Teaching Tip Tuesday and Winner, Winner!

Drum Roll......The winner of the Quietest Pencil Sharpener is Marissa from Wild About First GradeCONGRATULATIONS!!!  And, as I went to leave a little "congrats" on her blog, I noticed that she is having a fantastic giveaway, as well.  Hop on over to her blog for a chance to win a $50 Kohl's Giftcard!!

Speaking of giveaways, you can still enter Days 3-7 of my Giveaway Extravaganza!

Is anyone else HORRIBLE at keeping up with their counting tape of the days of the school year??  Maybe you aren't required to do this, but it is part of our math calendar program.  Since our calendar components are all on our Promethean Board, I have a super hard time actually putting up a paper version of the days of the school year - but we're required to....yep, marked down on observations if the paper version isn't up on the wall and up-to-date.  Luckily, my student teacher was da BOMB at keeping this updated.  Unluckily, she is now gone and it rests solely on my shoulders! ;)  Maybe it's because she got me off to such a great start, but I've actually been keeping it up-to-date on a regular basis!  Woot!  Woot!  This might be a record for me!

Anyway, I thought I would show you one way that makes this super easy to track and update....because if it were any more complicated (meaning taking more than two seconds) I would not bother with it!
I put the numbers for the days on post-its as I always have (tens digit in red, ones digit in blue...multiples of 10 circled, etc).  Then, I stuck the post-its to register paper (you know the long rolls of paper that would go in a cash register) and laminated it! This is a key part as it keeps the post-its from falling off and allows the same counting tape to be used year after year.  I think I'm about on my 6th year of using this one!  Finally, I cut the tape into sections of 10.  I then, put the entire section up, but roll and tape the end so that only the current numbers show (see pic above).  Then, each day I just roll it back one!  Easy peasy! ;)  I hope this itty bitty tip helps someone else keep their sanity with this tedious task!
You can see our counting tape stretching across the bottom of our window sill as one of my sweet students leads the class in math calendar.  It will end up going across two walls of my classroom by the end of the year, but this little tip makes it easy to control since all of the post-its stay put!

4 comments

  1. Thanks Amanda for the pencil sharpener and the shout out!! I put a post up. So excited to be a winner! haha

    Marissa
    WILD About First Grade!

    ReplyDelete
  2. I was in a math meeting today discussing how to have a number line to the count the school days and tada here is your tip! Thank you:)

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  3. This is the first year I have been good at keeping up with our counting tape!

    ReplyDelete

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