Math Intervention Part 1

As I gear up for my 14th year teaching (Yikes - I'm getting old), I am thinking of all the changes that have happened with education even in my short career so far.  I won't go into it all, but one obvious change has been increased high-stakes testing.  I'm sure we all have our opinions and ideas about this one, but I'll save that for another post at another time.  I don't have the energy to get into it right now with my summer brain still in charge.  

Ahhhhh summer!!!  I just love it!!!

Oh, sorry - back to why I'm here today.  

Along with the changes in testing and teacher evaluation, there has also been a huge push for more specific interventions in the classroom in order to target individual skills as best we can.  Response to Intervention (RTI) is something that my district has been doing since it was introduced; however, this upcoming year will be our first year that we will have an actual RTI time in our schedules everyday and group our students across the grade level based on needs.  I know other states have been doing this for some time now, so we might be a little behind.  Either way, it will be an adjustment for all of our teachers.  

As with anything new, we teachers are immediately on the hunt for materials to use.  I knew I would be  searching like crazy come the fall and decided to start making my own packs to help with this RTI time.  I decided to start with Math because I think we will need more than what we currently have.  I started with where my lowest students might be since I knew they would need the most support and I will work my way on from there.  

So my thought process as I started creating consisted of 4 main aspects of what I wanted in an RTI pack.  Here is what I came up with:

#1 

Of course it is important to assess students to find out where they need help and what skills they have and don't have.  

#2 

Once you have assessed all of your students, you can group them by need and focus in on those specific skills within your groups.  

#3

I don't know about you, but I get bored doing the same thing over and over.  And I think my students do too.  I wanted more than just worksheets or printables to use within my groups.  I did include those things in my packs as well, because of course there is a time and place for this stuff; however, I knew I needed to create more fun and interactive ways to target the skills I was looking for.  You gotta keep it interesting and motivating in order for learning to happen.  

#4 

Finally, I knew that with any intervention, you need to be able to monitor progress along the way and adjust as needed.  Therefore, although I'm not a huge fan of over-assessing - again, there is a time and place for it.  In my mind, in order for RTI to work we need to collect as much data as we can in order to  help our students grow.  

So with those 4 things in mind, my first Math RTI pack was born:

This baby took me FOR-EV-ER!!!  It is 238 pages and focuses on 6 main skills for early number sense.  

I knew I needed to have some form of pre-assessment to help group students, but that I would also need to progress monitor along the way with further assessments as mentioned earlier.

And of course we needed lots of ways to practice, practice, practice!!!  I've included easy prep directions and ideas for each skill, task cards, practice printables, and interactive games or centers.  Everything that is shown in color is also available in black and white.  

I am so relieved to have something to start my year off with when we begin our RTI groups.  

I can't wait to finish the next packs that will continue to work through the Common Core standards in both Kindergarten and 1st Grade: 

Math RTI #2 - Operations and Algebraic Thinking

Math RTI #3 - Number and Operations in Base Ten

If you'd like to check out the pack in my store, click HERE or on the above picture.  

And if you are back to school already - I hope it's going great so far!!!

Thanks for stopping by!

My New Bundle of Joy

Awww - did you think I had some exciting news to share from the title of my post?  

Sorry to do that to you, but this post is about some fun PRODUCT BUNDLES that I have put together that I think will help teachers.  

A little while ago I posted about my Ultimate First Grade Starter Kit which is an All-in-One Back to School bundle.  

Today I want to share the next Bundle I put together - The Ultimate First Grade Math Bundle.  

This bundle includes some of my most popular math products at an amazing price because they are bundled together.  Here is what is included:

Meaningful Math

This was my favorite thing I used last year in my classroom.  Every morning we had Daily Math and the students complete a Calendar page and a Number of the Day page with different skills each day.  I was amazed at the progress my kids made with their number sense by the end of the year.  Even my little one who struggled SO much in September were rockin' it by June.  #proudmommy #imeanteacher #butsometimestheyfeelthesame

Show Me the Number

These Number Collages were so perfect for the beginning of the year.  We talked a lot about how to represent numbers in different ways.  This showed me a lot in those early weeks about my students.  

Number Bond Books

We started implementing a little Singapore Math into our school and when I saw these number bracelets I thought they were absolutely perfect!  I knew I needed to use these to help my kiddos compose and decompose numbers.  We talked a lot about fact families.  I made two sets of these so you could still use them in your classroom even if you don't make the bracelets.  

Common Core Math Centers Set 1

AND Set 2

These centers are my life savers!!!  

I use and reuse these centers in my classroom ALL YEAR LONG!!!

There are so many different options that each time you use them they can be different.  These are not your one and done centers.  Although I really love using seasonal and themed centers (and have a TON of them) - these are truly my favorite.  It doesn't matter what time of year it is, you can always pull these out when you are working on these concepts and get some much needed review.  I keep meaning to make more sets - maybe this will be the year for that.  

