Adventures in Teaching: Deep in the Heart of Texas Blog Hop

Welcome to the "Deep in the Heart of Texas" blog hop! Over 40 Texas teacher bloggers have joined together to share what we love about our state as well as ideas and freebies that we love. You will also have the opportunity to enter to win TpT products and/or TpT gift certificates by entering using the rafflecopters included in each post. Down at the bottom, you will see all of the blogs participating in the hop. Just click and you will be taken to their posts. We hope you love what you find. Happy Valentine's Day!

Howdy! I'm Cassie. I'm a 27 year old 1st grade teacher. I've been married to my hunky hubby for 5 years and we have 3 fur-babies. I've only taught 1st grade and I wouldn't have it any other way! :)

Well, I live in Cowtown and I love it! The Fort Worth Stockyards are 10 minutes from my house. We also live close to wonderful museums and tasty restaurants. It is the quiet of the suburbs with an amazing night life all rolled into one! There is always a lot to do here in Fort Worth, Texas.

One of my favorite things in my classroom are my BUILD math stations. It is a very flexible way to run stations and it has been rocking in my classroom for years! My students have 5 choices and all the choices are things that we are working on or have been working on. I have found that these fun (and easy to prepare!!) choices for my students are a key factor in keeping them interested. A lot of the choices I have in there are simple and easily changed out.

Buddy Games, Using Manipulatives, Independent Reading, Learning About Numbers, Doing Math

My students don't go with a specific group to their station (although you certainly could do it that way- my teammate has her students go by table group to each bucket). I call whoever I need to my table first, and then I call the other students to make their choice. The kids at my table might be up there for word problems in one rotation and then coin recognition in the next rotation. This setup makes it very easy to fit the needs of my class at any given time. I'm a very structured teacher in all other areas, but with SO many concepts being taught in math, I wanted to allow a lot of leeway when seeing groups. I use a blank chart and I just write down what letter they go to. I can look back on my spreadsheet and see that Sam went to the U bucket yesterday, so today he should do L or B instead.

Head over to the 'BUILD' section of my blog using the tabs at the top and you can find a lot more info! :)