Yet Another Math Activity

   This week was a short week for us, with Fall Break giving us a four day weekend.  Yay!  In theory, fall break is a time for teachers and students to relax and recharge for the second half of the semester.  In reality, it's a super busy school week, filled with fitting 5 days worth of learning into 3 days of school, finalizing grading period grades, and meeting with parents during pre-report card conferences.  The days off are filled with all my fall yard work {trimming bushes and trees, weeding, mowing, raking leaves, etc.}, catching up on house cleaning and laundry, swapping out summer clothes for winter clothes, and cleaning my refrigerator {something I do fall and spring break--that's right, I'm a party animal!}.

     While I was waiting for some laundry to finish today, I started looking at our upcoming multiplication unit.  I decided to re-vamp the lapbook I made last year and make it cuter.  I didn't add any clip art or anything {I tend to make items that are clip art free as I find it distracting, and I have students who spend their time doodling on the pictures rather than focusing on the lesson}, but I used a cute fonts {hello helvetica and hello journaling from Hello Literacy, one of my favorite blogs!}.

Available at my TpT store.

    I use this lapbook as a way for my munchkins to keep track of their multiplication learning.  We use a folded piece of 12 x 18 construction paper to form the folder and glue the charts on to.  I 3-hole punch it and we put it in their math binder.  They record definitions, strategies, and examples in the lapbook, and they can take it out of their binder to use as a reference as they work or to take home and study.

     Do you use any special incentives or activities to help your students learn multiplication?  I've found that most third graders are excited to begin the multiplication unit because they see it as "big person" math, but once they realize that there is some brainwork involved, they lose interest.  I'd be really interested in hearing some ideas on how you keep your students enthusiastic about learning their facts and strategies.

     

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Long Time No See

Hello again.

It's been a while since I posted anything because the school year seems to have swallowed me whole.  I LOVE this year's crop of munchkins, but it's been a lot of work settling into my new room and getting used to the new routines and procedures of my new school.  Not to mention that the foundation of my house cracked, and I've been dealing with getting estimates and scheduling repairs.

So the foundation dudes are at my house today, which means so am I.  Finally, a personal day so I can catch up on laundry and housecleaning and blogging... and checking in on my house's foundation and the plants they have to dig up to get to the foundation.  I think I got a great company to work on it.  They've been very professional and seem to be doing some good work (like I know what I'm talking about).  I knew I had made the right choice when they broke for lunch a little while ago and they were all sitting out front in their truck eating sandwiches... except for one guy, who unpacked his microwave, plugged it into the generator, and heated up his soup.  I LOVE seeing creativity and ingenuity in action!

Anyway...

I put up a new math activity on Teachers Pay Teachers this morning.  I used it last week with my munchkins as they prepped for their subtraction test.  We'd covered so many skills during our unit that I wanted to give them a chance to practice them all one more time before formally assessing their abilities.

Get it here.

Get it here.

 I had divided the munchkins into 4 groups {no ability grouping here--I wanted my stronger math thinkers to interact with my strugglers so they could model their thinking as they worked}, and we rotated through the stations.  I put subtraction flash cards and math books at each station so early finishers would have something to do while they waited.

The kids loved doing this activity!  They told me that it was WAY better than a worksheet or revisiting activities we'd already done.  They like talking about the math as they work through the problems, and being able to get up and move to the next station helps to keep the wiggles at bay.

I'd love to hear what you do to help your kids review for tests.  Do you do the same thing every time, or mix it up?


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What Time is It?

     When is recess?

     How long until lunch?

     How many times have you gotten questions like these from your students?  Don't you wish your students would come to you already knowing how to read an analog clock and answer these questions for themselves?

     Using "Clock Numbers" around your classroom clock is a great way to scaffold that learning and allow students to use them in real-world situations.

Use numbers like these around your classroom clock.

      I have numbers around my clock, and students use them as a reference for telling time when they need to sign out to use the bathroom, when they sign up to go to the library, or when they need to fill out a behavior form.  As the year goes on, I will replace the 15, 30, and 45 with the following:

     This will allow students to see the relationships between the numbers and the words used in every day situations {quarter after 11, half past 3, etc.}.  Once these word cards go up and students begin using them accurately, the other numbers {05, 10, 20, 25, 35, 40, 50, and 55} will come down.  By the end of the school year, my goal is that students will have had practice telling time without any labels on the clock. 

     By using this knowledge in real-world situations throughout the year, our telling time lessons in math class can be mostly review, and we can focus on the dreaded elapsed time.

Find this pack in my TpT and TN stores!

     As a special treat, I'm having a sale just in time for school to start next week!  I'm joining Teachers Pay Teachers in their Back to School sale on August 12 and 13. 

     I'm offering 20% off all my products, and TpT is adding another 10% off, for a total of a 28% savings! {When you take 20% off my products, then 10% off the remaining cost, the total savings is 28%--I know, crazy math!}  All you have to do is put in the promo code (BTS12) when you check out for the extra 10% savings.  I will also be running a sale in my Teachers Notebook store those same days! 


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