Math centers, Pete, phonics, and readers notebooks

Time to catch up on what we've been up to!!

I've been teaching addition strategies in my whole-group math time, like doubles, near doubles, and making ten. We've been spending a little longer on making ten then I thought we would, but in all honesty, I really want them to be able to do mentally, so I keep on working with it! 

We started off using unifix cubes, and doing what I call "Build, borrow, write" Build the first two numbers (with 2 different colors), then borrow from one color to make the other color 10, then write your NEW math problem....does this make sense???

While I've been pulling my struggling kids working on this, my class has been working on my 2-Digit number sense centers. 

We've also been trying to finish our Pen pal letters...to JAPAN! Woo!! I've only got a few finished, addressed, and ready for delivery, so hopefully by THIS Friday, I'll have the class set ready to go!

Last week, we finished our Pete the Cat unit.  

We compared 2 of the books, using a double bubble (thinking maps!

Which, the students wrote in their Reading Journal.

And for their "test" I had them compare 2 other Pete the Cat books, this one was I Love my White Shoes and Four Groovy Buttons. They did it ALL on their own...and most of them did REALLY good!!

Last week, we worked on our Floss Words....words that have one syllable and end in F, L, S or Z. They did the matching activity in my Floss Pack

and then we put them on in our phonics notebook

I've had a few people question about using notebooks all the time and if it's time consuming getting them to color, cut, and glue in their book. Well....my friends, let me introduce you to my best friend...the timer! lol. For real. Each group has a timer (Each student has a job in the group, and one of them is the timer.)

Check out my post {HERE} on my group jobs! There's a Team Job Freebie!

Anyway, when I tell my time keepers to set the timers, then it's like magic how quickly they work! Do all of them finish?? No, of course not, BUT it makes them realize that we are moving on and they need to pay attention to me, or whatever we are doing at that time.

What timers am I using?? I bought a six-pack of timers from Lakeshore.

(this girl had a minute left before the timer went off!)

What have we started today?? Text features!! I don't know why this is such a hard concept, but I'm sure glad that we have Nicole Shelby's Interactive Reading Notebook to use! I love it!!

Today, we put in her inserts of the notebook, and then labeled everything (during whole group). Then, during small group lessons, I had them come back WITH their reading journals to use as a reference to find non-fiction text features in the Scholastic News that we are reading in small groups.

Tomorrow is an early release, after we just had yesterday off (teacher inservice day). I kind of feel like I dont' have enough time to teach everything I want! lol