Ep 43: 1st Grade Tasks for Building a Thinking Classroom!

Today, we’re diving into something that every early elementary teacher has faced: coming up with the perfect math task—especially for those curious First Graders. Sometimes, it feels like the hardest part, right?

Well, no worries, because we’ve got some exciting, hands-on ideas to spark engagement and build math confidence in your students! We’ll talk about:

Blog Post

📖 Story-Based Problems that bring math to life with fun narratives.

🔢 FREE 100 Chart Mysteries where your students will outsmart the 100 Chart Thief.

🍕 Pizza Fractions at the Dough-licious Pizzeria.

📏 Nonstandard Measurement Adventures with the Cube Queen and Popsicle Stick King.

🎡 Data and Graphing at the Laugh-A-Lot Carnival.

🎲Skip Counting by 5 with dice

🔺Composing Shapes with pattern blocks

⭐Save ⏱️ and 💸 on the 1st Grade Task Bundle!⭐

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Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Last week we were talking all about tasks to hit kindergarten standards.

(00:04):
Today we're talking about tasks to hit some first grade standards.
Hello and welcome to Making Number Sense Make Sense, a podcast for elementary teachers,
specifically early elementary teachers, looking to really make an impact in the number sense of

(00:24):
their students. I never thought I would say but I was really enjoying creating tasks for first grade
because in kindergarten of course I want stories, I want them to get immersed in what's happening,
but also they're in kindergarten so they do need a lot of practice with counting, number writing,
counting sequence, things like that. But I feel like in first grade they have a better handle on

(00:46):
it so you can get a little bit deeper and do a little more stories because they have a foundation
for the math that they'll be need to be doing or the ways that they might express themselves
both verbally and written down to show all of the great thinking that they're doing. So today I'm
going to share some tasks for first grade that you might want to try with your students. I find

(01:08):
addition, subtraction, traditional problem solving, there's a lot of tasks out there. I've created a
lot myself and those are really great especially when you can dip your toes into a story but also
have them exposed and practicing all of the different problem types. Today I'm going to share
some tasks that are four standards that sometimes might get overlooked but sometimes you just kind

(01:28):
of need a break from addition and subtraction. So the first one is for graphing and so in this one
the kids go to a carnival called the Laugh-A-Lot Carnival and at this carnival there is so many
things to do. So your students voted on rides, snacks, and games they wanted to play at the
carnival and in the task they are kind of organizing the data about the rides, the snacks,

(01:53):
and the games that the kids wanted to play. So they have three different data sets for rides,
games, and snacks and the kids have to organize it so they have to figure out how many were in each
category and answer questions and create a graph to represent the data that they collected. And this
and this kind of builds on itself by starting with just two options moving to three and then four

(02:19):
and students making a graph for each of these data sets which is the thin slicing part. The
check your understanding is that they've also kind of wanted to play games and see what kind of prizes
might be available. They can choose if they want two categories in their data three or four to
reinforce the skills that they had been working on. The next task I'm going to share is a measuring

(02:40):
task. So this task involves two characters the cube queen and the popsicle stick king. So these two
are remodeling a room in their castle and they need your students help to measure the various
things that they want to put into this room that they are remodeling in their castle. So your
students have a list of classroom items that they will measure and so on day one they're going to

(03:03):
measure these things with cubes to figure out how long or short these things are and on day two
they're going to be measuring these things with popsicle sticks. So the first one is the queen's
measurement, the second one is the popsicle stick king's measurement. The thin slicing is the variety
of things that they can measure and at the end instead of a check your understanding task this

(03:25):
will be more of a reflection on when it's best to measure with certain items. So they're going to
answer some questions and fill in the blank about when it might be best to measure with sticks
versus cubes and why that might make a difference. This next task is a fraction task and in this task

(03:46):
your students are helping the delicious pizzeria. If you couldn't tell I love a good pun I also
think it adds a little more fun to the task that you're doing. So at the delicious pizzeria they
have orders that they are trying to fill but these orders are either between two sharers or four
sharers. So on the recording sheet they have basically order slips and it either shows a

(04:08):
circle pizza like a circular pizza that the clients want or a rectangular pizza and how many
sharers they want it partitioned into. So on the recording sheet they're either going to partition
between two and four sharers and once they get to the check your understanding they might even have
a pizza with three sharers for a little extra challenge. Keeping on brand with the story theme

(04:31):
the next task is called the hundreds chart thief. So there is a thief that has stolen numbers
off of the hundreds chart and your students need to use their number recognition and pattern
recognition in a hundreds chart to figure out which items have been stolen or which numbers have been
stolen by the hundreds chart thief. And similarly their recording sheet or their thin slicing is

(04:54):
other sections of the hundreds chart that have been messed with that your kids need to figure out
which numbers are missing. Kind of my first category of tasks do tend to be more story related
that they can really get immersed into but at the same time that doesn't work for everything
and there might be other things that might engage your students as well and variety is a spice of

(05:14):
life right we like to switch it up. So the next two tasks I'm going to talk about are for composing
shapes and skip counting but it's not necessarily a story it's more visual and task based or
challenge based. So for skip counting by fives your kids will get different images of dice faces
and different arrangements that all show five. So this is a really great opportunity for you to see

(05:38):
if your kids are just skip counting five ten fifteen twenty or if they are starting to group
maybe they prefer to work in groups of tens or groups of twenty. So you can see kind of the way
that they're starting to think about numbers and grouping smaller numbers to bigger ones with a
variety of images dice images that they have to work with in both the fin slicing and also the

(05:59):
check your understanding piece. And the bonus last but not least for today is a composing shapes task
which is similar to the kindergarten one but these shapes are a little bit more complex and require a
little more thought for your students to be able to do. So they have four different shape challenges
that they'll work on and then again in the check your understanding piece they have challenges that

(06:23):
are a little bit tougher or if they're feeling crazy with it they really enjoy it they can try
all of them at the same time. Let me know if you have any questions about these tasks if you're
going to try them and you can check out the blog post to see images of what these tasks look like
and get a better idea if they will work for you in your classroom. The hundredth day of school is

(06:45):
approaching and their hundreds chart thief is a perfect task to do on the hundredth day of school
and if you would like to give it a try you can get it absolutely free in the show notes there is a
link where I will send it to you for free and you can give it a try and let me know what your students think.