If you’re like me, you’ve had to pull every behavior management trick that you have out of your magic hat lately and then some.  This week I tried a new behavior management strategy that is more specifically geared for when giving directions for a craftivity or other gluing activity.  I saw the idea floating around Pinterest and figured, why not give it a try?

I’m sharing the results and idea with you today by linking up for the You Oughta Know Blog Hop!

The idea for this particular behavior management strategy is pretty simple.  I started by grabbing 2 bottles of Scentos glue from Amazon (you could use glitter glue or a colored glue instead – anything really that would motivate your kiddos).

I explained to my kiddos that we had some awesome, amazing, fantastic (insert many, many adjectives) new glue, and that they could earn the chance to use it by showing good listening behavior.  We went back to beginning-of-the-year-style and acted out good listening and poor listening behavior.  My students always LOVE acting out the incorrect way of doing something.

We even passed the glue bottles around to let every students smell them – just to build that anticipation and desire to use them!

When I am explaining directions for a craftivity or other activity involving glue, I keep an eye out for a couple students who are showing exceptional listening behavior.  When I’m doing explaining, those lucky kiddos are handed the scented glue and off to work we go! 

I’ve noticed a big improvement in behavior when I’m giving directions.  The biggest improvement has been not having to hear ,”What do I do?,” right after I finish explaining and modeling!

It’s a simple idea and it’s fairly inexpensive, you may even have some scented, glitter, or colored glue already that you could use.  Hopefully this will be an idea you can use.  If you try it out, let me know how it goes!

Anyway, I’m not here today to talk about flowers.  But I am here to join some of my blogging buddies to share some great lesson ideas, apps, and other classroom must-haves!

This time of year it’s amazing to look back at where kiddos began and where they are now, and I’ve particularly been reflecting on writing lately.  I feel like I’ve been pretty darn successful this year on gradually releasing my kinder friends so that they can be awesome little writers – so I wanted to share a lesson idea that fits perfectly with Spring!

A couple of weeks back we did a unit on Weather.  When you’re doing a unit on weather, you have to talk about clouds, right?!  So I started thinking about how to help my little friends become more descriptive when writing about clouds (let’s be honest there was a lot of “Clouds are white.  Clouds are fluffy,” which is great but I wanted to push them a bit further).  I was inspired by Mrs. Schmelzer’s [blog post] from a while back.

Then I had a light bulb moment!  I remembered 2 awesome books that talk about the shapes that clouds can appear to take.  If you’ve never read “It Looked Like Spilt Milk” by Charles Shaw or “Little Cloud” by Eric Carle with your kiddos, please jump on it!

                         

I just think that they’re both such great options for discussing clouds that we read both!  After reading these stories we came up with a new list of describing words for clouds (much more expansive now).

Then came the fun part (and my secret way of motivating my little writers, shhhh!).  Each kiddo designed their own clouds using cotton balls and glue.

Anyway, these past 2 weeks we have been focusing on place value in math.  Trust me when I say it has not been easy teaching place value as the first concept of the year!  To top it off imagine trying to teach expanded form too… But, that’s what the district wants so that’s what we did.  To share some of the strategies I used, I thought I’d link up with the wonderful Jasmine from [Buzzing with Mrs. McClain] and several other great bloggers for a You Oughta Know blog hop.

You Oughta Know about making place value come alive!

First things first, we use Texas GoMath for any of you Texas bloggers out there.  The curriculum is OK, but moves pretty quickly and doesn’t offer much in the hands-on department.  So the team decided to move at a slower pace.

For starters, we’ve spent 2 weeks on teaching place value (tens/ones, word form, standard form, expanded form) of numbers 0-80.  Why 80?  That’s what our district will be testing the kiddos on, and it makes it easier to focus on each number.  We literally did 10 numbers a day after introducing all of these concepts.  For example we spent 2 days introducing making a group of ten with manipulatives and ten frames, then we moved into the above concepts with numbers 0-10, the next day we did 11-20 and reviewed some of the previous numbers, and on and on until we got to 80.  We will be going to back to cover numbers 81-120 second semester (but honestly most students could probably already apply the concept to at least 99).

I really think that breaking it up this way and moving SLOW was the key to success in teaching this concept so early in the year to first graders.  We had our assessment on place value to 80 on Thursday and I was pleased with the overall results.

So what are some of the activities I used to teach place value and make it come alive?

