Helps4Teachers specializes in unique, engaging K-3 Language Arts and
Math products. Each product is designed to give differentiated
instruction to help meet the individual learning modalities of each of
your students.
Teaching Math Using Literature
Teaching math through literature is a powerful way to focus on
learning key math concepts. "Mathematical activities that are
stimulated by literature inspire students to explore and investigate
concepts."
(Math Through Children’s Literature: Making the NCTM Standards Come Alive, Braddon, Hall and Taylor)
"Combining math and literature in classroom activities is a way for
teachers to invite children into the world of math. Reading books that
weave mathematical ideas into engaging stories helps dispel the myth
that math is dry, unimaginative, and inaccessible. Children's books can
not only generate interest in math but also provide contexts that help
bring meaning to abstract concepts. Using children's literature is a
win-win -- for children and for teachers."
(Marilyn Burns)
Our website offers the following stories to enhance your math lessons
through the use of literature. Each story is uniquely designed to teach
key math concepts using mnemonic hooks and engaging visuals. They
allow your students to more easily access the math concept being
taught. This is done through visual clues, rhyming text and
supplemental kinesthetic and hands-on activities.
This book teaches students how to recognize the relationship of the
numbers in a number sentence. It is a story rhyme about a family
named Fact. The story visually helps students understand the inverse
relationship of the numbers in a number sentence by assigning each
number as a member of a family. The book comes with a 32-page
packet of teacher and student manipulatives as well as practice sheets
to reinforce the concept of inverse number relationships as taught in
the book.
This book is about a mom who sees a mouse in her house and goes
searching to find it. Throughout the story the mouse playfully
instructs the mom on how she can teach her children to tell time by
the mouse changing its position on the mantel clock. Each position on
the clock has a rhyming phrase or mnemonic hook that helps students
remember what to say at each key position. This book helps teach
time to the hour, ½ hour and quarter hour as well as how to write
time. It is divided in such a way that you can stop after teaching each
key position to physically practice telling time on little student clocks.
It comes with a 22-page booklet of practice sheets with a picture of a
mouse at the key positions on the clock as taught in the story.
A determined alligator named Alfie, takes his friends on a journey to
find the largest numbers. This book teaches the concept of comparing
numbers and reinforces the use of the greater than (>), less than (<),
and equals (=) signs. It comes with 22 colored alligator manipulatives
for student hands-on practice and eight practice activity sheets.
The Importance of Math Learning Centers
Learning centers are a motivating way for students to practice
important skills. They encourage students to work independently and
to have fun, engaging and hands-on exploration and practice of
important math concepts. Hands-on learning and visual models are
core elements of an effective approach to math education. The books
below bring together some of the most popular manipulatives from
classroom materials along with manipulatives you can make yourself
to enhance and improve your classroom math centers.
This book provides 48 standards based math center activities that give
engaging, hands-on repeated practice of key math concepts and
standards using a variety of dice, spinners, rubber stamps, etc. It
includes ready to print manipulatives (spinners, cubes, etc.) and
student accountability sheets. It includes the areas of addition,
subtraction, place value (base ten), money, time, ordering numbers to
100, graphing, tally charts, comparing numbers (>,<.=) and more and
less.
Importance of Math Manipulatives
"Educational research indicates that the most valuable learning occurs
when students actively construct their own mathematical
understanding. One way to facilitate this is to provide opportunities for
children to explore, develop, test, discuss, and apply ideas. Extensive
and thoughtful use of physical materials, particularly in the primary
grades, is conducive to the concrete kinds of learning that lay a
satisfactory foundation for the development of this mathematical
understanding."
(http://www.iched.org/cms/scripts/page.php?site_id=iched&item_id=math_manipulatives)
Our website offers a variety of math manipulatives. We offer speciality
dice, spinners, rubber stamps and other kinds of unique manipulatives.
About Phonological/Phonemic Awareness
Phonemic awareness is a vital component to reading readiness.
Phonemic Awareness is not phonics! It is the oral manipulation of
sounds rather than associating a sound with a letter (letter-sound
correspondence). Struggling students often lack skills in the area of
Phonemic Awareness.
