Skip Counting Activities and Stations

We've spent the past week in my second grade class working on 2.NBT.2.  They are doing a great job skip counting and below are the activities and stations we did to practice.

To introduce skip counting, we spent time with counting collections.  I used pom pom balls, snap cubes, unifix cubes, highlighters, popsicle sticks, straws, etc.  Each item had a different number and was given to the partnership on purpose - to help with differentiation.  Higher kids had numbers in the hundreds - lower kids had numbers in the 40s-80s.  The first direction was just to count and tell me how many the had.  I stopped them about halfway through and we talked about how they were counting.  Most weren't organizing the items and most were counting by ones, so we discussed was this a good way or is there a better strategy?  I had two groups who had already figured out a strategy.  One group was counting by 10s and another by 20s.  So, we tried this with an example and decided skip counting was easier and it was easier if you grouped them. We went back to the counting collections and now counted while putting them into groups of 2's, 5's. and 10's.

Next, we worked on a skip counting chart to help us.  We colored all of the numbers that were by 2's yellow, circled all of the numbers by 5's in orange, and underlined the 10's in green.  The kids did a great job with this and then had a resource to use throughout the week (especially with the Skip Counting Task Cards (more info on this below)).

 

After making our own skip counting resource, we worked together to create a Skip Counting Anchor Chart.

 

Throughout the week, I introduced the activities below and then on the last day we used each activity at a station.

 

Station #1 -  Skip Counting Task Cards. I created these and have them in my TPT store here.  We used these whole group first and then they were put into a station.  This provides students with multiple chances to practice counting from and to different numbers.  It also goes up to 1,000 and has a few harder cards to provide differentiation.

 

 

Station #2 - School Bus Bump - I found this on TPT here at Lory Even's store. The kids love bump and now they can play it while practicing skip counting by 10's.

 

Station #3 - Ordering the Numbers - I found a ton of great skip counting resources on TPT.  Here is a sports one to practice skip counting by ordering the numbers.  This one is from a Series of First Grade Event's store, which you can access here.

Station #4 - Skip Counting Puzzles.  The kids loved putting these together. I found some cute Home on the Range ones in Haley O'Connor's store here.

 

Station #5 - Counting Collections - More counting practice with manipulatives - they were told to practice counting the items while grouping them in 2's, 5's, and 10's.

 

 

Thanks for checking out my skip counting ideas. Be sure to check out my Skip Counting Task Cards in my TPT store.

Five for Friday...well Saturday

I've seen this awesome Five for Friday linky party and been meaning to join it, but I can't seem to get my act together on Fridays.  So, this week instead of Five for Friday....we'll call it Five for Saturday.  I'll try to be more on time next week :-).  Join in on the Linky Party fun with Doodle Bugs Five For Friday.

 

 

Best Homework Response Ever! We asked the kids to write about where they live and give details/facts.  This student wrote, " I live in Las Vegas.  It is the city of sin."  Too funny!

 

So, I'm in a portable at my school and the heating/AC doesn't work at night and it turns on every morning when you walk in...or so I thought.  So, every morning it takes awhile/2 hours to warm up.  Only problem was Friday it just never warmed up.  Apparently the heater is broken and finally by 3:00 it was 66 degrees, but for most of the day we were hovering around 59.  No heat, in a portable, on a rainy day = no fun.  But, we made the best of it wearing our winter coats while we worked.

 

 

Back to the rainy day on Friday in my number 2.  Rainy day =  no recess = cold kids and restless kids.  So, for our indoor recess - we did a Thanksgiving Deskercise video.  I love these videos - great way to get the kids moving all while they're learning facts at the same time.

 

 

The last 2 weeks we've been working our way through 1st Grade is WienerFUL's Turkeys and Thanksgiving packet on TPT.  She has great ideas and lots of great resources for informational text reading and writing and additional Thanksgiving activities.  On Friday, we read the book The Pilgrim's First Thanksgiving and filled out her Thanksgiving tree map and then wrote All About The First Thanksgiving. Check out her awesome packet here...

 

 We also read the book Turkey Trouble this week.  It is about a turkey that doesn't want to be eaten on Thanksgiving so he tries to disguise himself as different animals that won't get eaten.  It's a pretty cute story with a funny ending that my students loved.  After reading it, we then wrote about what we would disguise a turkey as so it wouldn't be eaten.  Their responses were so cute! Some students chose animals - cat, dog, duck, etc and then the few I posted below chose the Hulk, Spiderman, and a ninja.  Great creative writing response to a fun book!

 

 

 

Thanks for checking out my Five for Friday/Saturday.  Be sure to link up here...

 

 

 

 

 

Place Value - 2.NBT.1

Last week, we studied place value specifically the standard 2.NBT.1.  I found a ton of great games and ideas on TPT and even created a few to help my kiddos out.

To start off, we made an anchor chart with some place value examples and things to remember. 

 

Then, after a 4 day study and introduction to the different activities below, we had place value stations on the fifth day. The kiddos loved it!

