Every now and then you get a few dollars here and there to spend on your classroom and then you're like well “What am I going to get?” These things are things that have been used so much in my classroom that I just needed to share if you have a wishlist you send out or you have some PTA money or your school gave you a few dollars to spend these things I think you will not regret spending your money on to enhance your math classroom!
You’ll see a theme here of items that can be used over and over in lots of different contexts and for lots of different activities.
Numeral Dice
The first one I use all the time is numeral dice. I use dice all the time in my classroom, especially the traditional dice they are great for subitizing, simple addition, and the list goes on and on.
There are some limitations to those dice, especially when students progress past the 1 to 6 range or the 1 to 12 range then you start to need more and more dice and if your students are anything like my students the more dice you have the more chance that they are all over the floor which would be okay but then you have kids all over the floor looking for the dice that they rolled too far and then at the end of the year you find dice behind every piece of furniture.
On Amazon, there are tons of different dice that are created for Dungeons and Dragons and those kinds of games are often less expensive than ones made for school 😡. Still, they have a big range of numbers on them anywhere from 1 to 6 to 1 to 20, and lots of number ranges in between. A huge bonus, especially for your kids, is they are fun colors and the kids love being able to use these fun colorful dice so that you have increased engagement in math centers and more possibilities for differentiation.
10 Frame Dice
Similar to the numeral dice would be 10-frame dice. Again the kids like it it is great for subitizing also 10 frames are a great way to get your kids to start to understand place value if you're using a double 10 frame like 10 and some ones for number writing and number sense. 10 frame dice are versatile and one of the easiest games to play is a rolling right at your guided Math Center specifically for the kids who need it, throw in some colorful dry erase markers they love it. ( I usually try and stick to just the black dry-erase markers if we're doing something full group but in small group, it's easier to control and they like having the choice of what color they're going to use.)
Spinners
Suction Cup Spinners are another item that I use all the time in my math class. I love the flexibility of being able to create a spinner easily with whatever I want on it maybe I want Renereks or Number Racks, on numbers, fractions, and shapes, the possibilities are endless! So if I have an idea for a center that I want to do but I might not have a dice for it or how am I going to randomize how they do this or make it more game-like, a spinner is my go-to.
Double Sided Tape
Hanging things once and staying put all year? Yes, please! I saw a teacher using this on socials and I knew I had to try it! This double-sided tape is heavy duty and you need the smallest amount to stick, like literally a tiny square!
I'm not sure about you but my students were always picking at their name tags and then they would curl up or need to be stuck down constantly and even if we put packing tape over it they still ended up coming off, especially when we got new tables packing tape just did not stick. I put a tiny Square when I say tiny I mean tiny square in each corner of their name tag and they haven't come up since. They do give the name tag a little bit of rise so stuff can potentially get stuck under there like double-sided counters but the kids usually find them right away and it's not that big a deal. I will take a few lost counters to not have to deal with the tape every day.
Dry Erase Pockets
The last but certainly not least item on my list are these dry-erase leaves or dry-erase pockets. it has been years since I've been able to get a class set of individual whiteboards so I can just put a blank sheet of paper in and then automatically have a whiteboard for each student. I have found a new appreciation for my dry erase Pockets since I started doing more problem-solving in my class with the Building Thinking Classrooms framework and specifically how I am using it in Kindergarten put the problem into the sleeve and they can write on the page and then reuse it over and over. If you’d like to see some tasks I use, you can read more about them in the “Building Thinking Classrooms Tasks” post.
コメント