First Grade Fun!

Whew!  Summer school is completed and now it's time for some serious blogging.  I am thrilled to have a place to share the stuff that I've made to make my own teaching life easier and I hope that those of you who read this will enjoy it as well.

I've taught math and reading Intervention to students in first through 8th grade.  I have amassed a lot of tips and tricks that are not only useful but simple and practical.  I've often thought to myself in the middle of a lesson, "What I really need is ___________ !"  I would often write a note to myself and proceed to make such item later that day or week.

One of the most valuable tools when working with my first grade math students has been my ten frame flash cards.  Click on the link and you can pick them up from my store at TpT.  They are big enough to be used as a flash card for a small group but easy enough for kids to handle on their own if working with a partner.  They are printed on index cards (trust me, most home printers have the ability to print on index cards, think of them as a smaller envelope if you will) so they're sturdy enough and don't need to be trimmed.  Yay! However, I would definitely laminate them if you plan on using them often.  I would also plan on making several sets of them because they could turn into not only a tool for teacher led lessons but also you could plop these babies in a math center and have the kids write out their math sentences using the cards.

Sample ten frame card.

I will use these in several ways.  When we are learning to identify the dots on a dot cube, I often will teach them to recognize the dots in a ten frame in the same manner.  Once they can tell me what number they see, I work in different questions.  For example, when I flash the nine card as above, I would ask, "How many more would I need to fill my ten frame?"  As the kids become more fluent with identifying their numbers this way, I step up the expectations and ask them to recite just the number of dots that are missing.

After a time I will then combine both existing dots and missing dots into an addition fact for them to recite to me ("Nine plus one equals ten!") but that usually takes a couple of weeks to build those skills.The kiddos get used to associating nine and one together which is a precursor to my lesson on combinations that make ten which I call, "Best Friends."

Best Friends is the idea that numbers like to be with other numbers, just like kids like to be with their best friends. We learn how 9 really likes 1, 8 really adores 2, 7 is thrilled with three, 6 is wild about 4 and 5 and 5 are not only Best Friends, they're twins!  Having this vocabulary and these number combinations come in very handy later on when kids are having to mentally combine larger numbers.  For example, when they are trying to figure out 24 plus 7, I teach them that the 4 in 24 really wants to be with a 6.  They pull a 6 from the seven to make the next ten (which is 30) and are left with 1.  30 + 1 is easy peasy and they never needed to get out a paper and pencil!

I wish I would have had these strategies for mental math when I was in school.  They would have saved me a ton of time.  Sigh.

How else would you use the ten frame flash cards?  Let me know in the comments section because I'm always looking for new ways to reinforce the concept of ten with my kiddos.

Enjoy!
RW&BT