I'm not the biggest fan of homework, especially for young kids, but you might find yourself
in a situation where your admin is requiring you to assign homework.
So this is a little workaround I thought of that I much prefer to traditional paper pencil
homework.
Hello, and welcome to Making Number Sense Makes Sense, a podcast for elementary teachers,
specifically early elementary teachers, looking to really make an impact in the number sense
of their students.
I think my biggest issue with homework is if their students are not given any choice
and it's not meaningful and it's not something that they are, that it's fun, you're going
to get kids who are not doing it.
So you're having to spend all of this time preparing this homework that kids don't do
unless it's for a grade and then it feels like something else they have to do instead
of something that they are doing to support what they're learning in class.
So this is a little workaround I created to still be assigning quote unquote homework
but make it feel more fun and less like a chore.
So my solution to the homework conundrum, it's kind of a play based approach to homework.
So what I'm thinking is I really want my families to enjoy their time after school, like you
don't have to keep doing more school once you're out of school.
But I want them to have fun with what they're doing.
So I really wanted the quote unquote homework I was assigning to be fun.
So what I did is I created a set of games that kids can use, kids and families can use
at home and that would be their homework, play one of these math games.
And in this handout that I gave my families, I let them know kind of why I was giving them
this kind of homework versus something traditional like a worksheet.
And I understand that not every family will be able to spend the time because of their
work schedules or other time constraints.
But I wanted the option to be there if they got a minute here or there to be able to use
these.
So in the description letter, I sent home to families basically saying like this is what
we're doing this year.
And these are some ideas for how to differentiate.
Now I don't like getting too into the weeds and that kind of thing.
But you know, there's there's families who are like, oh, you know, this is too challenging
for my child or this is too easy for my child.
So I tried to give them ideas of how to make it easier or how to make it harder according
to what they're seeing their kids do.
So in this packet, there are 36 games that are aligned to the common core standards.
But to be honest with you, most of the standards are pretty similar in all states across the
United States.
So even though these are common core aligned, most of your standards will be hit in them
even if you're not using common core in your state.
So there was the family family letter and this does require some prep.
I'm not going to lie to you, it did require some prep to get everything kind of laminated,
but you don't necessarily need to cut everything out yourself.
And with our beginning of the year Amazon money, I had purchased some dice and playing
cards for my students and then they could just use those all year.
So they needed the set of games, dice and cards.
And that was it.
So included in here, I had number tracks within without dice.
Five frames, 10 frames, hundreds chart, numeral cards, 10 frame cards, shape cards, a graphing
chart, comparison T charts and a board game, as well as a tracking system they could use
to see how many games are playing and so they can rate their favorite ones.
So like I said before, most of these games had a harder option and an easier option for
my students and everything was in English and Spanish because I taught Spanish immersion.
Half of my students come from Spanish speaking families and the other half of my students
come from non Spanish speaking families, usually English.
So that way all families, most of my families could access this information because it was
in their home language already.
So if you're curious like what kind of games were in there, I'm going to share with you
some of the games that I put in there.
So one of them is called Race to 100.
So this would be for later on in the year.
So with their playing cards, one kid would flip one card and then the grown up or so
oiler sibling would flip over the other card right down how many they had and then flip
over another card and add that to the previous card and keep going until one of them reached
100.
Another game I had was called Under the Cup, which is kind of a decomposing number game.
So you start with a certain number like I'm going to start with, oh no, six items and
I'm going to hide some of them under a cup or under my hand and then the other ones are
outside so they have to figure out how many am I hiding.
I also had some ideas for kind of more movement games.
So like these are all these number cards, a family could kind of hide them around the
house or put them in different places and then say to their kid, all right, I need you
to go find me the number seven and go find the number seven and bring it back or be like,
okay, pick the number eight, find eight Legos and bring them back to me, things like that
to get them moving around.
So there's kind of a game board type game.
There was number writing games, sorting games, number writing games, shape games, graphing
games, that kind of thing, so that they were kind of really hitting on all of the standards
that you might see in the common core in a fun way.
So that kind of my work around to homework, making it be more game like and play.
So if this has sparked any ideas for you, I would love to hear it.
And if you would like to see exactly what I'm talking about on what my game set looks
like, I will have that linked down below for you.
Thanks for listening and I will see you next time.
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