Math Lately - Journals and Number Talks |

The past few weeks have been state standardized testing weeks at my school.

The 3rd and 4th graders took their test the last week of April and the 1st and 2nd graders took their test the first week of May.

I am very lucky that I don't have to give my kindergarteners a standardized test.

We did, two years ago, and it was a nightmare.

Then the next year, my county decided that testing kindergarteners was developmentally inappropriate.

Correct!

Even though we are exempt from the tests, our whole school is affected by them.

So for the past two weeks we have had no morning encore classes.

That means no bathroom break for me until 11:20, yikes!

That also means no break from our classroom for my kids until lunch.

So we have been having fun with GoNoodle.

If you have not tried GoNoodle, you need to do so now!

There are Zumba Kid videos, running videos, stretching videos, coordination videos. And my personal favorite, the indoor recess videos!

There are currently ten indoor recess videos and they each have a collection of videos from stretching, to zumba, to running in place, to balance, and then a cool down.

They are perfect because you can pick which one you want to do based on how long it is.

I think my kids love the field trip videos best.

They have to duck, run, move to the side, etc, in order to get to their destination. And then you read fun facts about the destination.

One of my girls said "An ear?! We worked ourselves to death for 5 minutes to take a field trip to an ear?!"

Yep, you did!

And you might be a little dramatic.

There are also balance and deep breathing videos.

We do these when we need to calm down.

So with no breaks in the mornings these past couple of weeks, we've had more time to go deeper into our learning.

Which I love!

My kids beg for math journals everyday, but some days we just don't have time.

Well they have gotten their wish because we've been able to do math journals every day for a few weeks now.

I made these subtraction journal prompts for my class, but I hope to post them on TpT this summer.

We've also had time to do Number Talks everyday!

We've practiced with ten frames and dot cards, so it was time to pull out the rekenreks.

I made these over spring break. You can check out how I made them here.

First I showed them mine and we talked about how to clear our board (push all the beads to the left).

Then I showed them how they could use them to show different numbers by counting the beads.

We also talked about how to take care of them and handle them gently.

Then I passed them out and let them have a few minutes to play, practice counting beads, and clearing their boards.

Then I started asking them to show me different numbers.

I started with single digits.

I just wanted them to practice counting their beads as the moved them to the right.

Then I had them show me a number, still single digits, but they had to use some green beads and some pink beads to make the number.

I will totally use these next year when we begin composing and decomposing numbers.

They did really good with this and had fun turning to their Peanut Butter and Jelly partner to see if their partner built the number the same way as them or differently.