K-2 teachers love to teach using picture books! Here is a list of books suggested by the Math Learning Center for teaching mathematics concepts.
Counting & Number Sense
Ten, Nine, Eight by Molly Bang The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle 1,2,3 to the Zoo by Eric Carle Let’s Count by Tana Hoban Two Ways to Count to Ten by Ruby Dee 12 Ways to Get to 11 by Eve Merriam (used in Bridges Grade 2) 365 Penguins by Jean-Luc Fromental
Adding & Subtracting Each Orange Had 8 Slices by Paul Giganti Rooster's Off to See the World by Eric Carle 12 Ways to Get to 11 by Eve Merriam (used in Bridges Grade 2)
Multiplying Two of Everything: A Chinese Folktale by Lily Toy Hong Amanda Bean's Amazing Dream by Cindy Neuschwander Anno's Mysterious Multiplying Jar by Mitsumasa Anno
Dividing One Hundred Hungry Ants by Elinor J Pinczes (used in Bridges Grade 2) The Doorbell Rang by Pat Hutchins
Time
Bats Around the Clock by Kathi Appelt Telling Time with Big Mama Cat by Dan Harper Cluck O'Clock by Kes Gray
Money Benny's Pennies by Pat Brisson (used in Bridges Grade K) Jenny Found a Penny by Trudy Harris Jelly Beans for Sale by Bruce McMillan Arthur’s Funny Money by Lillian Hoban (used in Bridges Grade 2)
Problem Solving Anno's Hat Trick by Mitsumasa Anno The Grapes of Math by Greg Tang
Fractions Jump, Kangaroo, Jump! by Stuart J. Murphy Fraction Action by Loreen Leedy Fraction Fun by David A. Adler
Geometry
So Many Circles, So Many Squares by Tana Hoban
A Cloak for the Dreamer by Aileen Friedman (used in Bridges Grade 2)
Shapes, Shapes, Shapes by Tana Hoban Cubes, Cones, Cylinders, & Spheres by Tana Hoban
Measurement How Big Is a Foot? by Rolf Myller Measuring Penny by Loreen Leedy Millions to Measure by David M. Schwartz (used in Bridges Grade 5) Counting on Frank by Rod Clement
Like many teachers, I'm all about PD and planning over the summer. One subject that hasn't been going so well in my room for the past few years is math, and I want to do something about it! We use a state approved curriculum called Stepping Stones that is all online. Students have workbooks, but there is not a teacher's guide or independent activities. I can download daily lesson plans, and need to supplement extra independent activities outside of the workbooks. It takes a lot of extra work for me to plan for math and I don't feel like my students really get all the concepts after I give the unit tests.
I had heard about Math Daily 3 a few years ago and implemented a version of it, but then abandoned when I moved into my current position. I'm not really sure why, but all I know is what I'm doing now doesn't make me feel good as a teacher. I know I need to focus on improving my math instruction.
I get the weekly emails from The Sisters and saw that they offer online courses now. I quickly signed up for the Math Daily 3 course and finally dug into my Second Edition book that contains information about implementing the Math Daily 3. The course includes weekly videos, LMS platform where I can ask questions and connect with other participants, downloads, and a 3-month subscription to the Daily CAFE website.
From reading the new book, I have found some changes that the Sisters have made to their Daily 5 framework from the first book. I love that these ladies are still in classrooms, working with real kids, and making improvements to their practices over the years. Isn't that what successful teachers do?
There is a whole chapter dedicated to their core beliefs as teachers:
Trust and Respect
Community
Choice
Accountability
Brain Research
Transitions and Brain/Body Breaks
As a constructivist teacher, I believe in these principles as well. They align so well with the work I do in arts-integration, OCDE Project GLAD (R), and also my recent training with Responsive Classrooms and their positive discipline techniques. Its refreshing to feel so validated with my practices when reading professional books and literature!
The Sisters believe in a 10-step process to building stamina and holding students accountable for their choices during independent work time. You can get a printable version of these steps on their website {here}. I love how reflection is built into this plan and how children clearly see and know what is expected of them.
Identify What is to Be Taught
Set a Purpose and Create a Sense of Urgency
Record Desired Behaviors on an I-Chart
Model Most-Desirable Behaviors
Model Least-Desirable Behaviors, Then Most-Desirable
Place Students Around the Room
Practice and Build Stamina
Stay Out of the Way
use a Quiet Signal to Bring Students Back to the Gathering Place
Conduct a Group Check-In; Ask "How Did It Go?"
