Centers Hack

It seems silly, but starting in a new grade level is quite similar to being a new teacher all over again.  I don't necessarily know what misconceptions my students will have, I don't have a drawer full of manipulatives or centers for review/extension activities, and there's a lot of learning curves.

One of our most recent grade level meetings focused on math planning and the upcoming unit.  One of the benefits of these meetings is that I can pick the brains of the other teachers who have taught this math unit before.

Here were the take aways:

Elapsed time and telling time apparently is extremely difficult for the kiddos. 

A pre-test for this unit is highly recommended.  (The Engage NY Module covers addition and subtraction with regrouping to the thousands, elapsed time, telling time, estimation, and rounding.)

Pre-teaching is recommended because not all the second grade teachers use Engage NY curriculum.  With computers and phones, telling time on an analog (traditional) clock is a lost skill that's not necessarily reinforced at home.  Very few of my students can read the analog clock in our classroom and often interrupt my teaching to blurt out a question asking about the time.  It's a skill we're working on.

So we're going to do some hands-on practice with telling time and reading clocks before jumping into our next math unit.

We're going to physically build clocks, courtesy of this free {TpT download}.

I also prepped these {I have Who Has} center and {What Time is it} centers for each table.  Both were freebies (my favorite) from TpT.  If my students like them and they're valuable, I'll reprint on colored cardstock and laminate.

 

To stay organized, I make each table their own set and place it in a sandwich sized bag.  I then place all the smaller bags in a gallon sized bag, along with the answer keys.  It's the little tricks that make the difference.

The Metric System

Ahh, the metric system.  Usually students either have an easy time with this or they think it's the most confusing thing, ever.

My students this year, however, did fairly well with the metric conversions.  I think a large part of this success is because we spent so much time in the beginning of the year building number sense and working with powers of ten.

I also modeled exactly what a meter looks like and passed around a meter stick:

                                              

As with every math unit, we did a gallery walk with challenge questions before the test:

We also did some sorting activities and used our "I have, who has" cards in small groups.

I also sent them on a scavenger hunt in their own fridges to find items that were listed in the customary system but that were also labeled with the metric system.

How do you teach the metric system?

Halloween Math Games

Halloween is a special day in elementary school.  Between lots of costumes, our school wide dance party to Thriller, and the looming five day (yes, 5 day) weekend for students, there wasn't a lot of focusing on work from my students.

Instead of fighting for their focus, I did math games.  They were aligned to the standards and students were working on math, but in a fun way.  

Game 1: Decimal Place Value Spooky Sort, created by Jennifer Findley

We have been working on rounding and decimals, so this was perfect for them to round to the specified place value!

Game 2: Adding and Subtracting Decimals, created by Jane Feener

This was perfect for my students!  I'd just explicitly taught adding and subtracting the week before so it was a great spiral review.

Game 3: Sweet Rounding Decimals, created by Fun in Fifth Grade

Again, another awesome center to review math concepts!

Oh, did I mention all these fabulous games were free?  Be sure to leave their creators some love on TpT!

October

I'm a firm believer that school, especially elementary school, should be a fun and welcoming learning environment.  Since moving over to my new school, this mindset has grown because it's supported building-wide.

I checked with my students and since all celebrate Halloween, I put up a banner on the board.  I gave them new class jobs and the assignment sheet is orange.  The librarian is buying each classroom a pumpkin for us to decorate as a class with a book character.  Since we're reading The Lightning Thief as our class read aloud (and loving it), I'm hoping to steer them toward a Camp Half-Blood pumpkin. 

Our lounge was decorated with the most adorable Halloween signs and there was a feast of treats Friday morning.  I keep forgetting that the first Friday of every month is a brunch, so it's a pleasant surprise to find an assortment of homemade goodies awaiting me in the morning.  Our grade level is responsible for March's surprise, so we've got some time to think of a theme.  Although I'm seeing lots of shamrocks and green things on our table!

We are about half way through our math unit on decimals (NBT 3, 4) where we are focusing on rounding, reading, and ordering decimal place values to the thousandths.  I decided to take a day to do math games while I pulled small groups for reteaching.  I set the timer for 15 minutes for each game, went over the materials and expectations for each center, and allowed the table teams to pick.  For our first time, they did an awesome job treating my centers with respect and cleaning up after themselves.  I was very pleased with their respectful attitudes and how excited they were to talk about math.

For privacy concerns, I won't share the pictures because my students' faces are in them.  However, they had an amazing time playing.  I walked around and listened to their math conversations and they did such a great job coaching one another.  Many groups, without prompting, were explaining their thinking to each other.  Sometimes they can explain concepts in a way that makes sense to each other and as long as my kiddos understand the math, I don't care who they learned it from.  Plus, when they can explain their thinking, it shows me that they've truly mastered the content.

Some of the activities I made, but some I found on TpT.  The next two freebies were awesome and these hard working educators deserve a virtual high five! Thanks for making great activities to help students learn.

Here were some of the centers we played:

Spooky Sort, made by Jennifer Findley.

