First Grade Math
September
 What is math? Explore room in two groups. Set the tone.
 Play die/dice game. Go over procedures- roll die, quiet voice, flip a coin to
decide winner, return to the carpet to debrief.
 Number writing-one side fill in 25 missing numbers on a 100s chart, on the
reverse, fill in empty grid (if time).
 Math Journals- introduce. Title, Date, Picture. Jayne, Nial, and Auden are in
middle school sibs. Jayne has one sibling, Nial has two siblings, and Auden
has one sibling. How many siblings do they have? (Peyton and maybe others)
Operations and Algebraic Thinking
 Number Line in hall
 Pre-assessment for seeing a group of five without counting. (attached)
 The Sandbox- Eight first graders are digging and building in the sandbox.
How can eight kids play together with some kids digging and some building?
For example, you might have three kids digging and the rest building. How
many kids are building? Digging? (Students will work for ~five minutes then
stop to listen to a strategy, repeat) Students write about a strategy that worked
well for them.
 Class discussion to develop a classroom chart on addition strategies (attached).
 Go over the combinations that students found. Each one is represented by real
pails and shovels in front of the class. Introduce counting frame and show
“quick views” of combinations for eight. (see p. 21 in Bunkbeds manual)
 Play Roll For Tens (attached). Need 20 dice. Teachers will gather students in
small groups to work on counting frames.
 Play Ladder game (p.24) using shovel and bucket up and down cards. Debrief
at the end of class.
 Ten Kids on the Climber- pick two climber activities and come up with
combinations to make ten. Whole group gathers for “quick view” activity with
the tens family (p.21).
 Combinations of Ten Using Playing Cards-pick a card, what do you need to
make ten? (example: picked a 3, needs a 7) Manipulatives and paper are
available.
 Play Go Fish, asks for number that makes 10 with one of player’s cards.
(Later play with other number values).
 Twelve Ways to get to Eleven book.
October
 Ten Kids on the Climber with Three Activities- Show representation.
 Assessment- “quick view” on counting frame with combinations for 8 and 10.
Done individually.
 Word problems (see attached)
 Counting frame with mix of numbers up to twenty, show it a different way.
Dreambox.
 Maybe-Neighborhood with 10 lots after Building Museum.
 Look Alike Buildings (Bachman p.102)
 Assessment-Continuum of addition strategies.
 Box of Apples- students put into groups of three, they have a variety of apples
to sample and they come up with their own recipes for applesauce. They write
about their ideas in their math journal. Then they record choices on sheets with
10 or 20 apples.
 Make posters to encourage the class to use their recipe. It will include recipe
and reasons for combination of apples. Gallery walk with post-its to vote.
 When recipe is chosen it gets translated for 25 apples. Materials: apples, potato
masher. After cooking discuss changes.
 Skip counting- clothesline of hands with fives on them. Read Artic Fives
Arrive. Practice around the circle.
Number and Operations in Base Ten
 Pre-Assessment- Place Value Using 21 and 12.
 Organizing Collections- collect ideas for counting in the classroom, with
explore with clipboard, go over strategies.
 Count their own collection with optional tools such as paper clips, rubber
bands, cups, and baggies, and then check someone else’s collection, DebriefWhy would you get different totals.
 Read What Comes in Twos…book, discuss materials that come in set groupserasers, colored pencils, expo markers, paper glue sticks. Why?
 Making packs of ten, quick images, recording individual results
 Place Value Bingo, Children write in their 3-digit numbers
November
 Class inventory-How many more needed in a pack of ten, How Many Am I
Hiding? Game
 Recording the Orders for Full Packs and Playing Tossing (Rolling) for Tens
 Making Packs of Five- first count by tens, use different types of buildings in
pairs, prep for building, predict-write about it, what do you think will happen?,
repack in fives, debrief - What do you notice?
 Collecting stamps- use stamp markers
 Completing the inventory with New Orders-added on or taking away tens.
May use hundreds chart. Using blocks, number stories with ordering -How
many sets?
 Games from unit
 Assessments- Equivalents and Compensation, Subitizing and Unitizing, and
Place Determines Value
December
Geometry
 2D shapes- rectangles, squares, trapezoids, triangles, circles. Also, halves and
quarters of circles and rectangles.
 Sort shapes in groups, Why did you sort them this way?
 Pre-assessment –hand in the bag (with triangle and trapezoid, one at a time)
 Getting Ready to Make Gingerbread houses- everyone gets a graham cracker
decompose and eat. Use graham cracker shaped tagboard to design a
gingerbread house, give them a carton to help. Talk different shapes and how
they can be decomposed.
 Optional –how many bags of candy do we need?
 Make gingerbread houses with a various candy shapes
 Optional -Patterns
January
Operations and Algebraic Thinking Part Two (up to 20)
 Play Blackjack (connected to writing “How tos”). Share strategies.
 If I got a 4 (and/or 2).
