Whirlwind of a week = long post!

This week sped by, but somehow in slow motion.  Does that make sense?  You know, it was fast but slow…


One of the exciting things about this week was the Debbie Diller conference I was able to attend with some colleagues on math work stations.  I haven’t wrapped my head around the whole presentation completely yet, but I’ll be sharing some of what she said, and what my teammate and I are imagining for our classrooms. 


Debbie Diller was very pleasant, I actually met her on my way in to the conference.  I was speed walking towards the building and a lady was walking close by…she let me know I wasn’t late, and not to worry because she was the speaker and they couldn’t start without her. (Later she even signed my book! – would have taken a picture, but of course I left the book at school!)


I did feel bad for D.D. because the conference was mismarketed.  The title said something about Math Work Stations and Common Core…so about half of us went wanting info on the work stations and the other half wanted more about the common core.  D.D. was unaware of the marketing and was planning on addressing the work stations, NOT the common core.


I guess the first day was not successful because so many people were expecting her to address the C.C.  So, we went on the second day the conference was offered, and poor D.D. had been up nearly the whole night reworking her presentation to include Common Core…trying to make everyone happy. 


Needless to say you can’t make everyone happy.  I would have liked much more on the work stations and didn’t really want to hear about the common core.  Someone sitting next to me – a math coach, already knows all there is to know about math workstations but wanted to know more about linking them to the common core…see where this is going…


I learned a lot at the conference, I feel bad for D.D., because she was put in a terrible position.  I think someone might lose their marketing job…and I think the conference probably could have been better if it hadn’t been mishandled. 
I will share more about what I learned later, when I have a chance to look over my notes and my book…


I also wanted to share some of what we’ve been doing with money, but I realized I have been terrible about taking pictures this week.  So I only have pictures of one of our activities, but links to the others…


Here is what we’ve been doing after our whole group lessons:
For my students who didn’t know the coins and/or coin values we started with this activity from Keen on Kindergarten:
Other students started with the race to a dime/quarter/dollar games, from First Grade a la Carte:

Then my students moved on up to a game that uses coins, tallies and coordinate pairs…AMAZING!  I found it at mathwire – a great site for math activities, lots thematic for the season/holiday.

The original game has numbers on the vertical axis and letters on the horizontal axis…I didn’t have any dice with letters, so I just put post-its over the letters and drew the dots for the dot dice (very technical language here!), before making copies.


Each student needs a half sheet to record what they are able to get off the grid.  The pair of students needs a set of dice, and coins (3 of each coin), and the grid itself.  It’s easy and the students LOVE this game!  In the end they add up their coins to see who won.


That’s about it for now…off to get my super squeaky brakes worked on, my car is truly humiliating to drive right now. Then I’m off to the gym to start my second week of Couch 2 5k (C25K)…have you seen this app?  It’s amazing!  It helps you start running after being a couch potato – I LOVE IT!  Before I would always struggle deciding how much to run, and go to hard and then hate it, or get bored, but with this app, it’s all planned out and gradual…you should use it if you’re thinking about starting to run…


Happy Saturday,
Mrs. Castro Pin It