Teacher's Clipboard: 2011

Thursday, December 1, 2011

Water Colour Nativity

This is my third year doing this activity with my Grade 1 friends. I love how it turns out...even if I have to make a few extra copies of the Nativity figures in case Joseph loses an arm!

From this site using this template for the nativity figures.

Tuesday, November 15, 2011

Space man

A few weeks ago, I came across this idea on Pinterest:

Source: reallygoodstuff.com via Pamela on Pinterest

It's a space man! Let me explain...see my Grade 1 friends have this "condition" called neverrememberingtoleavespacesbetweentheirwords. It's an epidemic! This is where the "space man" (or "space woman") comes into use...they can use the "space man" or "space woman" to leave S P A C E S between their words. Genius.

A few years ago, I had some custom made rubber stamps made by this Etsy shop. They turned out awesome. After being unable to find astronaut clip art that fit into the space I needed, I messaged the Etsy shop owner asking if she could create a rubber stamp with a long narrow astronaut so that I could stamp it on popsicle sticks. Having a "space man" rubber stamp also means that I can have a ready supply of "space men" at my finger tips. I did get some razzing from my teacher peeps at school who bugged me for having my own private "stamp go-to person" but that's ok...I am proud of my stamping connections!

Well, my completed stamp arrived on Thursday and it is perfectly awesome!

Now I am able to stamp as many sticks as I need and I can rid my students of their neverleavingspaces "condition" forever!

I would highly recommend CupcakeTree Hand Carved Stamps for any personalized stamps you may need. They rock!

Saturday, October 22, 2011

SAGe Session on the Learning Carpet

I really enjoyed this session on the Learning Carpet. The instructor gave so many ideas to use the carpet.

You can place numbers from 1-31 and give students markers to place a marker to identify their birthdays. Discuss which number has the most birthdays, least birthdays, etc. Then you can graph the results. Love it.

You can also use the 100 chart to identify patterns, such as even numbers in red and odd in black.

Please tell me I am not the only one that just learned that numbers on the diagonal add up or subtract to number along the top?? For example, the instructor is on 19. If you minus the smaller number (1) from the bigger number (9) the answer is the number on the diagonal (8). If you go the other way from 8 on the diagonal 17 (1+7=8), 26 (2+6), 35 (3+5), 44 (4+4), 53 (5+3), etc. I had never put that together!

Here's a quick one to orientate students to the numbers. Place a treat on a square, students identify the number and get the treat.

The instructor explained that we can ask older students to create additional numbers up to 200, or even starting with any number (such as 92) it's interesting how it becomes a whole new board because students have trouble picturing it as anything but a 100 chart but it can be used for so much more. Many also find transitioning from 109 difficult and often believe it is 200 and not 210 as she showed us in her example. (check out "94" as well!)

The instructor showed us ways to use bead measures:

This idea was my favourite because you can clothes pin the number to the appropriate spot on the bead measure.

The learning carpet can also be used for geometry, and even as a clock (didn't take a picture of that!)

My favourite use was this: Assigning each letter a number and having students place it on the correct box to spell out a message. She did this as a group activity and people added letters one at a time and we tried to guess it as it was being spelled out. I think it would be good as a center with a bunch of messages to solve. You could even ask students to create their own messages for their peers to solve.

Lastly, this activity was in the hall and it was based on the book "Press Here" by Herve Tullet (check out the preview on this site) and it is a book you can write with students. It begins with an instruction "push the yellow button" and then on the next page it has a compliment at the top, then more "buttons" and an instruction. The book ends with "Do you want to do that again?" What a great idea!