They sorted by the underlined place value, then put the cards in order from greatest to least.  If they had time left over (we used a timer), they played war with the cards.

Decimals to the Thousandths, made by Allison Harig.

They had some awesome discussions about math.  I love that one table had two students really struggling with comparing, so they chose to do this activity twice during the rotation time to make sure their classmates understood the concept.  

What's even more exciting is I found more cute standards-based games for the next math topic!  My fifth graders, while they might not admit it, are loving these festive fun learning activities.  Who says kinder should have all the fun?

New Literacy Stations

With the school year winding down (and testing being over!), my students had some time to collaboratively enjoy reading stations based on the novels they read with me in small groups.

These stations are now available here on my TpT store!

New centers include:

A chronological order sort for The Son of Neptune with an included answer key. 

 Including answer keys was one of the things I revised this year after seeing what a difference it made with my own small groups.  Instead of being interrupted to referee on events, I would simply hand them the answer key when they were done so they could check themselves.  Some groups could handle having the answer key at the beginning of station time, but some needed time to try the center without being tempted to look at the answers right away.  

The second center is for Camp Half-Blood and Camp Jupiter.  

Students will separate out characters and descriptions to fit the appropriate magical camp.  My students loved doing this center and even though they'd read different novels (some read the Lightning Thief while some read the Lost Hero), they could still work on the center together!

Additional centers will be posted over the summer, I just need to move first!

Text Features Sort

While it was a tad time consuming to create, one of my students' favorite centers is my text features sort.  I cut up a few copies of an old Time for Kids magazine and cut apart the article.  I glued the text features on different colored pieces of paper and laminated them (for durability).

My students had to put the articles back together with their text features (captions, pictures, titles, maps, etc).  It was a challenge and they had to read the informational text to figure out what features went with each article.

Happy reading!

FCRR Shout Out

I've blogged about FCRR before and it's a wonderful free resource for literacy stations.  I love that it's broken up into grade level bands (K-1, 2-3 and 4-5) as well as into the big 5 components of literacy instruction (phonemic awareness, fluency, vocabulary, phonics and comprehension).  They've also revised many of their student activities to align with the Common Core State Standards, which is also extremely helpful.

I've used the stations with my intervention groups and during my small groups.  I especially like the fluency stations at the beginning of the year when I'm explicitly teaching the four components of fluency (accuracy, rate, expression and phrasing).

Since it was reading week last week, I took advantage of the lax schedule (we had assemblies and Discovery Education testing as well) to play some reading games with my students (when they weren't being pulled to make up missed assignments, since the trimester ended Friday). 

One of the stations they played was "fact and opinion football":

I had a group of football fans fully entertained for a good twenty minutes.  When they ran out of cards, I had them make up their own statements for the group to guess.

The second station was "incredible inferences":

(Yes, my classroom rug is polka dotted...that's just how I roll!)

I used counters from our math kit as pieces, but you can use virtually anything. I'm pretty sure almost every teacher I've met has some sort of kit of pieces.

They had a great time with these reading games and I liked the skills that were reinforced. I know many of my students struggle with getting past the literal words in the text, so this was a fun way for them to practice "digging deep" and making meaning of the text.  They're getting there with inferences!

Happy reading :)

Equivalent Fractions Bingo

During our intervention block, we've been working on equivalent fractions.

By no fault of their own, our kiddos have a very limited understanding of what fractions mean so we've been doing a lot of whole group intervention.

I found this adorable freebie on TpT, created by Fern Smith's Classroom Ideas and available here that has been so much fun for my kiddos!

She's also made Darth Vader & Princess versions, which my other small groups enjoyed!

I love doing math stations because it's a formative assessment and I can pull small groups.  I love hearing their discourse (discussions) and how they help each other find equivalent fractions.

Fun Writes!

I'm pleased to announce my newest station is available on TpT! 

In this "fun writes", I pose a series of task cards for students to write about.  These task cards are novel specific and challenge students to make connections between texts! Students can also make self to text connections, like with this question:

 Plus it's a lot of fun for students and truly challenges their thinking :)  For an added challenge, have them justify their answers with evidence from the novels!  With over thirty different fun questions , this is great for extension activities, whole group or small groups!

Snag yours here!

President's Day math fun!

While I do teach elementary school, we don't do a lot of holiday parties.  Part of the reason is due to a vareity of religious beliefs in my classroom but partially because we have so much to teach with the Common Core State Standards.  (Or as they're now referred to in my school district, the NACS.  Nevada Academic Content Standards.  Can't we just stick to one name?!)

However, when I find appropriate, holiday tasks, I like to use them.

One of my favorite math ones was made by another TpT seller, Rachael Parlett:

In this center, students analyze the task cards to determine the accuracy.  If there is an error and the card is false, they work together to figure out where the mathematician went wrong and how to revise their thinking.  This station lends itself perfectly to SMP #3 about critiquing the reasoning of others. 

(Best of all, this adorable center is a freebie!  Snag yours here and leave her feedback!)

