Classroom Management Grouping Freebie!

Happy Columbus Day everyone!

Today I thought I would share a fun & easy classroom management tool that is circling around the teaching world, and if you hang on until the very end of the post, a freebie awaits you!

I was asked a few weeks back on how I group my first graders for daily exercises.  I have used the even/odd numbering system for a few years now and it works wonders for me AND my kiddos!

We started at the end of August with using this board display to get introduced to our numbers and practice the even/odd (red/blue) patterns.

From afar, you can see a new "arrangement" on the front board.

Zooming in here, I use the even/odd groupings for our daily sight word fluency poem meetings.  The odd team meets at our pond carpet, and the even team meets at the library carpet.

A third favorite way to group throughout the day is for partnerships.

At this time of the year in first grade, I still need to "coach" and have some imput on making sure students understand the HOW and WHY of choosing a good-fit reading partner.

I simply use the best-fit teams to pair up and students stick with that reading partner all day.

I could make a second set and differentiate for math groups as well.

Now, I want to know how YOU group your kiddos!

Inquiring minds want to know so please leave a comment and share your expertise or links to great ideas!

As promised, a little freebie for you!

Click on the image above.

Have a wonderful week friends!

Julie DiBenedetto

Pumpkin-Themed Freebies!

Happy fall my friends! It's Sarah from Sarah's First Grade Snippets. Are you gearing up for some pumpkin-themed activities with your class? Well then you've come to the right place!

I posted some pumpkin freebies a couple years ago and I've recently updated them with new fonts and clip art AND I added one more page!

Head on over to my blog for some pumpkin goodies!

The Little Green Witch

Hi everyone!  It's Megan from Mrs. Wheeler's First Grade!  Happy weekend!  Time is just zippin' by, isn't it?!  It seems like once school starts, things don't really slow down until New Year's.  I can't believe Halloween is in 3 weeks!  Speaking of Halloween, I have a fun new pack that I'd love for you to check out!  It's called "The Little Green Witch Book Companion."  It's a fun little ditty that goes along with the book The Little Green Witch.  There are writing pieces, a vocab activity, abc order, a word search, a craft, and more!

Stop by my blog to check it out in more detail!  There is also a fun witch Math freebie that you can snag while you're there!

xo
Megan

easy peasy writing workshop anchor charts

Yowza. October. I can't believe how quickly this fall is going! Maybe it's my pregnancy (I've got 5 weeks left for this bun), but it seems like time is going by super fast at this point. So, I've got a lot on my mind, but thankfully, I'm a pretty organized person so all is well!  Something I've been working on really hard this year is amping up my Writing Workshop. For the last 4 years, I've developed a pretty good routine that I am very pleased with. You can read more about how I run my Writing Workshop here. One thing I was sick of doing was putting a lot of energy into making an anchor chart, laminating it and only once in a while getting a decent lamination job (can I get an amen or is our laminator the only one that sometimes sucks?!).  Then there's the whole #aintnobodygottimeforthat portion. So, I decided enough was enough. I'll make something that I can easily print off and not freak out if it gets ruined or I want to add something later. Voila! I've got over 10 done so far and will be adding more soon!

 
I put them on sale for the next few days, so if you are looking for an easy way to introduce a minilesson, grab them now!  And, if you'd like to check out how exactly these bad boys work first, you can click below to download this FREEBIE!

I hope you have a fantastic week!

Motivational Halloween Poster Freebie

I love Halloween.  Maybe, it's the candy.  Maybe, I like dressing up and being a goof.  Or both.  Whatever the reason is...I enjoy it.  With that being said, I'm passing along some Halloween Motivational Posters.  Here's one below.

The posters follow these three themes:

• When You Try
• When You Imagine
• When Complain

About a year ago Comcast was running commercials revolving around the idea that not having cable could lead to serious negative consequences.  I took the idea and fleshed it out a little more to fit the Halloween mold.  Each poster is a full size standard sheet of paper.

You can stop by and grab this forever freebie.  I made it around this time a year ago and completely forgot about it until I was going through files earlier in the day.

                                     

Enjoy your week, your freebie, and party on.

I really want this as my costume this year.

Apple Tasting Freebies

Hi everyone! It's Sarah here from Sarah's First Grade Snippets. Today I have a little snippet that works for all of our primary grades! 

You already know I love me some apples! It is one of my favorite units ever! I've already blogged about my apple unit, but I had to add one more thing. This isn't part of my apple unit, but I'm giving it away as a freebie for you all today. I made a way less cute version of this my first year of teaching first grade. I think I even might have shared it here on my blog a few years ago. But that is so embarrassing because it is really not cute! I think I even drew in my own faces, which is not a pretty sight. Well, I've updated it. I have two freebies for you today. (One you can get here and one you can get over at my blog.)

I was inspired because I had my own apple tasting with my family last night. My son is doing his own apple unit in kindergarten and he wanted to do a tasting. Of course I was super stoked about that. The apple tasting was one of my favorite parts! It's also a great way to get kids started with using their senses and recoding their "data". 

Visit my blog to download this freebie.

If you want your students to write about it, I also made this little freebie:

You can download this right freebie here!

Whooooo's Ready for Some sPoOkY Math?! FREEBIE!

This is always a favorite activity for my kiddos during the Halloween season. It's great for teaching or reinforcing fact families.

You can either have kiddos draw out a domino & create a fact family from those numbers...or pre-program the numbers for them. After writing all three digits on the roof of the house, we 'build' the house. The facts for the fact family are written on ghosts which are tucked behind the shutters. Spooooooky!

I love that this project can be easily tweaked for kiddos who do not celebrate Halloween. All you have to do is provide some 'non-Halloween' color choices for some of the pieces. Instead of using ghosts, you can use people. Easy peasy! Kiddos can make their own choice whether to make a haunted house or a regular house.

To grab a template to use in your classroom, just click the graphic below & download straight from my dropbox! Happy Math Haunting!!