Students as Teachers

I am super pumped in today's post where I get to share a little bit of what my awesome students do during Math.

These last 2 weeks have been completely crazy between Valentine's, Mardi Gras celebration, and Snow Days.

Here are my sweeties at our Valentine's special snack. They made precious
kitty Valentine bags for friends to give them Valentines.

I had my students write 3+ things that they love
about First Grade and school. They all went
"EWWW!!"when they finally saw what I put
about the heart of hearts. :)

One of my amazing parents helped make this door. The kids
held one of their favorite books as I took their pictures. All
of the teachers loved the Mardi Gras pun. ;)

I bought masks, feathers, and glitter glue at the Dollar Tree and let the students
make their own Mardi Gras masks. I think they turned out pretty cute!

No, we can't do a class photo without doing a silly pose. It's just not possible.

So as you can see, our last 2 weeks have been *eventful* to say the least! We tried our best to squeeze in any ounce of learning whenever we could. The past week, we had a wonderful Math lesson. Let me start out by saying I LOVE mini white boards. I use them in centers and in small group. I am trying harder to work them in my Reading and Math lessons, but sometimes I forget (getting old!). Thank goodness I remembered them for our Math lesson this week because it was a toughy and their worksheets didn't give them any room to work. Students had to add 2-digit numbers to multiples of ten (i.e. 47 + 20, 50 + 21, 36 + 60, etc.) Students used the white boards to draw out their work to help them find the answers. Below are some examples of their work.

As you can see, each student had a different style of working them out. Some worked one at a time while others split up the board to make room for everything. My favorite thing (and I think the kids love it also) about Math is I will go over an example or 2 and we work through 2-3 together. I give the students 1-2 problems to do on their own. I walk around, and if they get them right, they get a sticker. (Stickers are huge motivations in my class. If you don't believe me, I will have to show you their name tags where they put all their stickers to "show them off".) Those who get the problems wrong usually meet me at my small group table to work together until they can complete a problem independently. Sometimes, however, I let students who earn stickers go help another student who is struggling. I don't do this too much because many times they will just give each other answers, but I had 2 students who did an awesome job working together. Here is just a small clip of what I was able to catch on my phone.

Students Helping Students on TeacherTube

This really makes me a happy teacher!! I can't wait to show it to my other students on Monday so they can see what it looks like to help other students without giving them the answers. By the way, the student that was helping said that he understands why I sometimes get stressed when they don't listen now (LOL!!).