Hello Mrs Sykes

Who has a student who enjoys using manipulatives? Silly question, right? Do they like to use the iPad, too? Would they benefit from additional practice with CVC letter patterns or number sense? Then you simply must check out the Touchtronic Letters and Numbers from Junior Learning! I loved playing with the Touchtronic manipulatives last month!

Can't remember if I've told y'all about the very cool Math training I went through last year.  Very intense.  I learned a lot.  I spent at least 3 hours a month all year learning about 2nd grade math.  Best part: the class was split into 2 equal shares - mathematical thinking and fostering math talk. For real, it has changed me, as both a teacher and a mathematician.  Example: I now always calculate tip in my head.  (Really and truly, I was one of those folks who used the tip calculator on my phone... Not proud of it, just sayin.')  Another example, I never ever tell kiddos they "can't" take a larger number away from a smaller number.  Everyone know why?  Because a few years later, they'll be expected to learn about negative numbers!!  We'll be discouraging their mathematical thinking before it even begins.  Now I say, "If you subtract a larger number from a smaller number, you'll have to work with a negative number, and you won't...

I've been MIA lately... Usually I avoid the three-letter descriptions, but I've been buried in them lately.  IEP, LEP, PEP, and (my favorite) EASi (pronounced "easy" - but it's incredibly complicated!)  I'll be back to the Struggling Readers in Grades 3-5 series soon, after I tie up a few loose ends. One of those lose ends is my Math Training I've been attending this year.  It has been helpful in helping me understand the intricacies and common misconceptions in teaching 2nd grade math - fascinating stuff for a Lit. Geek like me. I'm being observed for the next 2 days in math with my students engaging in Math Talk in small groups.  I whipped up this little math talk prompt card for students to use when asking questions, and thought I'd share.   Click the pic below for a free copy .  :) For the record, I'm still loving the new laminator, and even laminated sets of these for my class and my math buddy's class, too!  For those of you ...

Good evening, bloggy friends!! I thought today I'd share a bit of my classroom with y'all. Warning: Long post ahead!!! First up: Post-it management. I don't know about you, but I'm so enamored with those little sticky sheets. We use them to predict. We use them to show our thinking. We use them to mark where we needed to infer. Today, we were using them to document our connections, and I finally had a method to keep them organized: this chart paper grid with the prompt on a whiteboard. Our CAFE wall: (though we refer to it often, we keep forgetting to add our new strategies!!) Thanks for hanging in there for the long post!! Have a wonderful rest of the week. :)

Sooooo...  Ever have the feeling that the blogger you've been stalking following really knows you and the problems you face?  I was reading The Clutter-Free Classroom, and her post about Math Workshop Rotations.  I nodded along as I read, thinking, "she understands!"  Check out her method of organizing Math Workshop rotations here !  I especially adore the way her rotations spell the word MATH. M=Math facts A=At your seat T=Teacher's choice H=Hands on manipulatives