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.

Oh dear - not the neatest or most organised of class libraries, is it? It looks better now - but only because I've started to pack books away to move them to my new classroom next week.

Classroom libraries are huge in the States - but not so prominent here in the UK, I've found. But what an incredible resource for kids in our class - a classroom library full of books, at their reading and interest levels, which they can choose for themselves.

I'm slowly learning the importance of being selective in class libraries - too many books (see above picture) can be overwhelming. And it can be hard for kids to pick books at the appropriate level for them. So - one of my summer goals is to choose a range of books appropriate for my incoming P3s in August, and have them organised and displayed clearly so that children can easily see what's there and choose what they want to read.

Here's the AR bookfinder website that levels books by LEXILE and ATOS book levels. I know many in Scotland use coloured bookbands, so if you click here, you will be able to download a document that matches lexile levels with our book bands (my husband really didn't 'get' why I was so excited when I found this!).

My library related tasks for this summer:
1) Buy matching book baskets/boxes
2) Choose books suitable for all levels of readers in my class
3) Use the bookfinder website & book band converter to book band the books in my class library (might see if I can bribe a couple of children to help with this one!).
3) Organise the chosen books, so that some are grouped by author (Magic Treehouse books, Junie B. Jones, Horrid Henry, etc) while others are grouped by book band level.
4) (If there is time when all of that is done - ha!) label books grouped by author according to their bookband level as well - just to make choices a bit easier for kids.

I'll let you know how I get on!

Do you have a classroom library? Is it filled with school books, or with your own books? How do you organise them? And most importantly - how and when are kids able to choose their own books from the class library?

This year, I used 'ball words' from Differentiated Kindergarten in my class for the first time - they were fabulous! As I type, more than two thirds of my class have learned all 220 early sight words (Dolch words) - and they've done it all independently. You can see in the pictures how I store my ball words. I'll write more about these later, but if you are curious, please click on the links for a fuller explanation.

As I was listening to kiddos who are still working to master their ball words today, though, I was thinking about how we help kids develop word attack skills. My son is dyslexic, so this is an area of the curriculum that I've thought and read a lot about.

In our school, we use North Lanarkshire's Active Literacy programme, which emphasises the ability to break words down into their sounds/phonemes and 'sound words out'. Which is all well and good - but what about trickier words? And things that don't seem to follow the rules we teach our kids? And how do we help those kids who need a bit more time and more support to remember the sounds that different phonemes make?

For me, two keys have been:
1) repetition, repetition, repetition and
2) giving kids as much information as possible about the words they are reading.

When kids are practicing their sight words and get stuck, I prompt for what the phoneme says, and if possible, I link my question to words they already know (for example, every time we get stuck with 'ay', I point to the 'day of the week' up on our white board. That's usually enough to remind them that 'ay' makes the long 'a' sound, and they can figure out the word). Some kids remember phonemes very quickly. Other kids need lots of repetition before it 'sticks'.

But I also try to give them as much information about a word as I can, so that things that seem crazy 'make sense'. 'C' making an 's' sound, and 'g' saying 'j' are cases in point. When does this happen? When 'c' and 'g' are followed by 'i, e or y' (there are always exceptions, but luckily, primary 1s don't tend to pick up on them!). Now - they don't usually remember this when they are spelling the words (nise, anyone?), but when they are reading, these words don't confuse them. There is a rule that helps them make sense of it. And I've repeated that rule so often, it's stuck in the back of their memory somewhere, ready to be dragged out with a prompt or two.  

The more information we can give our kids to take the 'mystery' out of reading, the better. This year, we've also spent a lot of time talking about vowels and just what tricky little letters they are...if we sound out a word and it doesn't make sense, chances are, that vowel (or two) isn't playing by the rules and is making a different sound. There isn't always a rule for that one - but at least we know which letters we have to keep an eye on.

Here's a picture of the first three 'ball word' sets, to give you an idea of how they are put together. I have 4-5 sets of each ball word, so there isn't an issue if several kids are working on the same list of words. 

In the States, the idea is that you count the first 100 days of school. On the 100th day there is a big celebration, with lots of activities based on 100.

