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.