June....Pressing Forward

And it is June. Where did the time go? With 18 days left, the school is slowly beginning to fill with anxiousness of the end nearing. It is filling with chatter, with excitement and with lots of emotion. For me, it's an empty feeling. That's the best way I can explain it. Every year I walk into a school and try my best to fit into the school community, build relationships with staff, students, parents and families and then, I must say goodbye (due to layoff or redundancy). The reason I say empty, as the feeling describing the emotion, is because there are no other words. Everyone begins to move rooms, and plan and reorganize. Some complaining of a new grade they were assigned and others smiling, knowing they will be right back where they are now..... The end of the year for me will once again involve uncertainty, packing up and moving to a new school in August. I don't know what grade or what area of the city, but it will be new. And it will be difficult to once again say goodbye to so many people I have grown to admire, cherish and laugh with on a daily basis. Many people tell me, "change is good" or "you're so lucky to gain this experience".... and I am... But it doesn't make June any easier. I am so ever-grateful to have a job and one that I love to boot....so with or without the pity-party, I must "keep on- keepin' on".....

THIS WEEK IN GRADE 1/2 E....

We have finished up with our numeration unit {addition and subtraction}. This was a BUSY unit-- With having a combined grade the expectations are very different. Throw in about 20 kids all at different levels, and it's a party! ;) This unit was especially challenging as adding and subtracting is what kids first get exposure to outside of the classroom. If mom or dad wants to give them some math work at home, addition and subtraction is usually where they begin. I had some kids with tons of prior knowledge and others asking "what is that plus thing?" Haha.

We did a lot of Math Center work throughout this unit, some paper pencil work, hands on games and I also had the kids come up with some problems of their own.

Here's a little peak at how it went down....

Every student needs to know why we add and subtract. Why do we regroup when we add and subtract? As a kid growing up, I never knew. The answer was always "because". As a teacher, I now try to teach so the kids know why they are doing something.

We started off the unit by learning about the ones, tens and hundreds columns. We created a human ten frame and why numbers to need to stay in their columns.

Then we discussed basic addition skills with the use of manipulatives-- how to use them and what they are for.

We played addition and subtraction games such as:

Head Full of Numbers

Treasure Chest Math Game

Spaghetti and Math Balls

Flashcard Games

Roll and Remove

After weeks of basic addition and subtraction, we dove into some word problems. The kids worked in pairs to create word problems for other groups to solve. This worked out AWESOME!