Vegas Day 4

How fast time flies!  It seems like only yesterday Jill and I were meandering around the streets and hotels of Vegas trying to find our way to registration for the national I Teach K! kindergarten conference and now it was our last day and we looked like pros because we had finally found the perfect route to and from our hotel to the conference hotel.  Ok, we didn’t look like pros but we at least had the confidence to go walking through hotels as big as a whole city block like we knew what we were doing.  Having a teacher conference in Vegas was probably the biggest influx of good manners that city has seen in a lonnnnng time. 

Note: Apparently, Deanna Jump has an app that notifies her every time she is mentioned anywhere on the web.  I have no idea how that works but I’m going to give you her website & Teachers Pay Teachers (TPT) store website down in the section where I talk about what I learned in her session today.  Mrs. Jump if you actually do get notified and you come visit my blog, could you leave a comment?  How cool would it be for my first ever blog comment to come from THE Mrs. Jump?  I’m not holding my breath but it’s my summer of nothingness so I have nothing to lose. 

 Oh Dear What Could the Weather Be?

Sherri Strating
Sherri’s weather presentation was filled with many good ideas.  I thought many of her ideas were adaptable for upper grades.  She stressed how important it is to make sure you are using the correct vocabulary when talking about science.  She had a very cute song that utilized the water cycle using the vocabulary evaporate, saturate, condensate and precipitate.  We made a cloud book using the flap book method and shutter book method together.  We made a shutter book taking a 12x18 piece of construction paper and folding the paper in 6 inches on both sides so it was like a window with 2 shutters that opened and closed.  We then made the four types of clouds on the shutters using cotton balls.  Inside the shutter book she stapled 3 sheets of paper folded down into a 6 page flip book and the kids drew and wrote about the weather and what kinds of clouds are usually seen during different types of weather.  I really thought this type of book was neat and will suggest it to my mentees this year as they both teach 4^th grade. 

 Math Magic

Deanna Jump
www.mrsjumpsclass.blogspot.com
Like yesterday’s presentation by Deanna it was jam packed with ideas.  Yesterday we talked about integrating all subjects into themes, or as she called them, integrated curriculum.  Today she went over all the different types of math games she uses in her classroom.  She also told us she was moving the first grade this year with her class, we call it looping here in Kansas, she had a different name for it.  She’s from Georgia.  She started off the presentation by talking about the stages that kids go through when learning math: rote counting, one-to-one correspondence, cardinality, conservation of numbers, subitizing and the second stage of subitizing, one & two more/less, anchoring numbers to 5 & 10, part/whole and computation strategies. 
Deanna said several times during her presentation she is convinced that a teacher could teach math all year with nothing more than dot cards and ten frames.  I have made dot cards and use them in my classroom for practicing automaticity but Deanna had so many more ways to utilize dot cards.  (Dot cards are simply a round card with stickers put in different arrangements for kids to practice subitizing numbers.)  She has kids practice by giving them their own mat and chips and she’ll then hold up a card and the kids have to make it on their mat.  A game called Nestle Quick! has small dot cards in a can of Nestle Quick and she pulls them out and has the kids say how many are on the card as quickly as possible.  A game called I Wish I Had… is where the teacher says, I wish I had a 9 but the card only has 7 dots and the kids have to figure out how many more I need to get to 9.  Make 10 is the same game but focus on the standard of understanding sets of 10.  She has kids practice matching dot cards to number cards.  She has bought one minute sand timers and she has the kids race the timer and see if they can match the cards before time runs out. All of these games could also be played with 10 frame cards.  She also plays the matching game with dot cards and 10 frame cards.  A game from her Back to School Unit had a bus game with dots on them.  The kids have to put the dots in order from least to greatest.  Then they will go through and match unifix cubes to the dots.  There were several variations to this one game but they all allow important hands on practice with real materials in math. 
These were just several of the ideas Deanna presented.  She had many, many more.  I suggest you check out her TPT store here:  http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Store/Deanna-Jump-11

Take Home Bags for Every Subject Area

Susan Mazzarella
Susan was a delightful lady about my age.  Her presentation was on take home bags or homework bags.  These are something I had a similar concept at my old school but never got reorganized after I moved to my current school.  A take home bag is essential a bag containing books (fiction and non-fiction, were CCSS), games, puzzles, maps, etc. that all are based around a single (sometimes broad) topic. The items are stored in a bag and a note is usually included explaining what materials are included, which activities should be done and how to do the activities. Susan’s method for designing bags was usually based around finding an interesting item at the Dollar Tree or dollar spot at Target then beginning to wonder what kind of take home bag she could design around that particular item.  For example she found a single tangram set at DT 2 days before she came to the conference.  She then looked around and found some boards that made pictures using tangrams at the DT.  Go quick and get yours!  She then went to her books and pulled out different books on shapes and fiction books utilizing shapes.  In a quick inventory of her personal book collection she had 5 books that could go in  her new tangram take home bag.  She discussed her methods for keeping track of who takes home which bag, what she does when something comes back missing and how she organizes them in her classroom for storage.  In the time we were in this session Jill wrote down 24 different take home bags she could make with her current materials.  I’m very excited to get back to school and get going on my take home bags. 

Summary

So that was our week. I bought a ton of materials and books.  I bought a really cute grey fleece jacket that says Children Are My Business.  We saw very interesting sights on Las Vegas Blvd.  Combined my two bags that I checked weighed 80 pounds and that didn’t include my backpack with my laptop.  I’m ready for a new school year.  I’m planning another Pinterest Party with my girls on Wednesday.  I’m so excited!