Our infant department did '100 days of school' this year, and I'm pretty sure everyone enjoyed our 'celebration' (who doesn't like to make chocolate wheeto necklaces with 100 cheerios?). But in Primary 1, we carried on counting - this picture is from yesterday, when we hit Day 177. 

In this simple addition to our morning routine, place value and reading numbers to 100 and beyond is reinforced every single day. I like using the ten frames to keep track, as we use them often during maths rotations.

Little ones need repetition so much - especially for tricky maths concepts like place value. Luckily, they also LOVE repetition, so even though I am mightily tired of counting beyond 100, they are still tuned in!

As part of our mental maths, and before we get to dot cards, my class and I count how many days we've been in school that year. This is a fabulous idea I've borrowed from the American teaching blogs I follow.

We don't just add a dot to our ten frame and change the number on our counting wall, though. I have magnetic Base 10 materials that we use to make the number from the previous day, and then add 1 to it. When we have the time, 4 kiddos get to be involved in this process (one to make 177, another to add 1 to it and finish the equation, one to add another dot to our counting wall and one to change the counting wall number).

I'd love to hear how you develop number sense in your classroom. And any ideas on how I can use and/or adapt this routine for older children would be very much appreciated!

As the year ends, I've been thinking a lot about how I teach number sense in maths. As I've been in Primary 1 (kindergarten) this year, that is my main job in numeracy. I want my kiddos to go up to Primary 2 with a solid understanding of early numbers and how you can combine and take apart numbers in different ways.

One of the resources I've loved this year (and which I think has made a positive difference to the numeracy learning in my class) is dot cards. I first heard about dot cards on Math Coach's Corner, and I bought her dot card set on Teachers Pay Teachers to get started.

Primary ones need lots of experiences counting concrete objects. But you also want them to start being able to subitise - to see groups of objects as a group, rather than having to count each one individually. Dot cards are a great way to develop this skill in a fun way.

As you can see from the side of one of my cupboards below, there are dot card rings available for kids to use in my class. I keep some rings out for the kids and some with me, that I use during our mental maths time. The kids love playing 'teacher' with these rings, and quizzing each other on 'how many dots' they see.

As part of our mental maths at least 2-3 times a week, I use a routine similar to the one found in Number Talks: Grades K-5 - Helping Children Build Mental Math and Computation Strategies. Using one of the sets of cards, I flash a card for a few seconds. My kids love the challenge of figuring out 'how many' when I've told them that they only get to see the card for one second!

When they know how many dots are on the card, they put a 'thumbs up' on their chest (so I don't have hands waving in faces and distracting others who are still thinking). I then have several kiddos tell me 'how many dots' they saw. Once we have several answers (or, when everyone is on the ball, only one correct answer), I get the children to tell me 'how they saw their number'. Hopefully, kids will see groups of dots and be able to add those groups together - for example, in the dot card ring furthest to the left, I'm pleased when my kids can tell me they saw 4 + 3 = 7, although someone else might tell me they see 6 black dots + 1 white dot makes 7 - also great thinking.

I always write up the sums they tell me they see, so we can see how many different ways there are to 'see' the groups of dots. When kids tell me that they counted all of the dots, we write up 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 = 7. Kids can see for themselves that counting gets the right answer, but that there are faster, more efficient ways to get there.

As I'll be moving to Primary 3 next year, I've been thinking about how to continue to use my dot cards to develop number sense in older kiddos. I suspect that some of my kids will benefit from some of the dot card sets I'm currently using with my almost-Primary 2s, while I'll need to have a think about how to develop subitising skills for older children who are working with larger numbers.

My husband suggested the name of this blog - Monday Morning Teacher - because I'm a bit of a 'Monday Morning Quarterback' when it comes to what happens in my class. I re-think (some might say over think) what has happened each day, and how I can do things differently and better. 

Patient soul that he is, my hubbie always graciously listens to my ramblings. But he isn't as interested as I am in the minutia of classroom politics, play and pedagogy, so I've decided to start blogging. Mainly so I don't bore my husband to death, but also to help me process what I'm doing and hopefully share ideas and resources with other teachers. There's no point re-inventing the wheel!