100s chart

Last week was loooong. It could have been the fact that it was the first full week since vacation or the fact that my students had terrible attendance and were having difficulty getting back into the swing of things or it could have been the cold and rainy weather we had for several days.... no matter what the reason (or combination of reasons), I was so relieved to see 3pm yesterday!

I am off all three days this weekend so I had lofty goals of accomplishing many things. Unfortunately a migraine kept me in bed much longer than I would have liked and the remnants of this morning's incessant amount of laundry is still lingering around my apartment. Fortunately my migraine is finally gone and it is back to the never-ending to do list.

Starting with this blog!

I gave my students the snowman numbers from my Winter Math unit and several of them were struggling... I was chatting with my teacher assistant about making a big hundreds chart with the ones numbers on top and the tens down the side to aid them in sequencing the numbers and she went off to find bulletin board paper to bring it to fruition. The kids love using it and have no clue what a mundane task they are completing and they love getting out of their chairs to work on the floor. I made special numbers to be used with it (green in the tens column and pink in the ones column) and my assistant make long arrows that the kids use to guide them to the right square. Here is a picture of one of my students in action!



Next project will be to make cards with rods and units and I plan on using it with my Tally Birds as well! I was elated at how simple yet useful it turned out to be.

What super simple solutions have been successful in your classrooms? I need more of these types of ideas because I am the type to make everything much more complicated than it needs to be!