So just like how teachers post reading strategies they've taught whole group on a CAFE board, teachers make a math board and post games they have taught whole group that students can choose from. It's important to organize materials so students can quickly and easily get everything they need to play the games.
I have some Math Station Posters in my TpT store that would definitely work for Math Daily 3. I actually just updated them to include Math Writing. I had used them for station rotations, but they could be set up as a math board, too.
I also have math tub labels for organizing your manipulatives. I think visual labels are so important in lower grades, but also in upper grades for EL students who are still learning foundational English.
How does the Math Daily 3 fit into your math instruction routines?
Throughout my work with the Maui Arts and Cultural Center and the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, I have gotten the chance to work with three amazing music teacher artists: Imani Gonzalez, James McCarthy, and Frank Leto.
Imani Gonzalez is a professional jazz/world vocalist and teaching artist. She lives in Washington D.C. where she works in schools and for the Kennedy Center. Contact info here.
In Imani's session, I learned how to explore world cultures through music and artifacts. We even got a wonderful book written by Imani with a CD of her singing the songs and a teacher's guide included. The book takes you through three different cultures: India, Senegambia (the region of Senegal and Gambia in Africa), and Brazil.
The book was named for the Hindu song Dhimiki. Dhimiki roughly translates to: The universe is dancing to the rhythm of the sounds vibrating from the drums. The whole song only has 5 words: Dhimiki, dhim, nache, bola, nath.
Here is a 2nd grade social studies standard that fit perfectly with this unit: SS 2.6.1 Describe ways in which own and other cultures express their cultural beliefs and practices through music and art.
And this is a great way to hit tons of fine arts standards: how art connects to cultures, music standards with rhythm, beat, melody, musical notation, recognizing instruments, physical movement, and dance.
James McCarthy is a professional vocalist and guitarist in Honolulu, HI. He also is a drama teacher, with both an M.Ed. and an MFA in acting. More info can be found here.
In James' workshop, he taught us about place-based songwriting. First, he had us imagine a place that makes us happy - any place. It could be where we grew up, where we once lived, where we visited before, where we live now. He had us brainstorm words and write metaphors to describe this place. I chose the beach at Hulopoe Bay on Lana‘i where we used to live. It's a gorgeous white sand beach with great snorkeling and sometimes even dolphins come into the bay!
After we got our descriptions and words, we listened to this song: https://youtu.be/sBVMlYqTxwg (skip to 0:40 for the start of the song). We wrote our songs to go with the tune of Wai Ola (Water of Life).
To incorporate songwriting in my classroom, I would write a class song. We could think of a special place we have all been to, or somewhere on campus, like the garden. We would brainstorm the descriptions altogether. Then listen to the song and write words to go with the tune from our descriptions. I know that my first graders would love this process! It would be a great way to build community in the beginning of the year to write a class song - they could even perform it at Open House!
Frank Leto is a professional musician and experienced Montessori teacher in New Mexico. Find more info here.
Frank taught us all about teaching rhythm and musicality to students. The best part is, his CDs do all the heavy lifting! His Repeat After Me CD is my favorite, as it introduces instruments that students can play alongside the songs. You will need tambourines, rhythm sticks, maracas, triangles, hand drums and cymbals.
Here is a simple exercise you can do with your class as a warm up!
For the past 3.5 years, I have been teaching tap dance classes in the evenings for our local theater company Maui OnStage. It started because I love to tap and the other teacher wanted to phase out. Now I have taken continued education through the American Tap Dance Foundation, Karida Griffith, and Hillary Marie at iTapOnline. Tap dance is more than a hobby, it's a passion and stress reliever. I always leave class so energized and soul-filled.
I previously taught at Pōmaika‘i Elementary, an arts-integrated school on Maui. There, I loved to teach my firsties about artists. We drew chalk cats like Paul Klee, finger-painted impressionist ponds like Claude Monet, and painted close-ups of flowers like Georgia O'Keeffe. I wanted to teach my students about famous dancers, too. Inspired by Misty Copeland's children's book Firebird (affiliate link), my students learned about her life, a little about ballet, and created a beautiful torn paper firebird art piece. You can find that unit I created about Misty in my TpT store for free.
