Being a Good Teammate, Near Doubles, & More

Hi bloggy world!  I have a few different things to share with you today and I hope you'll find some ideas you can use with your kiddos!
First I want to share this cute book

Bat's Big Game by Margaret Read McDonald

This is a fictional story about a bat who keeps changing teams between birds and animals during a big game of soccer.  He changes based upon who's winning.  In the end, no one wants him on their team since he isn't a loyal teammate.
I read the book to my students as a part of our weekly Olweus-inspired class meeting.  We had a great discussion before, during, and after reading.  After reading, I gave each student a football on which to write one way to be a good teammate.  They did such a great job!  Check out a few:

 

 

This activity was perfect for this time of year for a couple of reasons.  1.  We've been learning about bats, so it was fun to hear their explanations of whether bat belonged with the birds or the animals (mammals).  2.  "Loyal" was one of our text talk words from early in the school year and it was great to see if they still remembered the word and its meaning.  3.  It's football season, so these babies will make a great display in our hallway.  But before I hang them in the hallway, I want to show you what's hanging out there now:

Near Doubles Trees

 

     This is a craftivity that we made to help us understand near doubles (a.k.a. doubles plus one).  This is ALWAYS so tricky.  And some of you may disagree with me, but I often wonder is near doubles is actually a strategy that any first grader uses to add.  It's so hard for them to even grasp the concept, that I cannot imagine them actually using it when they're adding!  But I digress...

   Here's what we did.  I gave the students a tree pattern and I had a huge set of die-cut leaves.  The students glued their tree to the large blue construction paper.  Then they chose two colors for their leaves.  Using these two colors, they first displayed a doubles fact. 

 

Sorry, I didn't take a picture of the first step, but essentially, this student would've had four red leaves in the tree and four yellow leaves on the ground.  Then she recorded her doubles fact (4 + 4 = 8).  Next, she added one more red leaf to the tree to get her near double (5 + 4 = 9) and wrote it at the bottom.  We did this in these exact steps, so the students could first see their double, then very intentionally added one more leaf to the tree so they could understand how it became a near double.   

 

Here are a few more:

 

The doubles and near doubles trees made a great display to have up during parent-teacher conferences.  Which in case you haven't guessed, I survived parent-teacher conferences a few weeks ago!  Have you had them yet?  What really helped get me through were some forms that I created this year to help me stay on track, organized, and productive before, during, and after my conferences. 

 

 I have put these forms and many great others in a pack in my TPT store.  Click on the picture below to go there and check it out.