GO Math

Its T-minus 19 days till the first official day with kiddos...and I feel like I need another 19 days to tackle my to-dos!  Boy, oh boy do I keep creating more work for myself...it would help if I didn't check out Pinterest and Instagram daily, but there are just too, too many cool tricks to add to my room this year.   My To-Do list is slightly out of control. 

 

My district is implementing the Houghton Mifflin Harcourt GO Math! series and I'm not sure how I feel about it just yet.  My colleagues and I had a box opening party a few weeks back and to our surprise we were given two HUGE bins of manipulatives.  I'm telling you I could supply a whole district with the amount of math manipulatives that I have in my classroom...I keep the old, the new, you name it and I have it.  I'm not complaining, I'm not, I just prefer hard, durable manipulatives and not the soft, foamy kind that are not going to last past two days in the hands of six year olds.  You know what I'm talking about?   On a plus note, I will say that I love the teacher manuals...there is one skinny manual for each chapter...that's a score to the teacher bag. :)  Upon digging deeper into the boxes of goodies, I found that there was not much for classroom displays.  OK there isn't anything...  No vocabulary cards, no focus posters, no posters of any sort to display what in the dickens I'm going to be teaching for each lesson.  So my "Math Wall" is a bit empty right now which is weird for me. 

Walk into my classroom on any given day and you'll have a hard time finding an open spot on the wall.  I was on a search for items that were aligned to both the series and Common Core, but I wanted to ensure that I was able to display exactly what my little nuggets would see, hear, and be doing during our math lessons.  SO, I decided to tackle making my own items.  Typically I purchase items from TeachersPayTeachers...no shame, don't have the time to recreate the wheel, BUT this time, I wanted to create what I felt was necessary for my room.  Let me tell you all, it is time consuming creating items for a classroom, BUT SO, SO gratifying.  I may have the beginning signs of carpal tunnel in my right wrist. 

 

 

Click picture to go to my store.

 

Each chapter is designated with a color, a header for the Essential Question, the Essential Question poster, mini vocabulary term cards, and larger vocabulary cards that include the definition and picture example. 

 

 

I have completed chapters 1-3 and will be starting chapters 4-6 in the next day.  I'm celebrating this little product I created.  I'm off to give my wrist a much needed break.