In my tap dance classes, I always bring in a bit of tap dance history. In my studies at the American Tap Dance Foundation, I learned dances from the Copasetics repertory. The Copasetics were a group of tap dance soloists who were dedicated to preserving the memory of Bill "Bojangles" Robinson. I teach my students the Bill Robinson time step and the Bill Robinson turning flap sequence. We watch videos of his stair dance, his tap scene in Stormy Weather, and his duet with Shirley Temple in The Little Colonel.
I created this unit to help my students learn about his life as we learn his steps and his legacy.
Start with the book "Rap a Tap Tap" by Leo and Diane Dillon.
Then show students these quote posters.
Use the vocab cards to preteach vocabulary from the reading passage or mini book. Use the questions for a class discussion or for students to complete with a partner or on their own.
Finish your unit with a timeline to discuss important life events and to learn a little bit more about Bill Robinson's life.
Don't forget to watch the video clips I listed in the unit and help students recognize similarities between the dances and start to identify Bill Robinson's "up on the toes" style.
I hope you have so much fun teaching your students about Bill "Bojangles" Robinson! Download the unit FOR FREE from my TpT store.
When I taught 1st grade, my school used the Wonders reading curriculum. This post is all about some ideas we used for Unit 3, Week 5 and the essential question “How do we get our food?”
Make sure to scroll down to the bottom for a fun freebie!
The stories focused on how milk gets from the cow to our morning cereal bowls and how foods we eat everyday are made. The interactive read aloud is the Little Red Hen (except they say she’s collecting corn – not sure why they changed it from the traditional story of wheat). The paired selection focuses on nutrition and the food groups.
During my science block, I tied in more nutrition lessons to help students understand the concept. We focused on this health standard from our Hawaii Content and Performance Standards: HE.1.3 Describe the benefits associated with a healthy diet.
I love using OCDE Project GLAD (R) strategies in my classroom, so I started our learning with songs and chants. I wrote a Bugaloo chant and taught it to my students. I write mine on chart paper and alternate the color of marker I use. The title is one color, the chorus another, stanza 1 another color, and stanza 2 is the last color. This helps students see the structure of the poem. Older students don’t need this color coding scaffold anymore. I teach the poem line by line, then we go through and identify “clunkers”. Those are words students either cannot read or do not know what they mean. I highlight the clunkers right on the chart paper and then teach the word by giving a definition, break it into chunks and show how to read it, and either draw a little sketch next to it, or create a little motion students can do the next time we read the poem that will remind them of the meaning. On the student copy, they draw sketches in the box of what they learned from the chant. It helps them process the new information.
The next thing we did was a Healthy/Unhealthy photo sort. I passed out the photos to the students and had them turn to a neighbor to read the word and discuss if they had a healthy or unhealthy food. Then, one at a time, students came up to the chart and taped their food under the corresponding heading. A few of the foods were tricky (on purpose), like the fruit juice. Students thought it should be listed under healthy since it’s made from fruit. But then I told them how most commercial fruit juice from the store contains too much sugar, therefore making it unhealthy. Some of these foods might be controversial, like milk and dairy. Please use your judgement and research when approaching any foods. That's why I didn't create an answer key - this activity was a great way for my students to discuss what their family eats without judgement and we were able to confirm ideas through the text in our reading curriculum.
We ended the lesson with an exit slip (called a Learning Log in the OCDE Project GLAD (R) model). On the left side, students wrote and sketched one of the unhealthy foods and wrote why it’s considered unhealthy. On the right side, students wrote and sketched one of the healthy foods that they like and why they like it. Some of the sentence frames I had the kids use were:
________ is an unhealthy food because it has too much ___________.
A healthy food I like to eat is ________. It is healthy because ___________.
In a learning log, the text (or book) side is where students write about what they learned from the text. On the you (or smiley face) side, they make connections to what they learned.
Next, we watched the BrainPOP Jr. video on the Food Groups. Using a plain paper plate, students drew a line down the middle, to divide the plate in half. They then drew lines to make the larger vegetable and grains sections and smaller fruits and proteins section. After we watched about each food group in the video, I paused and they drew foods on their plates. Susan Jones’ nutrition unit on TpT has a worksheet that would work well for this activity, too.
The last thing we did was to make our own food! I asked parents to send in 1 quart of heavy cream (a 1/2 cup each for 4 groups of 5 kids), oranges, whole grain crackers, and plastic knives. From home, I brought my KitchenAid mixer with the citrus juicer attachment and 4 mason jars with lids.
