Color Tiles, Craft Sticks and Patterns

To practice patterns, I like to use color tiles and craft sticks. The students separate each repeating section using a craft stick. I like to have them repeat the core 3 times. This way the pattern has time to develop but doesn't go on forever! In these patterns the students each repeated the pattern twice then rotated to the next chair and repeated their neighbor's pattern the third time. I like to have the students think beyond just color patterns into the positions of the blocks as well. One student even chose to do two patterns at once. After the students add the 3rd repetition, they remove it before rotating around to the next person's desk. We rotate anywhere between 10 to 15 times giving the students lots of practice on a different child created pattern each time. Photos of these patterns will be printed and placed in the pattern work station for the kids to practice again and again. The relevance to their own creations captures their attention and the rigor involved in extending some of their patterns challenges their minds. A great combination! :)

Shapely Pets!

For short e week we studied and read about pets. Since we were also studying 2 D shapes in math, we combined the two and created Shape Pets! The students then used the names of the shapes in our observational comment writing lessons for the week (Write from the Beginning) to construct descriptive sentences about their shape pet. I also placed extra shapes, paper and shape books in the shapes work station for kids to create and write about more shapely pets!

Graph Puzzles

A great way to help kids understand the components of a graph and how all the parts "fit together" is to make puzzles out of the graphs you've made together in class and have the students practice putting the puzzles together. I transferred the information from the large graphs we made as a class to smaller paper. I just quickly hand wrote these, made copies and cut them apart. (I am not too fancy as you may have noticed :) As they build the puzzles, you'll hear groups using saying things like, "This is the title. It goes at the top." OR "The numbers have to go in counting order at the bottom." We used these puzzles earlier in the year, but as the year progresses, I'll cut the puzzles into more pieces. I think kids need A LOT of practice with puzzles to build thinking, reasoning and memory skills anyway so why not get the most bang for your buck? I have added these puzzles to my graphing work station. The kids really like doing them. One tip...make sure to copy each graph on different colored paper or mark the back of each piece with a unique color or symbol so if the pieces of different puzzles get mixed up, it's easy for the kids to sort out. Mark a plastic bag with the matching color or symbol for storage.