Pumpkin Math

The fall is one of my favorite seasons. I love switching to sweaters, jeans, and pumpkin spiced coffee! Another one of my favorite things about fall is that we get to complete "pumpkin math."

This is one of those activities in first grade that students always remember at the end of the year. In my district, we're very fortunate to have families that are always asking for how they can be in the classroom. Volunteering for pumpkin math is a great way. This activity can be done as a whole group if volunteers are limited, but students are able to be more hands on if you can have about 4-5 children per pumpkin.

For pumpkin math, you will need my pumpkin math booklet printed for each of your students. You can purchase it here: https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Pumpkin-Math-2825745 . You will need a scale and tape measure. You will also need the following materials for each group: a small or medium sized pumpkin, knife for cutting the pumpkin open, a spoon for scooping out the seeds and pulp, newspaper to line your tables, and a bowl to hold the pulp.

Students start pumpkin math by thinking about how to "estimate." We then make some estimations and record them on the included recording sheet.

Once the estimations are complete, it's time to start recording. The first is weighing your pumpkin. I usually set up a "weighing station" with my scale at a separate table. This seems to help with the flow of multiple groups. Students record their answer and then return to their table.

They will then use a tape measure to measure how tall the pumpkin is and the circumference around the pumpkin.

Next, each group counts the number of vertical lines on the pumpkin.


Now it's time to get dirty! Have the adult cut off the top of the pumpkin with the knife.

Students can get in with a spoon or their bare hands to start pulling out the seeds and pulp.

Then students will begin the first page of the pumpkin recording, which is counting the number of seeds. HINT: The smaller the pumpkin, generally the more seeds it has. Our pumpkin with the greatest number of seeds last year was 352. Groups of tens were very helpful! After each recording, we compare our actual numbers with our estimations. The seed counting is usually the most surprising!

At the end of the math portion, we allow each group to vote on the type of face they want their pumpkin to have and the volunteer gets to carve the face. We then share out to see which pumpkin weighed the most, which pumpkin was the tallest, most seeds, etc.

This is always a fun project and the feedback from parents is always positive! I hope you enjoy! :)

I'm backkkkk and engaged!

Well, I can't believe it's been over a year since I've posted on this fabulous blog of mine. It's been a busy year and I had to prioritize my life. I put more of a focus this year on our home and family, and I feel energized and renewed to be back. Since I last posted, I am happy to share that I am engaged! :) Ryan and I can't wait to spend the rest of our lives together and I can't wait to shift from being Miss Coulombe to Mrs. Mullen. Here's a picture of us right after he proposed. He proposed on the Marginal Way in Ogunquit, Maine.

  

My beautiful engagement ring with the sunrise of Ogunquit Beach. 

After we got engaged, I went to a bridal expo with my Mom and won a free engagement photo shoot with Millyard Studios. They were fantastic. Here are a few of our favorite photos.

We will be getting married on July 29, 2017 at our church and then we will have our reception at Sky Meadow Country Club in Nashua, NH.

Now that I've updated you on my personal life, for an update on school! I put a real focus this year on my reading and writing instruction. My school launched the Lucy Calkins reading and writing units and I spent a lot of time improving my mini-lesson and putting a focus on student engagement. I can't wait to share my ideas on how I make the reader's and writer's workshop model work in my first grade classroom.

In the meantime, one of the biggest questions I get asked during the summer is how can I help my child avoid regressing over vacation? Nissan 24 created a great graphic to share with parents:

http://www.nissan24auto.com/

*I did not receive payment for sharing their infographic.*

At the end of the year, I also send home a packet of information. It includes a reading log from the town library that rewards children for reading an hour. It also has a bunch of Everyday Math and TPT games that children can play with their families and a writing journal. Knowledge is power for parents and the more we can educate them on ways to prevent the summer slide, the better of our children's education will be!

I can't wait to dive back into the blogging world and share my ideas and experiences with you all. 

Xo,

Jessica

 

Setting up your Reader's Workshop

Hi All,

I'm sure like many of you, we all search for a way to guide our young students to be independent readers that can sustain their independent reading for as long as possible. This year was my first year at really focusing my reading instruction on my student's reading stamina. We of course still explored other reading topics like fairy tales, folktales, and author studies. However, our main focus was building our reading stamina, and our box of reading strategies.

First, each student starts with their own book box. I got them from Really Good Stuff.

 

Each child's name was labeled on the front and they were able to "book shop" in our classroom library. Each day, 5 students would go shopping for their books. Every child was aware of their shopping level from our reading groups. I also chose to break up the students from a variety of levels so that on each day, there weren't 3 kids trying to shop from the same bins. In the beginning of the year, each student was able to get 10 books. My thought behind this was that most of my students were at a lower level (between a D-F) and the books weren't long enough to sustain them for a long duration. They only get to shop once a week, so it was important that they have books that will keep their interest. My the end of the year, they were allowed  7-8 books. I used this chart to manage the book shopping schedule. It's editable and FREE! Click on the image to get your free download!

Every day, our structure was the same for our reading workshop. It would start off with a 10 minute mini-lesson, then independent reading, which was followed by a buddy share, and a closing.

During our independent reading, we would not only be reading for stamina, but we would often practice something that we had learned in the mini-lesson. For example: if we were learning about problem and solution, the students would have to identify the problem in their book and how their characters solved the problem. Then, they would share this as a part of their buddy share.

To track our reading stamina, we used Teaching with Style's stamina freebie. Click on the picture to download it from her TPT store.

In the previous year, our kindergarten did not use the full Reader's Workshop model, so our students started independently reading for 4 minutes. By the end of the year, every child was fully engaged in their independent reading for 40 minutes. This past year, our kindergarten used this model and left the year reading for 12 minutes. Therefore, I'm very encouraged that we can probably start around 7-8 minutes and feel successful. I would set a timer on the whiteboard and before they would go off and read, I would prep them and we would discuss what our time goal was for our independent reading time.

I also created these job descriptions and would put these posters up on the board as a reminder of what they should be doing during this time. It made for very easy management so that I could continue working with my reading groups without being disrupted.

After our buddy share came our closing. This was usually about 5 minutes long and allowed us to revisit the goal from our mini-lesson and to discuss how we did with meeting our independent reading goal.

I hope you enjoyed our walk through of our reader's workshop and I would love to hear your tips and tricks to running a smooth reading workshop.