Chronological Order Sorts all up for the Percy Jackson!

I'm pleased to announce that chronological order sorts are now up for all 5 of the Percy Jackson series on TpT!  Answer keys are included and my students love the challenge!  I love hearing my students analyze how characters develop over time and how events build upon one another to provide meaning!

I also learned how to add custom categories on my TpT site:

I'm really excited for being able to organize my products to make it easier for customers :)

Happy reading! 

Solids, Liquids & Gases Sort

Since my best selling TpT product of the year was my mixtures and solutions sort, I decided to make another science sort.  

This one requires students to sort task cards into solids, liquids and gases based on the description.  It's a great review for standardized testing!

Snag yours here!

97!

Now that it's Winter Break, I have the time (sort of) to catch up on movies.

So I decided to check out the new(ish) film Sea of Monsters.

Like it's predecessor The Lightning Thief, I didn't love it.  It was cute, but I feel strays too far from Rick Riordian's novel to make me gush.  Granted, this director seemed to do a better job than the first one so that's a positive move.

However, due to the differences between film and novel, my students should be able to engage in great conversations about the similarities and differences between the novel and the film adaptation.

So I created a sort for them and you can snag it too here!

Just like my first one, this center has students sort task cards into categories:film only, novel only and both.

An answer key is included!

Happy reading :)

New Sort! RL 5.7

So we read 90% of The Lightning Thief before winter break and watched the film adaptation on the last day of school for the calendar year.  In a perfect world, we would have finished the novel first but...that didn't happen.  

It was my first time seeing the movie and I must say, I wasn't too impressed. 

Yes, the film was cute but didn't really follow the book.  There were lots of differences and I'm glad my students picked up on these differences.  Comparing & contrasting a film with the text is a great, critical thinking skill to have!

(Plus it corresponds with RL 5.7 in the Common Core State Standards)

So I decided to make this into a sort where students can independently or collaboratively sort the descriptions into the following categories:

1. Just the book

2. Both the book and the film

3. Just the film adaptation

There are over sixty different task cards to sort and an answer key is included!

I'm excited to have my students try this center after winter break!  

You can download a copy here on TpT!

Upcycling for social studies

So I'm all for centers that give a fun twist on authentic, meaningful work.

My favorite new idea is taking an old "Guess Who?" game:

And upcycling it for social studies or book characters:

I think it'd be challenging for students but they'd love it!  I'd probably laminate the cards for durability but I think the few hours of teacher prep would be worth it.

Let's put the joy back in teaching :)

Chronological Order Sort: Loser

I first read Jerry Spinelli's Loser over the summer after a retiring teacher gave me a few copies from his library. 

I love this author, so I immediately ordered a few more from Amazon so I'd have enough to read the novel with small groups.

I'm almost done with the novel with my group (they're finishing over winter break) and I'm really impressed with how well they're doing.  Some of the members of my small group have been bullying others, so I decided to use this text as a teachable moment.  

They're having some great discussions about being kind to others and labels like "loser".  What we talk about in our small group literature circle is having a positive impact on their classroom and playground choices, which is quite exciting.

My teacher guide is available here.

I'm pleased to announce I've made a chronological order sort as well!

Happy reading!

Freebie: Chevron & Cloud backgrounds!

While doing teacher prep (okay, being on pinterest) I stumbled upon this:

Free digitial downloads for chevron and cloud prints!

Granted, there is no pink pattern  but I can't have everything. I'm excited to incorporate the gray & teal ones into some of my home & classroom decor with banners and centers :)

All you have to do is be a TpT member (sign up is free) and you can snag yours here!  Thanks to The Candy Class for making this cute product free!

You can download a copy for yourself too! (Just make sure to read her copyright info.)

Happy crafting!

Tech Tip: Kid blog

One of my favorite websites this year is kidblog.  It's free to sign up but you can only have 50 students.  I had to use 2 different email addresses since I have large classes but it was easy enough.

I used first names & last initials for student names and their ID numbers for their passwords.  

There's a super helpful "bulk import" option where you create a word document:

student name, password

Then save as .txt instead of .doc or .docx, then upload!

Change from .docx to .txt by using the dropdown arrow

Much faster in comparision to uploading 40 students individually!

I also love that if you view kidblog without a log in, this is what you see:

Nice and safe for my students!

I gave my principal a log in as well. She logs in and leaves them inspirational comments, which makes them so excited :)

Candy Cane Concentration

For my intervention block, we've been working on multiplication.

On the last day before winter break, I decided we should have a little fun with some candy.  Using circular stickers and candy cane kisses, I created candy concentration.

Students had to match the factors with the product.

They had a lot of fun with it!  Hopefully yours will as well :)

20 Wins

I first heard about "20 wins" from a math professor at UNLV and have used this math strategy game every year with my students.

The essential premise is students play using the digits (0-9) and try to make 20 with any four connecting corner boxes.  They can use any operation.

I modeled with my students (me against them):

Before l let them loose!  

They loved it!

You can download one here for your students!  I included extension suggestions!