After an extended winter break (thanks to some extreme wind chills!), we returned to school! Our first order of business? Review rules and routines, of course!
In our class, children worked in groups to create posters that reminded us of the 'three R's-Respectful, Responsible, and Ready.' These are part of our school-wide PBIS plan. I happen to be the Tier 1 coach for our building, my team and I have worked really hard to combine the 8 Keys of Excellence in Quantum Learning with our PBIS plan. You can see some of my kiddos are making the connection in their posters--they wanted to draw the keys on their poster!
As part of a school-wide lesson, each classroom made a poster for a specific area and 'R' and they are hung all around the school! My partner in crime over at First Grade on the Brain had this awesome idea to encourage kids to earn the keys of excellence over the next 8 weeks! Keeping that positive behavior up for the 3rd quarters! We have keys hanging all over our room, school, etc! The kids are loving it.
We also began learning double digit subtraction... While I don't mind the challenge of whipping these kiddos into Math Wizards, the concept of 'borrowing,' I mean ungrouping, decomposing, whatever you want to call it....is a tough one. Our new 'common core' math curriculum is a little lacking in the area of manipulatives and hands on lessons--so I was super excited to come up with this idea to incorporate some interactive learning to help with this concept!
One friend was the 'Ones' and one was the 'Tens', we had a third friend be 'THE SUBTRACTOR!" We used unit blocks and the kids could SEE when we didn't have enough to subtract. I made a huge deal, and we put the bucket upside-down and I banged on the bottom and asked the kids, 'what's the problem??'
We had lots of fun, and I could refer back to it in the next few days when we were just doing pencil/paper.