 

Station #1 - Show Me the Number - this is an activity I created and can be found on my TPT store, here.  This activity offers chances for kids to practice working with 2 digit and 3 digit numbers.  Students can build the numbers using base 10 blocks, draw a place value model, write the number in word form, expanded form, etc.  This provides students with a chance to practice working with multiple numbers.

 

Station #2 - Write the Room - Place Value.  Students got to get some movement in and find the different values of the numbers around the room. I found this on TPT at Shuna Pocket Full of Kinder's Store - this activity is called Place Value Rock.

 

Station #3 - While this picture is upside down, the station was still too great to not share.  This game was called "Mystery Number" and can be found in Love to Learn's TPT store, here.

 

 

Station #4 - Roll It, Make It, Expand It can be found at Rebecca Anderton's TPT store, here.  Great chance for students to practice writing the number, modeling it, and expanding it.

 

Station #5- Digit Game - This is a game from our Everyday Math Unit. Students play with a partner and each turn over two cards.  With the 2 cards they have, they need to make the largest number possibly (for example, 28 or 82 - they'd choose 82). The student with the larger number wins.  You can also differentiate this game by having students flip over 3 cards so they need to make the largest 3 digit number.

 

Station #6 - Miss V - Students were put into groups based upon levels. When students met with me, we worked on place value skills that they needed practice on or started to challenge with expanded notation.

 

 

Thanks for checking out my place value ideas.  Be sure to check out - Show Me the Number in my TPT Store.

 

 

Learning about Settings

We've continued our study of Common Core Standard 2.RL.1 and have moved on to focusing on the where question - the setting.  For setting, I found some great picture books that have a very descriptive and easy to identify setting to start with.  I'm teaching mainly ELL students so I didn't want to confuse them with too many settings.  Even though the setting was semi-easy to identify I still wanted my kids to use text evidence to back up their setting choice.  To show text evidence, I used a brace map (thinking maps) and then also had students write a sentence response. 

The first story - Library Mouse we read whole group and discussed the setting and evidence together.

The second story - Gingerbread Cowboy - we read whole group, discussed, and completed a class brace map together.

The third story we used was Owl Moon.  To scaffold, we read the story and discussed whole group. Then, the students helped me fill out the brace map.  After filling out the brace map together, students copied the brace map and then had to fill in parts of the sentence on their own.

 



For the last story, for now, I used The Tickly Octopus. Now, I thought this would be a good one to see what kids could do independently on their own, but they struggled a bit.  I'm not sure if it was because of being ELL or just not having a lot of background knowledge, but kids had a hard time saying the setting was the ocean or the sea and they had difficulty coming up with evidence - fish, water, sand, octopus, coral, etc.  But, we move forward and will come back to setting again to re-teach as necessary. Below are a few samples of student work and the chart we filled out after they completed their student work.

 

Stay tuned for some plot ideas coming up in the next few days!

Graphing

Graphing is one of my favorite math concepts to teach.  I found some great ideas online to get it up to 2nd grade level and also created a 2nd Grade Graphing packet that can be found on TPT ($1.50).

The first thing that made a huge difference in my kids understanding of graphing was using Teaching from the Core's idea to help kids understand the term difference.  Every year when I was teaching first grade, the kids were great with representing data, great with answering questions like which had the most, how many had this, etc - but when it came to how many more or how many fewer did one graph item have over the other....it was a disaster.  So, while reading through all of my favorite blogs I stumbled upon her post.  You can check it out here...  I used it this year with my 2nd graders and they got it! And, what a fun way to learn it.

Another great item I stumbled upon was Sunny Day's in 2nd Grades Math Common Core Assessment Packet.  This thing is fantastic! There are 3 math pages for each Common Core Standard. I purchased it and have loved using it! I use one of the pages as a pre-test so I know what areas I need to focus on when teaching the standard, another page as homework, and the last page as the post-test. 

Now, on to graphing... 

In my graphing packet, you'll find some practice pages, where students need to take the tally graph data, turn it into a bar graph, and then answer questions about the graphs.

You'll also find a Favorite Book graph. This is a great way for a whole class activity or a survey activity that students could do independently. I used this activity whole group and we asked each student in the class, which book was their favorite and filled in the tally graph accordingly.  The kids had a lot of fun and I love when we can represent them and their opinions in the graph.

The next graph was a fan favorite of the kiddos. This was during Halloween week so I bought some of those fun size Skittle bags and we graphed the colors they found in their bag.  Their favorite part...eating them when they were done graphing.  My favorite part...seeing that they were getting the concept of representing data and how to use it to answer questions.

The last graphing activity we did before the post test was a survey of the class. This turned out better than I imagined.  First, we came up with possible survey questions that kids would maybe want to ask each other. Afterwards, the students fill out their survey question sheet with a question they wanted to ask their fellow students and the four answers that would go with it. They loved this! Afterwards, they got to go around the room and ask each student their question and represented their response in their tally graph. Once their tally graph was filled out, they transferred the tally graph information into the bar graph and answered the questions. For my students that finished early, I challenged them to come up with other questions they could ask about their graph on the back of their page.

 

 

Please check out my Graphing Packet in my TPT Store!!

 

Hope everyone is having a great long weekend!