Please tell me I am not the only one with a class that has turned into a bunch of little monsters this last week of school? They started off they day as chatty monsters then transformed into giggle monsters then the next thing I know, they were full blown throwing-pencils-across-the-table-and-running-in-circles monsters. I had three students absent today leaving me with only 7... Yes, you read that correctly. I only have 10 students in my class... I am sure you have now lost all sympathy for me after reading that, but let me plead my case: the majority of the class is boys (7/10) and they all have big enough personalities to make it feel like a class three times the size on a normal day. On a day like today when we have all checked out and are ready for our summer holiday, it feels like a class 5 times the size! If you don't believe me, feel free to pay us a visit. :)
Because we were already acting like monsters, I thought a great way to get some of our energy out while still incorporating math was by reading the book
Monster Musical Chairs. On each page, one monster is out of the game. After reading and discussing the book, we played our own game of musical chairs. As each child sat out, they helped me write the equation on the board. Once we played the game a couple of times, students went to math stations. When students came to work with me, they used these cute monsters pictures from
First Grade Best to make up their own subtraction problems.
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| I couldn't believe they were capable of sitting still long enough for me to take this picture! |
Another task I took on today was Step 2 of my library organization project. I gave my students the choice of either going to literacy stations or helping me sort through our library books. Only two chose to go to literacy stations and the rest were eager to help. I gave them each a box of books and told them to pick one book each. Those books were the start of our piles. Two students happened to both pick Dr. Seuss books which gave me the opportunity to show them how and why to put those two books together. Then the rest of us looked through our boxes to see if we had any other Dr. Seuss books to add. After we found all of the Dr. Seuss books, we moved on to alphabet books because another student had picked Chicka Chicka Boom Boom as their first book. It continued like this for awhile until we had most of the books sorted. There were a few that we couldn't decide where to put them. What do you do with the books that don't fit with any of the others? I may just put them in an unlabeled box for now until I build up more of a collection.
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| My floor after we were finished. |
I realized I have A LOT more piles of books than I do book boxes, so I will be on the look out for some more. If only we had a Target here...
