I don't know about you, but the move to digital learning over night in March made me realise how much I needed to update my Google Drive knowledge and skills. Having taught mostly younger children, I had never really gotten to grips with how Google Drive works, how to create work for Google Drive, and how to assign activities to children digitally. 

So, like many of you, I'm sure, this is something I've been working on.

 I've had more time to spend with Google Drive since the start of the summer, and I've made a few multiplication resources to try to develop and strengthen my digital knowledge and skills. I know schools are planning for different schedules when they go back this year (full time in class / full time digital / a mixture of both), so the 2 times table (free) resource I'm linking to here has both a digital and a printable component. 

This file has 2 versions of a 'Candy Store' 2 times table picture (click the 'Candy Store' picture above to access the Google Slides folder that contains all of the files). Children multiply each number on a candy jar by 2, writing the answer in the candy jar next to each number. Once they are finished, they can then color the picture. Hopefully, the addition of the coloring job helps solve the 'What can I do now?' problem for your fast finishers!

When teaching multiplication, however, I always want the children to be able to reference a visual representation of a multiplication equation. So the coloring page also asks them to find 'How many groups of 2 children' and create a multiplication equation based on that question.

On one of the coloring pages, there are no children - so their equation should be: 0 x 2 = 0. 

One the second coloring page, there are 2 groups of 2 children, so their equation should be: 2 x 2 = 4. 

And the digital compenent: a full-color Candy Store, where children solve the 2 times table equations, writing their answers in the empty spaces next to each number (on the Google Slide, I have included a grey text box, so children just need to click the text box, and enter their answers). 

The digital version is the same as the coloring page versions, so the same answer key should be used for both. 

I hope you find these helpful! Any problems or questions, please let me know, so I can help resolve them (this will also help me to learn). 

Thinking of all teachers as we prepare to go back to the classrooms. Stay safe everyone. 

My Early Years classes have always loved dinosaurs, and this year is no exception. So Numbers to 10 with Dinosaurs has been updated and is ready to go! 

As always, when children are working with numbers, they need both concrete practice (with manipulatives) and representational (picture) practice - and both should be linked to the abstract (the numeral itself). 

I love Dot Cards in the Early Years - they are such a powerful way to build number sense in young children (see any of my Number Talk posts - and go here if you want a FREE set of dot cards for your own class). I also wanted my classes to have practice with Numbers to 10 at a concrete level - how to do both? 

Well - you can have your class make their own Dot Cards for each number, cutting out and coloring Dinosaur Eggs to fill 10 frames in different ways. The act of cutting out and moving the eggs makes this activity concrete, rather than purely representational - something we should always be looking to do where possible. As an added bonus, classes get some fine motor practice as well! 

My T-Rex Numbers to 10 booklet (picture at the top) has always been a great 'fast finisher' job. There are 2 pages for each number, and it works really well printed as a booklet. Detailed instructions are given in the file if you want smaller booklets, with only 1 of the 2 pages (so you don't have to think about which pages to print yourself!). 

Every early years classroom I've taught in has had children who needed different levels of support and challenge. And that can be tricky! Over the years, I've made a variety of different Numbers to 10 Dinosaur-themed printables that let children practice different skills, depending on where they are in their own development. This file has 10 different printables, which target a variety of skills and knowledge, including number recognition, number matching, number amounts, early addition and early pre-subtraction skills. And including a dinosaur or a dinosaur egg on a printable never hurts! 

I hope the start of your school year is going well! If you are interested in this Dinosaur Number to 10 pack, click on any of the pictures...

And if you haven't already started to Count the School Days, it isn't too late to begin! You can get everything you need in this (FREE!) pack. 

Well - we're back from a last minute holiday to Northern Ireland (arrived home late last night), and I have a fair amount to do before I'm ready for our in-service day tomorrow, and pupils arriving on Tuesday (eek!). But since it's been a week, I wanted to write a short post about a different approach to Number of the Day that I'm planning to try out this year.

Last year, 'Number of the Day' was a mental maths routine for my Primary 1 (kindergarten) class. It will still be a mental maths routine on some days this year, but I want to introduce 'Maths Journaling' into our maths block, and I'm hoping to incorporate our Number of the Day routine into that.

I really like the idea of Maths Journaling - getting kids to write about their mathematical thinking. The K-5 Math Teaching Resources website has a great explanation of what Maths Journaling is.

In their journals, we want children to be thinking mathematically, in an open ended way. Many of the 'Number of the Day' cards ask closed questions, but for getting started with Maths Journaling, with a new class who has never done it before, that's OK with me. :-) Once we have established our oral 'Number of the Day' routine, it will hopefully be fairly straightforward to transfer that into written form in our journals.

With P1s, I usually only used 4 cards per day (sometimes 5 or 6), but with P3s, I might eventually use more (we'll see how it goes). But if, as an example, I had the above 7 cards up (taking out the '100 less' for now!), I would ask children to draw the following simple grid in their journals (we can probably get some fraction thinking out of that!):

I know many of the 'Number of the Day' routines you find on-line have photocopied sheets with a variety of number tasks, similar to the ones you see on my cards above. But I'm always looking for ways to use journals, rather than photocopies - it makes my life easier (I have less copying and less filing to do) and it's more eco-friendly.



Additionally, it's much easier to see the progression in what the children are doing, as everything is naturally in date order in a journal (once you train your class to NOT skip pages!). Using a journal rather than a static photocopied sheet also lets you more easily change the maths skills you want to focus on and practice that day. Rather than making up and photocopying a separate sheet of paper, with different skills to practice, you can just change the cards you have up on your Number of the Day board.

After drawing the grid, the children would then fill in the answers for each card, beginning with the cards at the top. If this is already an established oral routine, then hopefully it will transfer into journals fairly easily (although that is never guaranteed, of course). The finished page would look something like this:

Once the 'Number of the Day' journaling is established, I plan to add in more of the 'open ended' journal questions. So on a separate page, the class might be asked to write and illustrate an answer to a question like:

Sally had 25 chocolate bars, she gave some to a friend and kept some for herself. How many did she give away and how many did she have left?

This kind of question is asking children to decompose 25, of course - which is a task they will be familiar with from the 'Addition' and 'Subtraction' sheets in our mental maths routine.

I'll let you know how it goes once school is back, and we get this up and running!