Interactive Board books

April Fools!

I bet you thought I wrote a post for today on my blog!  Well, I tricked you!  I wrote one, but you need to hop over to Mrs. H's Resource Room to read it.  I am guest blogging over there today.  I promise it is a post that you don't want to miss!  It is all about making interactive books and there is a link to a limited time freebie!

Valentine Blog Hop: My turn!!!

Whoop!! Whoop!! It is my turn to have a Valentine treat for you. Before I share my goodies though, how has the hop been going? Lots of fantastic stuff!!! Last year I made a book called Valentine, Valentine (You can check it out here) and it was a huge hit in my classroom. I read it again this year and my students just love it. One of my boys gets so excited when I bring it out he almost falls out of his chair. To keep the excitement going into March I made a new book call Shamrock, Shamrock. It is the same pattern, just using a St. Patricks Day theme. I thought this would be the perfect thing to share since we are nearing the end of February. Please leave me a comment if you download this file and let me know what you think. I would love to know if your students like it also.  (Make sure you scroll to the bottom of this post, there is a giveaway!!!)


Without further discussion, here we go! You can download the file by clicking on the picture or at this link. I had hoped to to have actual pictures so you could see this book in action, but the weather had other plans.  I ventured out to school today just to get out of the house.  I brought home my copy of Shamrock, Shamrock, but unfortunately the pictures are not the best.  To make the book, print the pages, laminate, bind, and then use the included shamrocks (or foam ones made out of a die cut) and put velcro on the page and one the shamrock.  I try to put the Velcro to the side so it does not interfere with the picture (someone else put the Velcro on this one for me, so I need to move a few pieces).  Then as you read the book, students can take turns pulling off the Shamrocks. My students often start chiming in and saying the repetitive line with me.

 I am not only giving away Shamrock, Shamrock to everyone, but I am having a giveaway for winner's choice of 1 item from my Teachers Pay Teachers store!! There will be two winners!!!

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Skip counting

Wow, I really feel like I am neglecting my blog and my readers since school started. It has just been so crazy around here. Anyway... this week with my 2nd grade math class I worked on skip counting. I also find this a hard area to teach... not sure why. We used a hundreds chart so we could see the patterns when counting by 2's, 5's and 10's. The students also filled out their own hundreds chart and colored or crossed out the numbers that we use when skip counting.

I use a lot of music in my classroom, so we sang skip counting song for counting by 2's and 5's. The 2's song goes to the tune of Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star and the 5's song to the tune of Row, Row, Row your boat. After we sing it over a few days, I give each student a copy of the "words" to put in their math interactive notebooks. I give them the "words" with some blanks so that they have to practice their skip counting. It is always nice to hear them singing the songs. I was going to add the sheet, but it looks like I left the USB at school, so I will add it to a later post. If you would like me to email it to you, just comment below.

While searching for something else to use for them, I came across a youtube video that was a HUGE hit. One of my students was even dancing. I love seeing my students truly enjoying learning.

Math Interactive Notebooks

For the past two years I have taught one general education class called Math Explore. It is for 2nd grade students who are "slow learners" or need smaller group instruction to be successful with the math curriculum. My first year I felt was not as successful as I would have liked it to be, so I came up with this idea to try out Math Interactive Notebooks.

I decided that this needed to be as hands-on as possible, so I would need some materials. I wrote a grant that included a binder for each students, Dinah Zikes Big Book of Elementary Math K-6, felt, construction paper, and die cuts. My grant was funded and my math interactive notebooks were born. It took a lot of organization to begin with, but turned out to be a great endeavor. I ended up writing a second grant to purchase additional diecuts.

Photo rights http://www.flickr.com/photos/jkfid/

So here is what each 3-ring binder included:
Sections divided by SOL (VA Standards of Learning)
A freezer bag with packing tape on the side, then 3-hole punched so it would fit in the binder
Lots of hands on activities, foldables, games, worksheets, etc that the students developed throughout the year.

Some of the activities I came up with myself, some came from some of the blogs I stalk and others from books like Big Book of Elementary Math and Hands on Math (K-1 and 2-3).

I used diecuts from Ellison and Accucut.

All in all I felt like I could have organized the notebooks a different way as it seemed difficult for the students to figure out where to put things, but the project showed tremendous growth. My students were so excited to take the binders home and I received lots of compliments from parents. As part of my grant I had to identify how I would determine success so I used our end of the year math test for 2nd grade. My first year with the math explore program I had a 33% pass rate (passing is considered 80% or higher in our school) and with the notebooks..... 79% pass rate. I was so excited to see that number.

Now I wish I had pictures to share, but of course I can't find them. I did have each student share their favorite part by using my flip camera to tape them. I plan to use that information to decide which activities to include and ditch for next year.

So, now that I have typed a short novel.... have you used interactive notebooks for anything? How did you organize them?


** Since writing this I have added a Pinterest board dedicated to foldables. Check it out!**