Teaching in a Tutu: Standards, Teaching, and GNOMe's....oh my!

I find that there is so much that I strive to do when it comes to teaching. I want my lessons to be jam-packed with content, engaging, and meaningful for my students (as does every teacher, right?). After six years of teaching the same grade, I felt that I had a good grasp of what I was doing. Then...new standards were adopted and our state and district were jumping into them. The first few meetings that we had which revolved around the new standards were ~~frightening~~ overwhelming. Like most teachers, I want to know exactly what I should be expecting my students to do by the end of the day, end of the week, end of the month, and end of the year. Seeing the pages, and pages, and pages of standards made me a bit queasy. Our district had many teachers that worked tirelessly to look at each unit and each teaching point to make sure that we were teaching each standard. Of course there were some gaps, which were filled in. Even with the newly revised units, I felt like I was just treading water when it came to making sure my students were taught everything - and making it enjoyable for them.

You can imagine my relief (and excitement!) when I was asked to check out the new Math GNOMe book and bulletin board set by Creative Teaching Press! You can check it out here.

This book is jam packed with ideas for creating and managing a common core math classroom. I love that there are ideas on how to efficiently run your common core math workshop. The authors have done a great job of explaining how they ran their math period - in a Common Core 4 setting which includes math fluency practice, math games, mathematical practice, and technology. They explain how to set up bulletin boards, math games binders, math boxes, and manipulatives. While I will be following my districts curriculum and lessons in the units, I love the ideas that I gained. I always stress the importance of math fluency, yet never really gave my students time to practice other than assigning it for homework. I'm now utilizing the time in my math block a bit differently, which includes a math fluency section so that students can practice their facts in fun ways including Xtra Math on our computers and various math apps on our iPad.

A bulletin board set is also available and I love how cute it is. I love how this set comes with cards using kid-friendly phrases for each of the standards that can be displayed on your bulletin board. The headings - Geometry, Number Sense, Operations, and Measurement are nice and bold and colorful. Nothing makes me happier than color coded organization, and this set has just that. Each of the standards are outlined int he same color as the heading that it belongs to (insert happy face here!). As if it couldn't get better, the little Gnome's, mushrooms, flowers, and leaf cutouts are so cute!

I plan on posting the standards that are relevant to each of our units on our math bulletin board, along with an anchor chart. This will keep the students aware of what the expectations are. I'm also putting examples of problems they may find on the leaves as our unit progresses.