I was introduced to the Ten Room from the math specialist at my school after I watched her teach the lesson to my class. The idea comes from Grandma’s Magical Math. It’s a program that offers from rhymes, games and unique ways for students to remember all sorts of math facts, rules and formulas. She had attended a workshop many years ago and found that this lesson was the most successful of all.
To present this lesson students the teacher would tell the story of the Ten Room and draw it on the board while she spoke. Students would then draw the room on a piece of paper to reinforce the ideas and for use at home. I actually have a large version of a hand-drawn Ten Room hanging on my math wall right now that my students refer to. As follow up activities to this lesson students would use manipulatives, flash cards and dice games to reinforce the idea of “ten friends” or compliments of ten. Once introduced students would use “ten friends” to solve math problems as well as learn other addition and subtraction facts.
This lesson was taught in the beginning of the school year as a foundation to learning addition facts. Since this was not new for my students, I was able to involve them in the process of making this tool. They are fascinated with the idea that I am going back to school and love to see my homework! They were great sports and let me teach the Ten Room lesson to them many, many times while I was working on it, They had lots of great suggestions to make it better too. The fireplace, picture and mouse hole with with cheese were ideas from my students. There was some debate over the ceiling fan with the fact 5+5 because they didn’t want me to confuse my students next year by having two doubles facts on the fan that added up to 20. We took a class vote and having four fan blades looked better than just having two!
I was able to share this with the math specialist and other first grade teachers who are just as excited as I am to use it next year. My goal is to have a class blog next year and I will definitely add the Ten Room to it so that students and parents can use it at home too. I would also like to blow up a version of it to make a better Ten Room poster. I find that they referred to the one I drew a lot, especially at the beginning of the year, so I would like this poster to match. I would also like to create a smaller size for students to bring home or even a very small one to tape inside their math journal alongside their number grid.
is finally done! I have to show my class tomorrow since they are the toughest crictics, but I’m hoping it meets their approval.
I had already taught my students about the compliments of ten using the ten room lesson back in the fall, but I drew it on the whiteboard and then had my students draw it on paper to help them remember.
I envision using this tool when I intorduce the concept in the beginning of the year. This is a much easier way for them to visualize the numbers being “ten friends” since they are together and come to life to create their number sentence. It’s hard to keep a six year-old’s attention for very long, but this definitely does the trick. All of my students were captivated by the animation and especially impressed that their own teacher made it! I know they already know their “ten friends”, but I’m hoping that next year it will help my students even quicker.
I’m looking forward to sharing it with my class and fellow first grade teachers tomorrow to see what they think!
Here is an updated version with all of the “ten friends” in place. I still need to add some more to the room itself. My students of course suggested the mouse hole with cheese and want me to finish the fireplace under the shelf. If you click on any of the big 5 items you will learn your “ten friends”. There are still lots of little things that I need to work on.
The more I’ve been using the Flash the easier it’s been, but it’s still frustrating at times when things aren’t just right.
The rug and mouse (8 and 2) is hard to use because you have to click on the small part of the mouse tail to keep the animation moving, so I need to find something to add that the mouse can stay on. The =10 next to my shelf runs off the screen, so I that number sentence needs a new location. I’m still trying to figure out how to make all of the action stop within each piece, because I thought I already had it stopping =P
This video is to Jack Johnson’s song “The 3 Rs” from the Curious George soundtrack. We listen to it in school all the time and my kids love it!
I had a lot of problems installing flash, but I absolutely love using it. Once I got the hang of which tweens to use when and how to insert everything it wasn’t so bad. I did try to make a motion guide, but I wasn’t very successful so I’ll just have to save that for next time. =)
This is a game I created to quiz my students about organisms.
I found this very frustrating in the beginning because I had lots of ideas but I wasn’t quite sure which commands to piece together to make it happen. I had to abandon a few ideas…but I finally figured it out! Once I got going it was easier, but tedious, to program all of the steps. I am excited to share it with my class.
I’m not sure if you’ve seen this yet, but your students will love it! I showed this to my first graders and they were dancing and singing the rest of the day. Just watch and you’ll see why!
If I could have ANY job I wanted I would love to be the first base coach for the Yankees! Why? I think it’s definitely the best job on the team. You get to sit in the dugout and position players in the field, cheer them on from the field and maybe even occasionally give them an encouraging pat on the tush =P That would only be reserved for a select few, of course!
I would also have Michael Buble singing to me while Paula Deen bakes baked me something yummy to eat. =)
Unfortunately I was unable to run GIMP on my computer, but I used a free trial of Photoshop to make the picture. I thought the lasso tool was a little tricky to use, so I don’t think the pictures I cut out are as neat as they could be. I tried to zoom in to make it easier, but then I found I couldn’t get the whole picture at once on my screen. With some more practice I will definitely get better =)
Google Earth was really fun and easy to use! This video shows the places I visited on a 10-day cruise this past summer. This would be really neat to show my students the path that the pioneers took on the Oregon Trail!
Here is a tutorial on how to use Tikatok to create books that I made with Jing!
It was really easy to use Jing and get my video from Screencast. The hardest part was doing the speaking. This is definitely a great tool to make videos for my students! I can’t wait to use it more =)