What combinations of cards could I get without
going over 21. Go over equations with missing addend. 4+2+ ☐≤21.
21=
☐ +5.
 Students make their own games. Write as a “how to.”
 Teach games:
1. Discover how much your first name is worth if every consonant has a
value of $5 and vowels are $10. Compare the value of your name with those
of your friends. Graph the class results to see which names have the greatest
and least value. Find the range of numbers (the difference between the
greatest and least value). What do you notice on the graph about the names
with the greatest and least value?
2. Choose four cards and arrange them to make the least possible four-digit
number. Have your partner choose three cards and make the greatest
possible number. If either of you draw a 10, discard the card, and draw again.
The player with four cards subtracts the three-digit number, or subtrahend,
from the four-digit number, or minuend. If the answer is odd, the player with
four cards wins a point. If the answer is even, the player with three cards
wins. Switch roles and repeat. When you have drawn all the cards in the deck,
the player with the most points wins.
3. Have your partner close his or her eyes and choose one card from a deck
of cards. The number on that card is your target. Place the remaining cards
face up on the playing surface. With your partner, take turns looking for two
cards that you can add or subtract to get the number on your target card.
Keep playing until you cannot find any more combinations that equal the
target number. Repeat the game with a different target number.
4. I came across these equations. There all wrong! Can you fix them?
5. Look at pictures in pictures in picture books. A. Which equation fits
the picture. B. Here is an equation draw a picture to go with it.
 Neighborhood with 20 lots after Building Museum
February
Number and Operations in Base Ten Part Two
 Use eight bags of Kindie’s 100 Day Snack to figure out how many bags or
boxes needed for 200 snacks (10 per child). Oreos, goldfish, …
 Estimation Does it make sense?
Data analysis
 Graphing of books into groups of first grade identified themes.
 We want to order more books for next year, a graph will be an easy way to
share information for Ms. Potts.
 Bar graphs (talk about range), pictographs, and tallies are used on separate
days.
 Share observations and suggestions when interpreting data.
March
 Compile all data and make class suggestions. Perhaps the pictograph could
lead to unitizing by recording books in groups tens.
 Assessment for Collecting and Analyzing Data- The students made their own
surveys, interpret data, and share the importance of that data. Connected to
persuasive writing.
 Partners used rubrics to check surveys.
Measurement-Time
 Time- Countdown to Spring Break
 Looking at hour hand
 Make paper chain to record hours (color coded for school hours, sleep hours,..)
 Count bubbles by working with a partner to see how many bubbles you can blow in
1 minute. You will each need bubble solution and a straw. One student blows
bubbles into the air while the second student counts the bubbles. When the minute
is up, record the number of bubbles on a chart. After each student from your group
has had a turn blowing bubbles, find the total number of bubbles for the group. On
the basis of this data, how many bubbles could you and your partners blow in an
hour, a day, and a week? How many bubbles did your classmates blow altogether?
How many bubbles could the entire class blow in an hour, a day, and a week?
 Activities- how many jumping jacks can you do in a minute?
April
3D Shapes (collect recycled 3D shapes)
 What is recycling? What is a Recycling Center? What gets recycled? Why is
it important?
 Magic School Bus video on recycled materials.
 What 3D shapes might see in a recycling center? What 3D shapes are there?
 Visit recycling center and take pictures.
 What did you see at the recycling center? What did you learn?
 Cubes (cupcake boxes), cones (make with recycled paper), spheres (tennis
balls), cylinders (toilet and paper towel rolls, markers), rectangular prisms
(boxes), pyramids to make a replica of the Recycling Center.
 Sharing/Ice cream trip
 What have we learned about our community? What can we do to help the
community? Fund raiser for… something local
Money and Measurement
 Order 3 objects by length, then use one of the 3 to compare the other 2.
 My Body and Units of measurement (Math Journal One p.56)
 Comparing individual heights to objects in the classroom (Math Journal One
p.57)
 Measuring with a cutout of your foot
 Measuring with standard foot cutout (Math Masters p.97)
 Comparing My Foot to the Standard Foot (Math Journal One p.60)
 Inches (Math Journal One p.62) Inch by Inch by Leo Lionni possibly use Vicki
Bachman’s Sizing Up Measurement
 Foot Race p. 29 in Sizing Up
 Measure with centimeters
May
 Lemonade Stand
 Books-Olivia Open’s a Lemonade Stan,
 Making a model with straws and clay using measurement –inches, half inches,
centimeters
 How big will the real one be? –feet
 How tall? How wide?
 Homework -Bring in a lemonade recipe (family favorite, google,…)
 Capacity-The Right Fit (Bachman p.85)
 How Many Scoops? (Bachman p.89)
 Making lemonade- come up with recipe-lemons, sugar and water, cups, pitcher
 How many pitchers will we need
 Money- quarters, and equivalents of 25 cents
June
 Logic puzzles and games