1.  We started off the 2 weeks by using unifex cubes and ten frame cutouts to model numbers up to 10.  Before moving into place value I needed my kiddos to understand a group of 10.

2.  Of course we also had to practice skip counting by 10s.  If kiddos can’t skip count by 10s then they won’t be able to count rods and cubes!  We watched the popular Have Fun Teaching video for some extra practice.

3.  Once we understood groups of 10s we moved into modeling numbers using manipulatives (rods/cubes).

4.  We watched this fun place value video from Mr. R about a billion times.  The kids LOVE it.

5.  We played “Simon Says” with tens and ones. We talked about how tens are tall and ones are small so whenever I said “Simon Says ten” the kiddos would stand tall and whenever I said “Simon Says ones” they would squat down to be small.  It was a lot of fun and helpful for getting the kiddos bodies active in learning tens and ones.  I also learned who was a good listener!

6.  I also took the above concept and had groups of students model numbers with their bodies.  IE:  If I asked them to show 32 then 3 of them would stand tall to be the tens while the other 2 would squat to be ones.  Then the class could decide if they were correct.

7.  Once we had a firm grasp on using rods/cubes to make numbers and making quick drawings to represent them, we were able to spend more time focusing on some of the many different ways numbers can be represented.  I created this Freebie for some extra practice.  This was a great time to pull a small group to work on some simpler numbers with manipulatives while letting the kiddos who were understanding the concept work on numbers of their choice within the range for the day.  You can grab a copy [here].

8.  I found an awesome iPad app that I used to help with differentiation.  A few of my kiddos had mastered tens/ones in the first day or so and were ready for a challenge.  I searched the iTunes store and found an app called Math Bugs.  There is a free version and a paid version for only 99 cents.  The great thing about this app is you can choose how high of a place value you want students to practice to.  So I was able to have some kiddos work to just a hundred while my kids who needed a challenge were introduced to place value to the thousands place.

 The concept of the game is pretty simple.  Each body part is assigned a value (1, 10, 100, etc) and the kids add the body parts to make the number shown.  My favorite part about this is when they click the arrow to check their work, if they were missing something then it highlights the are that is incorrect.  So if the kid only put 8 ones for the number 89 the app would highlight the ones box.

 9.  I think the hardest part of teaching this concept at the beginning of the year was teaching expanded form to go with it.  Many of my students don’t have a firm grasp on addition so I’m pretty sure I earned a few more gray hairs from this!  However, I found a great idea inspired by [What the Teacher Wants].

We used foam plates divided into 3 sections (plastic would work too) for practice taking the groups of tens and the group of ones and putting them together to make expanded form.  I kids loved this activity and it made the concept a lot more visual and understandable for them.  We practice putting the manipulatives on each side first, then we practiced just drawing them.  The left side is for tens and right side is for ones.

10.  We played a fun dice game with partners called Roll it! Make it! Expand it!  This is a great Freebie from [Teaching 1st].  This was perfect for giving more practice to our newly acquired knowledge of expanded form.

I think that’s just about a wrap on all of the activities we did over the course of 2 weeks to introduce place value.  As I was typing it seemed like a lot of activities, but when you think about how long a beginning first grader can keep his or her attention on one activity you have to be prepared with a ton of strategies!  You can also see there isn’t a ton of worksheets.  I challenge you to make learning come alive with meaningful activities and just a little less worksheets.

I hope at least a few of these activities will be helpful for you.

You can head over to any of these other great blogs to continue on the “You Ought Know” blog hop.

Last month I shared about Sparkle (a fun, easy, and FREE spelling game).  You can check out how to play Sparkle in your own classroom [here].

This month, I think that you oughta know about a fantastic writing resource called DoodleLoops!

Before, I start… I want to say that I was not asked by the creator of DoodleLoops to write about them, but I feel so strongly about this writing resource that I felt you NEEDED to know about it!

So, what in the heck are DoodleLoops?

I’ll tell ya, but first let me give some background on why I feel they are so fantastic!

At my old school we adopted a curriculum called Writing Alive.  Now, I’m not going to share much of my opinion (good or bad) on the program, but I’m starting here so that you can see some examples of writing that we did this year.

Basically, the curriculum starts the year heavy on learning the parts of a sentence.  Great!  My kiddos became so strong at identifying subjects, verbs, objects, and phrases.  I honestly can’t remember learning those specifics in first grade!

