Silly me - I started this flashcard project with the beginning of Stage 2, because those phonemes are reviewed during the first 5 weeks of Stage 3, which I assumed I would start with (I also have a few kiddos who will be going onto Stage 2 phonemes this year).

When I finally looked more closely at my handover notes, I see that my kids are starting (next week!) on FF (Stage 2, Week 35!). So I've been rushing to get these finished, and here they are. Then just 2 more weeks of Stage 2, and I'll be able to get back to work on Stage 3 phonemes.

However - if you are a Stage 3 teacher, you should be fine with the Stage 2 flashcards, as you'll need to be reviewing those at the start of the year with your class.

Welcome to anyone who has come over from the Scottish Teachers FB pages - I hope at least some of these resources are useful! I don't think there is a way to follow this page, but I've started a Monday Morning Teacher page on FB - if you like that, I'll post there whenever I add a new post/resources, so you'll get a notification.

When we start our different calculations on our 'Number of the Day', I have kids give me a 'thumbs up' (with their thumb placed right on their chest, so no arms waving in the air) if they think they know the answer to a given question. Then I take several different answers.

When another child gives an answer, I ask the class to either 1) keep their 'thumbs up' on their chest if they got a different answer or 2) give me the 'me, too' sign if they got the same answer. The 'me, too' sign is just making a 'hang 10' sign with your hand (from a fist, stick out your thumb and pinky fingers), and moving it from your chest outwards and back again). That way, I can see who is getting the right (or wrong!) answers. The idea with this routine is that EVERY child is expected to come up with an answer (and show that they have an answer by giving me a 'thumbs up'). We want everyone to be thinking!

The picture above is our first day - I wouldn't normally use quite as many cards, but I wanted to get a picture of what kinds of problems they were used to, and what was less familiar.

The picture below is our 'Number of the Day' from this morning.

Our number was 11, and we answered a few simple questions about 11, as you can see. We doubled 11 (they did that easily), then we doubled 22 - which was a bit trickier for some, but when we did it with our base 10 magnets on the white board, most of the kids 'got' what we were doing. In the picture, you can see the equations I wrote for doubling both 11 and 22 (with the 'expanded form' written below each number). In the picture, we've moved on to writing the expanded form for 11 (10+1), but when we were doubling both 11 and 22, I modelled what we were doing with the base 10 magnets - this makes the problem much more accessible to all of the kids, rather than only the kids who are comfortable working with the abstract equation.

Tomorrow, we'll add in our 'Addition' and 'Subtraction' pages.

If you'd like the 'Number of the Day' pack yourself, you can get it here. It is geared at Primary 1-3, stretching into P4, with the basic questions K-3 in the States), but it can easily be adapted to suit older stages as well (instead of giving them 11 to work with, you can give them 1147!).

I think I'm procrastinating, as there is so much to plan for this coming week!

When I wrote my last post about how I was planning to use my new Number of the Day cards, I decided that it made sense to go back and add a few cards that I used with my Primary 1s - you can see the 4 extra cards I've added above. If you want the updated pack, click on the link above. In this pack, I've also made the 'Number of the Day' sign a bit bigger. The previous pack (with the smaller Number of the Day sign) is still linked to from my previous posts).

With the additional cards, I think this pack should work well for most Primary 1-3 classes (K-2, for Americans). You can just pick and choose which cards are most appropriate for your own class. I hope you find these helpful, and I'd love to hear (or see pictures) about how you use these in your own classroom.

This is taking much longer than I anticipated. I originally made all of my wall words in Microsoft Word (see my previous post, in which I was very happy they were all finished!).

AFTER I finished all Stage 2 and Stage 3 words, however, I realised that I could only find directions for converting Powerpoint files into the right kind of files for uploading to the internet (e.g., files in which images are 'flattened' or secured in the document so that they can't easily be copied and pasted into other documents). Nothing about converting Word files the same way.

So....I spent yesterday and today figuring all of this out, and converting my CH and SH wall words into a PDF files (this is more complicated than it should be, my husband tells me). I think my margins are slightly screwy in this document, but I don't think that will affect the flashcards/wall words.

You can click on the above link or the image to access the file, and I'll also put a link to the document in the Resources section. If you download these and use them, please do let me know how you get on and if there are any problems with printing, margins, etc. that I need to sort out. Hope these save you some time! These phonemes (dipthongs for any American readers) are first learned in Primary 1 in the North Lanarkshire Active Literacy programme, and then they are reviewed at the beginning of Primary 2.

This past year, my goal was to revamp my numeracy teaching - so I've added lots of games, maths rotations and small group teaching.

Although literacy has been rolling along relatively well, I've wanted to include more literacy-based games into our reading and spelling time. It's been more of a challenge (and I definitely think that it is sensible to tackle one change at a time in a classroom!), but here is a game my kids really enjoy.

Played in groups of 2 or 3, the kids put word cards inside a hula hoop (pictured). This picture is from the week we worked on the 'ai' phoneme. They then take turns tossing a bean bag onto the cards. Whichever card your bean bag lands on, you have to spell the word on your white board (one of the other kids holds the card and checks for correct spelling). If you spell it correctly, you win the card. If not it goes back into the hula hoop and play passes to the next person.

Since introducing this game, I've never seen kids more eager to practice their spelling words. Some of the kids will even pull this game out during 'choosing time' - our 10 minutes at the end of the day when everyone can choose something fun to do with their friends in the classroom. This is great for your kinaesthetic learners!

For anyone interested in trying this with your own class, here is a link to the 'ai' cards we use for this game. If you are working with North Lanarkshire's active literacy programme, this game would be good for beginning of the year Primary 2 classes, when they review the ai phoneme, and end of the year Primary 1, when kids are introduced to the ai phoneme for the first time.