Daily Archives: February 18, 2019

The 112th Day of School?

If you’ve been here for a while, you know that I have done some reflection on the appropriateness of celebrating the 100th Day of School (at least outside of kindergarten).  Last year we decided to commemorate the 111th day of school in a small way instead because that was our room number. Not the most creative reasoning, but Rm. 111 kids really stepped up and we did some awesome things around the number 111!

This year we talked about doing the same thing again (new class, same plan) after I explained to them about how we didn’t need to do the same thing they did in kindergarten–this is first grade, after all!

Well, because of two “too-cold” days off, our 111th day of school fell right after World Read Aloud Day, right after Global School Play Day, after a visit to the Black History Museum and some brownie baking and smack in the middle of Kindness Week!  Whew!  We were (and would be!) so busy–and no one had asked about it in a while–that I figured I’d let the day come and go and no one would notice.  I know–not fair, but hey, it’s what I did. 🙂

And it did come and go….at least for one day. LOL . On Wednesday, the 112th day of school, Ali noticed on our ten-frame number on the board that we had in fact missed our special day!  Oops. 🙂 . She asked me and I was honest with my answer.  She seemed fine with that explanation, but pretty much insisted that we fix it by doing something that day.  Ok, Al, you’re right. 🙂

During our Morning Meeting that day we talked about our new plan for the day (and yes, I admitted my mistake).  They had ideas similar to what some of my previous classes have done, and thankfully most of their suggestions were totally appropriate and “doable” without much planning.  Together we decided that we would read 112 books, have 12 extra minutes of math (which sounds weird but was the concession I could give them when they first asked for 112 extra minutes!), and that we’d do some reading/writing/drawing about Black History Month later on in the day.  Pretty great ideas, I’d say!

Before we got busy with our reading goal, we talked about how we would make 112 books happen.  Sam had a great idea of thinking about it like a math problem, and he helped construct a ratio table to figure out how many books each would need to read.  We ended up with 7 or 8 each, and quickly discussed how we’d keep track.  Chart paper and post-its for the win!

Remember how in the post about Twenty Yawns I talked about how great it is when the numbers work out for you?  Well, it happened again as the chart we used could fit 9 sticky notes across.  You can use multiples of 10 – 1 to figure out how many you have pretty quickly.  LOVE IT!

Anyhow, we worked pretty much all morning on this, but ended up getting to our goal (and a bit past it!) just as it was time for lunch.  PERFECT!

Oh, and I’ll share what happened in that extra 12 minutes of math in another post soon!  The afternoon when they worked on Black History Month was also great, but I didn’t get any pictures of it. 😦 . I LOVE how excited these kiddos are about learning, and how much of that includes books!

Kindness Week 2019: Ms. Dale’s Kindness Sale

As I mentioned in my post about the Kindness Quilt 2.0, Robinson has begun doing a variety of fabulous and kind things throughout a whole WEEK instead of just focusing on Valentine’s Day.

One of the REALLY fabulous things that happened during Kindness Week was a Kindness Garage Sale held by Ms. Dale’s First Graders.  They have been working on a service-learning project related to poverty, food scarcity and helping our neighbors.  We have a Little Food Pantry on our school campus (and it’s shaped like George, our Roadrunner mascot!), but they had noticed that it is often in need of filling; many people in our community benefit from what is available inside.

Ms. Dale’s class put together a garage sale to raise money to take a shopping trip to Aldi to shop for food to fill up our pantry and invited all of our school to come shopping!  Everything was 50 cents, so everyone was able to get a little something.

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We were amazed that everyone in our class seemed to find a trinket that was seemingly made just for them.  Zach found dinosaurs, Brock found a Transformer, Ariya chose a little porcelain egg with a kitten on it, Avant found bouncy balls, Riley found a dog, Hailey found a book she LOVES from our classroom and now she has her very own copy!–even I got something and found a 1000 piece puzzle! Several kiddos discovered sunglasses and were THRILLED when two days later it was finally sunny. 🙂 . Beckett and Isaac both made a point to choose something for themselves, and also for their moms. ❤ . And I’m sorry–I didn’t get a picture of everyone.  They were too quick for me!

Besides the treasures that we were able to find for ourselves, the big benefit of the sale was the almost $400 that the class raised!  They were able to take their shopping field trip on Thursday of Kindness Week and stock up the pantry!  What an incredible way to spread kindness and love to our community!  Can’t wait to see what happens as they continue to support the neighbors who live around us.  We’re also hoping that maybe the rest of Robinson can join in and do some learning with them. 🙂 Stay tuned for more chapters to this story!

There’s Math in That Book!–Twenty Yawns by Jane Smiley and Lauren Castillo

I remember when we were reading Going Places and Beckett found some pretty amazing math in a picture that was in the book.  We tweeted to Peter H. Reynolds to ask him if he knew about it, and/or if he did it on purpose.

We were tickled when he replied–because when authors talk to you it’s a BIG DEAL!!

Well, we were reading another book the other day–Twenty Yawns by Jane Smiley and Lauren Castillo–and something similar happened.

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As we finished the book (which is a super sweet story about a girl who is trying to go to sleep and not surprisingly does lots of yawning), I asked why the author would have named the book Twenty Yawns.  I thought someone would say “because there are 20 yawns in the story,” but surprisingly that was not what they suggested.  Somehow we got into a little tat about how there were 21 yawns in the book.  What??  I’m still not entirely sure if the friends who were so convinced about the 21 yawns were for real, or if they wanted to cause a ruckus, but regardless, Ali saved the day by saying we should count them and figure it out.

So…we went back through the story and paid attention to how many yawns were on each page, creating an equation that looked like this:

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Next we talked about the different ways kiddos could PROVE that there were or were not 21 (or 20!) yawns in the book.  Our list looked like this:Screenshot 2019-02-18 13.26.11

It was actually really lucky, too, how the problem worked out because we have been working on combinations of 10 and I was hoping that kiddos would find the 10s in there first, and then quickly come to the answer of 20.  Not all did, which is fine–we’ll keep working–but many did. 🙂 .

Check out some of our thinking (which we are still working on, by the way!).

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I LOVE it when we can take a story and turn it into a math problem!  What an authentic context and motivating activity. 🙂 . And while anytime we stretch our math brains it’s a good thing, I especially love it when the numbers in the book match the numbers we’re working on.  Way to go, Smiley and Castillo!  Did you do that on purpose for us? 🙂

What books have you read that have math in them?  Tell us about it so we can try it, too! 🙂