Math!

Hey, there!

I LOVE teaching math! Looooove it! Our team has an awesome self-created curriculum that we follow too. One of our teachers went to the SUMS training a few years back, and it was all about how math should progress to make the most sense, especially in schools that serve low-income areas. So, we took the research-based progression, tweaked it here and there to make it work for us, and wrote all of our own lesson plans to go with it! It has been a serious labor of love, but when your district says they won't buy curriculum and they don't really want you using the old stuff either... You do what you gotta do! You create! It's very refreshing to be treated like the expert when it comes to educating our students. So, here are a few pictures of what we've been up to! (And, unfortunately, I do mean a FEW. It is soooo hard to remember to snap picture when you're, you know, teaching.)

Number Bracelets! We did these last week (or the week before) as the middle of our decomposing numbers unit. The recording pages are a freebie from TPT (find it here). I snag pipe cleaners whenever I see them at Target Dollar Spot, and the beads I found at Dollar Tree this year!

 Rekenreks! We made our rekenreks ourselves with window blinds, stretchy string, and beads. My team made these the same summer I got married, so they made mine for me! But we do a lot with the rekenreks to help us find different combinations of numbers.

And that's all I have... :(   It's SO hard to remember to take pictures when they are in the middle of working! I have been doing a little better by using Instagram to catch them in the moment doing math, so feel free to check that out here.

I will try to get some actual posts about actual lessons for both math and ELA because we do some awesome stuff!