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If you have ever read the blog Forever in First , you know what in inspirational educator Tammy McMorrow is. The good news for all of us in the education world is that she has now written a book called Gatekeepers: Let's Talk About Teaching . She is a very well read author and brings a lot of other experts into this book.  She has been a first grade teacher for over 20 years but this book is really fitting for all educators.  She writes a lot about teaching writing but the lessons learned are those that would apply to teachers of any subject at any grade level. The format of this book is short chapters based around a quote.  There are 50 chapters but they are quite short, around 300 words on average.  They can be read in any order and are great short pieces that helped me reflect on my practice and think about what is next for me.  I read the first half of the book in one sitting and then decided to slow down a bit and read a little each day.  I also did so...

Over the past few years, I have put a very high priority on keeping up with professional reading.  As my kids have gotten older, we seem to be on the go more than ever and I found my pile of to be read books growing and growing and very little reading getting done.  After discussing this with a colleague I decided what I needed to do was give audio books a try.  I signed up for Audible , got 2 free audio books and was off and running.  After my 2 free books, I decided to stay subscribed and now I can download new audio books whenever the mood strikes. I have found that teaching books specifically about math are pretty limited,but general books on education, leadership and mindset are almost all available on Audible .  The first book I listened to via Audible was Strengths Based Leadership  by Tom Rath. (He also wrote one of my FAVORITE picture books How Full is Your Bucket ?) I have been in a teacher leader position in my school since almost the beginning o...

Earlier this week, I shared this post about memorizing facts versus knowing facts from memory. In this post, I talk about how I used to think timing kids daily on multiplication facts was the backbone of my fourth grade curriculum and how my perspective has shifted over time to one where I believe kids should know their facts from memory rather than through memorization.  If you are not familiar with this idea, here is a video where Graham Fletcher  explains it better than I ever could. After re-sharing this post from last summer on my Facebook page , I received the following comment from Michelle: " While I agree that strategy is the way to go (it's the only way we teach math facts), I'm second guessing myself when it takes 15 mins to work through a 2-digit x 2-digit multiplication problem bc every 'part' (when using partial products for example)  has to be worked out using a fact strategy when kids don't know their facts well. It takes soooo long. I'm ...

In the past few years, the political make up of our schools has been changing a great deal.  The way schools are funded and the amount of local control in schools has been changing.  There has been a huge push from our state government to consolidate school districts and push some of the local control to the district level.  This has resulted in many fears from parents, teachers and community members about losing their local, small town elementary schools.  They are rightfully afraid that these schools will be closed and our children will be sent to larger regional elementary schools.  I get these fears from the perspective as a teacher who works in a small school and as a Mom who loves the small school her own kids attend.  In our school, so many wonderful things happen that the general public is not aware of.  Some parents who are well connected to the school have a pretty good idea, but I often think the community in general lacks specifics about th...

I have known a lot of teachers.  First as a student, then as colleagues and now as a parent   I have been very lucky that my children have had wonderful teachers who I absolutely treasure.  I love their school, the sense of community and the teachers willingness to go above and beyond.  I am trusting these folks with the things that are most important in my life which has really forced me to reexamine my own role as a teacher in other students' lives.  These teachers and my kids' school is such an important part of their life and their happiness there is vital to the happiness of our family. A situation recently arose where the teacher of one of my children made a decision that I did not agree with.  It was a decision that made me and my child feel unwelcome in their school.  My emotional response to this decision was dramatic and I can't remember the last time I was this upset about something.  I was in the place of the irrational parent rat...

I am loving the fall weather we have been having this week!  It gave me a chance to get outside with some special Kindergarten kids and do some play based math activities using natural materials.  It was such a nice way to spend some time outside learning together!  We started by going on a little nature walk with a few buckets and picking up some beautiful leaves, acorns and pine-cones.  Then we dumped our treasures out on the table, grabbed a few fine pointed sharpies  and got to work exploring and adding some mathematical details to our fall materials.  We started by writing numbers on leaves.  Some kids wrote numbers to 10 while others wrote some random numbers they knew.  We have been doing a lot with the 10 frame model  recently and I wanted to capitalize on this so I used some of the larger leaves to draw some 10 frames which led to a lot of ordering and matching activies.  Some kids are ready to look at addition and subtraction f...

In the past few years,  I have posted some of my favorite songs and videos about  shapes ,  counting ,  multiplication ,  coins ,  time ,  fractions ,  teen numbers ,  area and perimeter  and  addition facts .  I try to keep these posts up to date with the latest songs and videos I am using with my students.  They are a great way to get a little movement break while still working on important math concepts. These little movement breaks have been super important as we have transitioned from summer vacation back to school 5 days a week.  I forget how busy the back to school season can be and now that things are finally calming down, it is so nice to be back to sharing things with you on my blog.  This week, I have had subtraction on the brain as we have been working on subtraction in the fact range in both grades 1 & 2. We are are playing a lot of games, using the same deck of cards over and over.  When k...