So if you are looking for a SUPER SAVING Bundle of Math products - look no further.  

Thanks for stopping by today :)

What are math products that you CANNOT LIVE WITHOUT????

What are some centers you would like to see me put into a Set 3??

Trying to catch up Part 2

Hi there - me again!

  I've just been having the hardest time keeping up with timely blog posts with all the rest of life that is happening that I had to do some quick catch up posts.  So this is part 2 of them.

Here's one thing I've realized about myself - my brain maxes out at 10.  

I've thought long and hard about it and I've found that I am only capable of doing about 10 things well and if something else comes in, then that means something on my list of 10 has to go.  I'm not proud of this, nor do I think it is a very good excuse, but it just seems to be the way things have been lately.  Let me give you the rundown of what I consider my daily list of things I do:

#1. Keep myself and my two girls clothed by doing laundry.  Not my poor husband because he does his own laundry.  Now I'm not even saying all our laundry gets done --- but we do all have clean clothes when we need them.  

#2. I keep food in the house by going grocery shopping

#3. I plan and cook the majority of our meals.  Which will sometimes be frozen chicken nuggets, but dangit I planned it and cooked it - so it's a meal!

#4. I drive and pick-up my kids at day care

#5. I keep our house somewhat picked up and clean 

#6. I pay the monthly bills

#7. I spend quality time with my husband and kids

#8. I spend time with the rest of my family and my friends

#9. I teach (that's like the black hole of time commitment - am I right?) - planning, creating, teaching, assessing, REPEAT!  This should count for more than 1, but I'll let it slide.

#10. And finally, I try to keep up with my blog and other social media like Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest

So there's my list of 10!  I know there are actually more, but those are the main ones I try to do on a daily basis.  

In the last month I have had some interrupting chickens (have you read that book - it's adorable!).  

 Anywho - I have been placed in charge of planning our school Christmas party (talk about pressure) and I also got a student teacher.  So when those two new items moved in - I guess my brain just kicked #10 right out of there to make room.  Or at least, that's the way I'm telling the story.  I just can't handle more than 10 important things I guess, and when it comes down to it - the other 9 things really are my priority so they cannot go anywhere.  I want to also make the note that I realize there are many people in the world who do all this and SO much more. I guess it just seems like there aren't enough hours in the day sometimes and I was just searching for a reason why I couldn't get everything done.

So without further ado -- here is part 2 of catching up on what's been going on in my classroom.  (I should have taken WAY more pictures, but that also was too much for this girl to handle I guess).

Veteran's Day activities from my Proud to Be an American unit



Handmade flag and Thank You Veterans necklaces.



This is a page out of a mini-book we use to introduce Veteran's Day.  Then the students wrote thank you letters to a veteran.

In reading we have been focusing on informational texts lately.  I made a little pack that is perfect for my first graders as we venture into informational texts called Be a Fact Finder.    In this pack you will find resources to use during guided reading, whole group reading, and independent reading.  Here are just a few pictures of what we've been using in guided reading, but I will post more about this pack at another time when I have more pictures to show.

In math we have been working very hard on strengthening our number sense.  Every day we do a number of the day in our Daily Math workbooks.  We also worked on some awesome number collages in the beginning of the year.  Our latest activities to help build our number sense come from my new Number Bond Books pack.  

The kids make a number bracelet for each number 1-12 using a pipe cleaner and beads.  (By the way, this comes from Singapore Math.  I've only been to one training on this, so I am no expert, but the number bracelet idea was one thing I took away from the training).

With each page of the book students use their beads to find the number bonds to that number, in this example it's 5.  

They draw the beads on the page in two different colors and then color in the tens frame with those same two colors.

Then they fill in the number bond and create the fact family that goes with it.

Once these are created I will be using them during whole group and in centers to work on true/false equations and number sentences with missing addends.  The bracelets are the perfect manipulative for kids to see how these numbers are all bonded together -- get it?  

If you are interested in these books, but don't have the time or resources to make the bracelets, I have also included all the books without the number bracelet part.  

For my last bit of information, I just want to talk for a minute about how much I LOVE Mr. Clean!!!!  More specifically, I love these Mr. Clean Magic Erasers!!!!  If you didn't already know it, these things really are magic.  I use them ALL the time to erase dry erase marker on anything laminated like our Number of the Day poster that I change each morning.  

The kids use them in centers, too!  When the tables and chairs in the classroom get really gross, I get the magic eraser wet and go to town cleaning up.  If our white board isn't erasing the best with the regular erasers, these will do the trick.  I use them on our flip chart that we have from our reading program Treasures, too.  I also use them at home to clean little kid's handprints off the walls and scuff marks off the door.  They really are amazing!  I just had to spend some time talking about it on the off-chance that anyone has yet to discover their amazingness!  

Ok - that's it!  Have a fantastic day!!!!  =)