Valentine's Day Math and Reading

MATH ROTATIONS

Right now my team of teachers and I are focusing our efforts on helping our students increase their fact fluency.  It is always a real eye-opener to see the actual results of the assessment our district uses to determine their fact fluency.  We call it the Hiding Assessment.  Once we determine the number at which the student hesitates more then three seconds or gives a wrong answer, we set up a series of activities to focus on that number.  Once the student becomes fluent at that number, they move up and work on the next number.  The goal is for our kindergarteners to be fluent to 5 before they come to us in first.  Our goal is for first graders to be fluent to 10 before moving on to second grade.  After my math mini-lesson and lesson application, my students participate in a math rotation which lasts about 20 minutes.  They rotate through four stations called: 

1. Computers 

2. Math by Myself

3. With Mrs. H. 

4. Centers   

The station "With Mrs. H." meets at my teachers table.   I meet with this group mainly to remediate or review earlier content.  

The station called "Math by Myself" is the station with activities designed specifically for the individual students. If a student is working on the number 6, everything in that folder helps them remember the various number combinations of the number 6.  

In the "Centers" station, I include new and past math concepts.  I also include fact fluency center activities.  I select the activities that go into the center stations, but the students can choose which ones they want to work on from the activities I put out.  I wanted a fact fluency center with a Valentine's Day theme, so I created Breaking Hearts Fact Fluency.  The students match the broken hearts by locating the sums and the number combinations that go together.   Students use the smaller pink hearts and white hearts along with the ten frame to help them determine the correct sum.  Afterwards, they provide answers on the recording sheet. 

Here is a preview of all of the number combinations, including the recording sheet.

Click to get your copy of Breaking Hearts Fact Fluency.

If you are teaching a bit older child, you will want to check out the FREE Valentine's Day multiplication fact game at my 3rd grade blog, 3rd Grade Grapevine.

SIGHT WORD PRACTICE

My sweeties love it when they come in first thing and find their morning work is one of my Color by Sight Word sheets.  I have pages created to go along with the seasons and holidays as they arrive.  I have three for the month of February, and each are with the Valentine's Day theme.

This is the cover of the packet you would see on TPT. The upcoming seasonal themes include:

• Winter/Snow
• Valentine'd Day
• St. Patrick's Day
• Lion/Lamb ("Spring comes in like a lion and goes out like a lamb.")
• Easter
• April Showers
• May Flowers

The sight words featured are a combination of Dolce and Fry words along with years of experiential knowledge of the words kids need to know how to read by the end of first grade.  

DISCOVERY EDUCATION

I am a huge fan of Discovery Education.  If you have not found that resource yet, bookmark it or save it to your favorites.  I can't tell you how many times I just pull up the site, type a topic in the search bar, and, WHA-LA!  ...several great resources to choose from that will fit whichever grade level I need.  All of the following videos can be found on Discovery Education and they are all about Valentine's Day.

Here is a video that tells the origins of Valentine's Day, and how the tradition of giving valentines all began.  

It's titled Holiday Facts and Fun:  Valentine's Day.  

Click on the image below to go there.  

You will need to set up a FREE account if you or your school do not already have one.

If we have rainy weather, I will often play a fun video on the smart board.  Clifford's Your Secret Valentine would be a fun choice.

If your school allows access to You Tube, here is the same Clifford Valentine's Day video.  You Tube used to be blocked in our district, but not any longer.  However it still it in many districts, so you may want to go through Discover Eduction. 

Click on the title, Breaking Hearts FREEBIE , to get your copy of the recording sheet below, just for visiting my blog.  Follow my blog and bookmark it so you don't miss updates and other FREEBIES offered here.  

I would love to hear from you...  When do you incorporate math centers, or do you have a similar math rotation as I do?  Do you use Discovery Education videos in your classroom, or do you have other video sites you like to use instead?    Just click on the "comment' button below.