Measuring Table

I did a measuring activity in a kindergarten class the other day. It was part of the Investigations curriculum, if you're familiar with that. The lovely thing about this program is the marriage of hands-on manipulative play with the transferring and recording into a math journal/portfolio.

Set up:
Students glued title (Longer than, Shorter than) into math journal. Students drew line down center of page.

Activity:
(adapt to your own lessons).....Several specific items were placed on a table (items that are in the clipart I give the students, as drawing and labeling items can be a struggle for young kinders). Students made a tower of 10 cubes as their measuring resource. After they measured their item, they glued in the corresponding clipart picture under the correct heading of their column.

This particular activity needed to be done in small groups so that I could help the students, and so that there were enough items to go around.

Get copy of titles here
Get copy of pictures here

Tens and Ones titles for Math Journals

 

    

Here is a example of students working with place value into their math journal/portfolio.  Students can pick a number, glue it in their portfolio (or copy down given number from board), and then use manipulatives (if so desired) before drawing into their correct columns for place value practice.



                                                                          




















copy of titles here

skip the fill-in-the-blank and encourage more writing!

Often times, it's hard to get away from worksheets. Sometimes schools or districts mandate that you use a certain number/all of given curriculum series to prove "fidelity to the core" (glad I haven't worked at places like that!) or you're not sure how else students could practice the specific concept.

I like to take worksheets and cut parts of it to encourage more writing.......as seen in the pictures below. I put a worksheet on the document camera/overhead to give students sentence frames (or at their table if they need it).

I try to avoid fill in the blank (different from cloze activities which I know are powerful and helpful), as I saw that this was almost never done in England or Australia and students there wrote a LOT more (yes, this is a bit of a generalization). 

 

worksheets source: Harcourt Storytown


Any thoughts on worksheets in the classrooms???

Harcourt series + writing question sentences

Incorporating question sentences with setting pictures from reading series

On the walls.........

Building community

what a terrible picture I took! you can't see the timeline and all of the lovely "artifacts"

Not the prettiest, but England has certain rules about what bulletin boards must contain
(and there's no Lakeshore or Teaching Stuff there!)

Targets must be posted in British classrooms!

Vocab board in ELL kdg classroom
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I LOVE SUBBING IN CLASSROOMS!

Love those IKEA boxes!

Organized Kdg library

Kdg bulletin board for Open House with kid-friendly objectives

Second Grade Library: beautiful

Second Grade Bulletin Board

Third Grade Word Wall

Third Grade Literacy Centers

Compare Numbers.......Math Portfolio/Journal

Comparing numbers.......connects nicely after playing
"Compare" or "War" card game in pairs.

Title for students to glue in portfolios/journals here
Differentiated numbers:
Lower achieving here
Avg here
Higher here

Lower achieving students could also draw objects under numbers if necessary.