Reading and Math

First grade has been hard at work. First grade works in stations most days in language arts and math. One of my favorite activities in language arts is to have students say a word, tap out it’s individual sounds, and then write it out in sound boxes or sound lines. This is a very helpful activity to get students to notice the sounds in words and it develops their spelling skills and handwriting.

In math, the stations focus on practicing skills we are working on as well as building number sense. A strong number sense is crucial for understanding and manipulating math. One activity that builds number sense and help the students we skip counting and grouping is counting collections. The child chooses an item and counts it. Sometimes the parameters are to count by ones until you reach 100; other times it group the items in twos and skip count. It reinforces the one to one correspondence and ordering numbers. Other math station activities include pulling a number and building that number, matching the word to the number, pick a card (or roll a die) and make a number sentence and solve it, and many more.

This last week and this week we discussed expression that equal and what equal means. One station was to match the expression cards that equal. Working with a partner helps them with social skills and furthers their learning. Making math fun allows students to learn in multiple ways with several options of manipulatives. They are way more likely to retain the knowledge if they enjoy the process and practice.