First we made butter. I poured a 1/2 cup of heavy cream into each mason jar, filling the jar up halfway. We added a spring of rosemary to each jar from our school garden. I screwed on the lids. Students got into groups of five and sat in a circle. I set a timer for 1 minute and one student in each group shook the jar. When the timer went off, they handed it to the person to the left of them (reinforcing “clockwise”), who then shook the jar for a minute. Each group went around the circle twice, continuously shaking the jar.
After their butter turned, I dumped out the buttermilk (my baker mother-in-law would be horrified!), then gave the kids a plate of crackers and a plastic knife for spreading their butter. We talked about how hard it was to shake up their butter, but also how this was healthier since we didn’t add any salt or sugar that is unhealthy for us. And how hard work pays off (like in the Little Red Hen) because now we have a delicious snack.
Next we made fresh squeezed orange juice. I cut the oranges in half and the students got to press half of an orange onto the citrus juicer as it spun around. This is definitely easier to use than a hand press or handheld juicer. They each got about a 1/4 cup of juice, since we talked about how even though we didn’t add any sugar to our juice, that fruit juice has natural sugars and we don’t want to drink too much; this is only a treat. The kids had fun using the juicer.
The last thing we did was a lesson idea from my colleague Mel. We read the story Gregory the Terrible Eater. Then students wrote on writing paper about healthy and unhealthy foods. You could have them write a five sentence paragraph (maybe using the 4-Square method to plan it out) or sentence frames with a word bank. Then I gave them cut outs of fruits and veggie clipart from EduClips and they glued torn paper on top to create a collage. We added a little crayon-colored image of Gregory as a finishing touch (my colleague drew his outline). They came out beautiful!
My colleague Mel's pineapple example
This was one of the more memorable weeks for the kids due to all the fun extra lessons I added into our core curriculum. Grab my freebie with the Healthy Foods Sort (paper or digital), exit slip, and Nutrition Bugaloo!
I know I'm about 3 years late to this party - but I've had the book Worksheets Don't Grow Dendrites on my shelf since 2015 and I knew I needed to read it! Since I've been working in an Arts-Integrated school, my teaching has really transformed. I don't do nearly the same amount of crafts as I used to, students create their own graphic organizers and Thinking Maps in composition books, and my reading instruction doesn't include the same amount of comprehension worksheets as it used to. With today's education focusing on brain research and appropriate development, it seemed like a good time to crack this book open and dive on in.
Marcia Tate (as seen in this YouTube Video) starts the book off with two scenarios:
Mrs. Taylor, a civics teacher, who gives lectures day in and day out. Sometimes her lectures go on for the whole class! She doesn't use visuals and expects students to take notes on what she says. She has them round-robin read (which we know is a huge no-no for a whole group setting). Not surprising - few of them are listening or engaged.
Mr. Stewart is a civics teacher next door, but he has different techniques for his classroom. He uses graphic organizers, checks for understanding with questioning techniques, and even gets students involved in a simulation activity to learn the branches of the government. He has few behavior problems and his students excitedly learn the content.
As 21st Century teachers, we know that they ways we were taught in school just don't work anymore. They weren't engaging then and they aren't engaging now. We want ALL of our students to succeed, not just the ones who are intrinsically motivated. Tate has come up with 20 strategies to ensure that students are learning and having fun at the same time:
brainstorming and discussion
drawing and artwork (Yay for arts-integration!)
field trips
games
graphic organizers, maps, and webs
humor
manipulatives, experiments, labs, and models
metaphors, analogies, and similies
mnemonic devices
movement (more arts-integration!)
music, rhythm, rhyme, and rap (even more arts-integration!)
project-based and problem-based learning
reciprocal teaching and cooperative learning
role plays, drama, pantomimes, and charades (arts-integration again!)
storytelling
technology
visualization and guided imagery (ahem, arts-integration)
visuals
work-study and apprenticeships
writing
As you can see, there are quite a lot of connections between Tate's 20 strategies and arts-integration. There are also a lot of connections with visual learning, which is helpful for struggling learners and multi-language learners. We know that long gone is the Sage on the Stage, that we need to be the Guide on the Side. If you are interested in expanding your repertoire or even validating some practices you already do, I suggest checking out this book. I was not compensated for providing this review, I just love reading teacher books and sharing them with you.
Which strategy are you excited to learn more about or try? Which is one that you already do?
