Math Strategies

 Throughout my student teaching I quickly picked up on the fact that not all students learn the same way. I had read about students all learning differently and I had experienced learning differently than other classmates but I had never actually taught diverse students. Now that I have had the chance to teach a diverse group of learners I can understand the true importance of teaching from several different approaches. I realized that some students can learn multiple strategies and apply the one that works best for a given problem. I also learned that some students are dependent on a single strategy and cannot grasp the idea of other strategies. These posters were made by my mentor teacher's past interns and I was happy to have them in the classroom so I could use them as a resource. It is truly important to make sure every student is learning, even if it means teaching one lesson five different ways.

Even or Odd

Cute song for even and odd:

There was a farmer who had a pig
and even was his name-o
0-2-4-6-8, 0-2-4-6-8, 0-2-4-6-8 
and even was his name-o

Around the Clock

I just took on teaching math and got the joy of teaching time to my wonderful first graders! Some materials I found very useful were a big teacher clock with colored hands, and small individual clocks for each child. The standard states that students will be able to read time to the hour and half hour. I began by reading "What Time is It, Mr. Crocodile?" The kids really loved this book and they helped me guess what time would come next. As I read I wrote all the times shown on the clocks in the book up on the smart board. I continued the lesson by introducing different types of clocks, pointing out the hour and minute hand. We practiced learning these hands by writing the word minute and seeing it was longer than the word hour. I also said, "When I say minute hand you say long hand." "When I say long hand, you say minute hand." then, "When I say short hand you say hour hand." "When I say hour hand, you say short hand." The first day we just saw how the hands moved around the clock and learned how to read time as "o'clock" when the minute hand is pointing to the 12. After practicing reading several different hours, we did a closing called "ticket out the door." Students had to stand up one by one and tell me what time I was showing them on the clock. Each student had to read a different time before lining up for recess.

Definition Squares

My friend who is student teaching in 4th grade made these great sheets to help students remember the definition of mean, median, mode, and range. I thought this was a great idea and could be created for several different subjects to help students remember new lessons. For example I could make a first grade one with penny, nickel, dime, quarter and on the inside have how much each is worth and how many make a dollar.

Counting Coins

I never thought of counting coins using a 100's chart! This is a wonderful idea that I cannot take credit for because I stole it from my mentor teacher. Students use their 100's chart to count money and it helps them so much. They start with the coins with the largest amount. In the picture above the student had one quarter so he place it on the 25. He also had 3 dimes so he placed those on the 35, 45, and 55. After the dimes he placed his nickle on the 60. Then the four pennies were placed on 61, 62, 63, 64. The student now knows he has 64 cents!