Teaching Math is My favorite!

So third marking period is winding down. It's kind of crazy to think we are 75% through this school year! I teach in a departmentalized classroom, and each marking period I teach a different subject to our 1st grade lovelies!

This marking period was my favorite subject to teach, Math!! For me, math is super fun to teach. I love seeing the kids make those connections, and seeing them get excited about applying what they've learned to new situations. I am a 'math mind' and I think that's why I love to teach it.

I thought I'd take the time today to show you how I teach math.

This is what my lesson plan looks like when I introduce a new topic or standard:

When introducing a new topic, I make some sort of anchor chart. With the standard I was teaching in this lesson, 1.NBT.6, kiddos have to subtract multiples of 10s from multiples of 10s (60-40 or 80-30).

So I started out by showing them this on my anchor chart:

They immediately tell me, "4!", and I will say, "well how do you know it's four?" then one of them says, "well I know my math facts, and 4+5=9, so 9-5=4"

So then I will ask, "ok, so what's 90-50?" and it's like a light bulb went off! Hands shot up---"Ohhhh, ohhhh, 40!!!"

I then showed them a practice sheet, and explained them what to do. I gave them tens rods to use to help them solve. I also modeled drawing 10s and crossing out the tens we were subtracting.

I spend about 2 weeks or 10 days on a standard. The first day I introduce it, like the lesson outlined above. The rest of the days, I will introduce and play games that reinforce that skill or concept. I will do little check-ins or exit or entrance tickets---then I will pull small groups based off how they do on those assessments, while the others are playing those games, either with a partner or by themselves. The lesson plans for those days are differentiated by group. Our top performing student group, normally will all get the standard within 5 to 6 days, so the other days I will push them to a 2nd grade skill.

Next marking period I will be teaching FUNdations, our phonics program, along with pulling small groups for reading. I will be posting those lesson plans when I start teaching that :)

Take care!!