Money money money

We have spent the last month working on  money. I have always had kiddos struggle with this because it's tricky. So we have taken our time! I have also had a lot of fun extending money for my high kids.

We started by making flip charts in our math journals so the kids could identify the coins.

Then we wrote out how we can determine the differences between the coins.

Then we started counting groups of coins.

We matched the coins to the prices!

They played I have who has with money.

Some of them struggled with switching from counting 25s then 10s then 5s. We made a key on the hundreds chart to refer to in our journals.

The few that still struggled, I introduced touch points! We used expo markers to write on the coins.

We practiced finding two ways to find the same amount.

We also practiced using the least amount of coins to find amounts.

Then we worked on counting a dollar and more.

Spend and earn...they said hey this is just like monopoly!

They practiced counting by rolling a number and letter dice to remove coins from their board. Whoever had the most money at the end won!

They practiced trading in money for  coins worth more with the game trading up!

Whoever gets to a dollar first is the winner!

We practiced buying from the store! Each animal had a different amount and the students had to determine what they could buy!

We have a couple more days to practice but I have been proud of how well they have picked up counting and using money! 

How do I do both? Read and find text features!

Text features are always an interesting concept to teach. I want my students to still be reading, yet I want them to identify the text features. So how do I tackle both at once? Read on!

1. Text feature walk!

Have them read the book, but as they read stop and write down the text features! 

It's essential to have some great nonfiction books with a lot of text features!

2. Label those text features with post its!

The kids love this and I just cut my sticky notes into little strips!

3. Play some great text feature games! 

Memory

Bingo

I have who has

I had my student teacher make these and they have been great!

4. Use a passage as their assessment 

I'm big on having the kids mark the text! They read the passage and marked the text and were to box the evidence.

After they boxed the evidence, I had them label what each text feature was.

There you have it! They practiced text features while still reading!

Math journals!

Hello all! Sorry about my absence! Somebody in our family has been sick every week so it's made for an insane winter! On to the reason I blog, my love for teaching...

Our principal brought up the idea of math journals the other week in our faculty meeting and how they have proven to be highly effective in bringing up test scores! I was a little critical at first, thinking it was just more time and work for teachers. However, as our coach began to show some examples, I began to get excited! It was a way to almost "keep a portfolio" of all the cool stuff we do! It was also a way to keep rhymes and nomonic devices for kids to refer to when reviewing a concept! I was now excited about starting these journals! 

On my way home from school, I zoomed into the Walmart parking lot and ran inside to buy a stack of notebooks for my students! The next day, I was ready and raring to go. The student could tell I was excited and as I always say, "excitement is contagious!" Thus, we began our math journals!  

We have implemented them the last couple of weeks and let me show you the results....

First attempt: Missing parts into the hundreds!

Second attempt: Subtracting 3 digits with regrouping.

Third Attempt: Logical Reasoning (several step problems) I loved their explanations for how they solved it! The kids are wowing me with their ability to explain!

Then we started our money unit!

We needed to make sure they recognized the coins before we dove into counting collections of coins.

They explained how they differentiated the coins to count them...

As I realized that some kiddos were having trouble counting by 25s, 10s, and 5s, we added this to our journal...

So far, I'm loving it! It's really not a lot of work because there are so many free resources out there on TPT! 

Also the students are actually saying, "Can I use my math journal?"

My answer, "Yes! Yes! Yes!"