Now this is no reflection on the curriculum as a whole, but in my eyes it was very teacher driven.  I get the importance of modeling, but I wanted to see what my kiddos could write about without me giving them an example first.  I mean, what would my first graders do if I just gave them a prompt or question to write about???

Coincidently I was struggling with finding activities for my kiddos to work on during reading centers (Daily 5), especially for work on writing.  I had my curriculum for writing lessons, but no resources for work on writing.

So, I started digging through some of the “inheritance” that the teacher before me had left.  That’s when I found a copy of DoodleLoops!

The idea behind DoodleLoops is that there are pictures (many times unfinished) with a simple question that gets kiddos started on writing.  Here’s some examples of work with DoodleLoops during Daily 5. (It’s ok to laugh; I find the banana example to be quite humorous!)

To make things easy on myself, I started making packets of these for my students with anywhere from 5-10 in them and extra lined space on the back of each.  This way my kiddos got the CHOICE of which they would do each day!  I would collect them periodically to take a look at what my little ones were writing about during work on writing.

I love these because the writing prompts are SO simple and easy to read.  I also love these because the prompts are so fun for the kids to write about.  My kids would literally beg for more copies of DoodleLoops!  I really feel like my students started to love writing more when I added these into our work on writing center.

Side note – I can’t stand the question “How much?” or “How long?”  I didn’t want to turn my first graders into sentence counters!  I would always answer back with “How long do you think it should be?” or “As long as it takes to tell your reader enough to understand…”  Something along those lines.  I was shocked that my first graders were already asking this question.  I’m happy to say that I broke most of them of that habit pretty quickly!

Now, I’m not saying that you need to go buy DoodleLoops, but I highly recommend checking out some of the products.  I will absolutely be using these in my classroom again in the coming year.  You can download a free sample [here] or visit the DoodleLoops TPT store [here].

Hopefully this will be a resource you may enjoy in your class, or will at least give you some ideas for writing time in your class.

You can hop over to any of the other great blogs below to see some more resources, ideas, and tips that you oughta know about!

You know what I think?  I think that you oughta know about a little something that I like to call SPARKLE!

No, not sparkle as in glitter…

Nope, not even sparkle as in diamonds…

The Sparkle that I’m talking about is an AMAZING game for practicing spelling words.  I mean what kid doesn’t absolutely love a good game?  Yeah, I can’t think of any either!

So back when I didn’t have a school to call my “home” and I subbed everyday, I ran across this idea of Sparkle.  The kiddos kept asking, “Mr. Sizemore, when we finish can we PLEEEEEEEASE play Sparkle?!?”  So me, not knowing what Sparkle was, and them, claiming they knew all the rules, agreed we could play Sparkle when everyone had finished what they were working on.

Best. Decision. Ever.

Here’s how Sparkle works:

It is literally so simple.  The only “prep” work is writing the spelling words in a visible location.  That’s it.  Really.  No worksheets, no laminating, no cutting.

My kiddos BEGGED to play this throughout the year.  I usually had them play during the last 5 minutes of phonics instruction OR as an activity if we finished something early.  Sometimes I offered a prize to the winner.  I would never tell them when the round was for a prize which kept engagement high.  In my class, if a student wasn’t following along and didn’t know what letter/word we were on, that student was out.

Now if you are in a school where parents may not be able to work with their kiddos at home as much as you would like, this game helps TREMENDOUSLY!  I think it’s the addition of speech and auditory elements that make it successful for those kiddos who just don’t “get it” from writing it, or coloring it, or stamping it.  I always had kiddos ask to play it every time we had indoor recess!

But the best part about Sparkle is this…  I didn’t actually begin the year with my kiddos playing this game.  I was trying to stick to what the rest of my team was doing for phonics instruction – that didn’t last long.  My kiddos were excelling in phonics (we had 30 minutes of just phonics instruction a day), but were failing their spelling tests!  Even with practicing during our Word Work center, there was up to 12 of my kiddos who were under 70%.

After adding Sparkle to our daily phonics routine, my class average was consistently in the high 80s and 90s.  That’s some pretty good results if you ask me!

Bottom line:  Sparkle is easy and it’s free, so it’s worth a try in your class if your kiddos need some extra spelling help.

Head over to [Ms. McClain’s blog] to check out some other things that “You Oughta Know!”