithmetic rack the children are introduced to the idea of equivalent facts. Children get to go to their seats and explore this idea with manipulatives. Now the program suggests that the kids use math racks with partners but I have found it much more useful for the kids to use counting bears.

Day 2 - The children continue to explore the idea of how to make equivalent number sentences all equaling a special number. After this lesson we had a math congress to discuss our thinking. The kids explained and shared what they learned and we charted all the ways to make equivalent number sentences for our special number.

Day 3 (today) - I introduced the idea of a number story. Since we had an extended weekend I reviewed what we did last week and then introduced the idea of number stories. The kids had a blast using counting bears and trying to write their own stories. Typically we don't script for our kids and encourage them to write the best they could but I was curious what they could do and knew that many of my kids could verbalize their stories better than writing them so I did script a few of them.

I remembered to take some pictures today (YAY!) so here is what my kids did today:

 This student has a great understanding of making a number sentence and picture to match but the idea of a number story was very difficult to her. Even when I scripted for her she struggled to understand that she had to write a story to match her picture.

Here you can see how this student is using the counting bears to help her understand the concept.

This student was also able to use the counting bears correctly to make a number sentence.

This is one of my more advanced students. When I saw that she too struggled with the idea of writing a number story I realized I did not do a good job explaining how to write a number story. I think I was so excited to get the kids working and to see what they could come up with that I didn't spend enough to explaining and giving directions with examples. 

So I took a step back and explained a number story in more simpler terms:

How many bears on the top? How many bears on the bottom? How many all together?

This is what my students came up with after a better explanation:

I have to say I was super proud of my kids (and myself for realizing my "failure" and going back and fixing it ASAP!). ALL of my kids were able to write a number sentence correctly and used only 8 bears. They really did a great job with that. The majority of my kids were also able to write a word problem (once I explained it better). 

I really have to say this unit is one of my favorite units to teach and I'm so excited to see how my kids do with the next few lessons. Have you ever used this math unit? What do you think about it?

*Please note - all of the opinions in this post are my own. I was not asked to write about this program by anyone, I just HAD to share how much I LOVE this program! !