"Phonological Awareness is defined as one’s sensitivity to, or explicit
awareness of, the phonological structure of words in one’s language. It
encompasses an awareness of individual words in sentences, syllables,
and onset and rime segments as well as awareness of individual
phonemes in words. Phonological Awareness is considered an
"umbrella" or broad term, which covers aspects of sound identification
and manipulation in spoken language. Activities in Phonological
Awareness are based on a progression of skill difficulty (as shown
below). The goal of Phonological Awareness instruction is to develop
an awareness that words are composed of individual sounds or
phonemes, and to develop the ability to manipulate sounds in words."
(http://www.fcrr.org/Curriculum/pdf/GK-1/TRG_Final_Part1.pdf)
"Teaching children to manipulate phonemes in words is highly effective
under a variety of teaching conditions with a variety of learners across
a range of grade and age levels. Teaching phonemic awareness to
children significantly improves reading more than instruction that lacks
any attention to phonemic awareness."
(National Reading Panel, http://www.nichd.nih.gov/publications/nrp/findings.cfm)
The following books are offered on our website to help with improving
the phonemic awareness of your struggling students:
This book offers a wide array of phonemic awareness
activities including rhyming, blending and segmenting activities. Each
activity is multi-modal in nature and will reach the learning style of
every student. It also includes many sight word activities and sight
word fluency readings.
Phonics/Alphabetic Principle
"Phonics instruction is a way of teaching reading that stresses the
acquisition of letter-sound correspondences and their use in reading
and spelling. The primary focus of phonics instruction is to help
beginning readers understand how letters are linked to sounds
(phonemes) to form letter-sound correspondences and spelling
patterns and to help them learn how to apply this knowledge in their
reading."
(Report of the National Reading Panel: Teaching Children to Read)
Letter sound practice, word play (physically adding, deleting and changing the
sounds in a word to make a new word) word family (onsets and rimes) practice,
reading decodable books, reading nonsense words and high frequency
sight words are all necessary components of a good phonics program.
The following books are a great way to meet the state standards of
adding, deleting and changing the sounds in words to make a new
word.
This book includes lessons
to review short vowels, long vowels with the silent 'e' and digraphs. It
encourages students to add, change and delete the sounds in words to
make a new word. This is a great way to improve a student's decoding
(blending and segmenting) and spelling skills! Each lesson is scripted
and the use of a hands-on, tactile manipulative such as Spelling Sticks™
, plastic letter tiles, magnetic letters, etc. is needed.
Spelling Sticks™ Systematic and Explicit Phonics Word Play Lessons Book Two (Coming Soon)
This book includes lessons
to review dipthongs, long vowel teams, and r-controlled vowels. It
encourages students to add, change and delete the sounds in words to
make a new word. This is a great way to improve a student's decoding
(blending and segmenting) and spelling skills! Each lesson is scripted
and the use of a hands-on, tactile manipulative such as Spelling Sticks™,
plastic letter tiles, magnetic letters, etc. is needed.
Sight Word Recognition
Sight Words (sometimes called the Dolch Word List or high frequency
words) are some of the most frequently used words in the English
language. Even though they number only about 200, sight words are
part of approximately 50 to 70 percent of any basic, non-technical
text. Therefore, teaching sight words as early as possible is considered
a crucial part of elementary education. Students must be able to read
sight words on sight within three seconds. Sight words are often rule
breakers that cannot be sounded out. For example: the, was, they,
etc. Automatic sight word recognition helps to increase reading
fluency, which in turn aids in comprehension.
Sight words can be practiced and taught through games, activities and
reading sight word rich books. Games and activities allow repeated
exposure to grade level sight words and are much more engaging and
motivating than just showing sight word flashcards. REPEATED
EXPOSURES TO IRREGULAR SIGHT WORDS IS ESSENTIAL to
mastery of these words!
The following book found on our website includes many engaging and
fun sight word games, activities, incentive charts, and practice cards.
This book offers 20 sight word activities as well as sight word fluency
readings. It also contains many phonemic awareness activities in the
areas of rhyming, blending and segmenting.
