Quick & Easy Strategy for Students

I have some fifth graders who like to rush through their work.  I also have some kiddos who get overwhelmed by an activity sheet, so I found an easy strategy for both.

Take an ordinary file folder:

Cut the front side into several parts:

And viola!  

For fast finishers, they have to have the top part complete and correct before moving on. 

For students who are overwhelmed, they can only see part of the activity and tend to be less anxious about the work.

Teacher Shout Out: Mr. B

At our school, we enforce "HALLS":

H: hands to yourself
A: all parts of body facing forward
L: low speed
L: lips zipped
S: space between you and me

I was outside my room DRA-ing students while my co-teacher taught writing when we were interrupted by a rowdy bunch of third graders.  They were waiting to enter another teacher's classroom since we switch students to differentiate based on their needs.  I went down to remind them about our school's expectations and then told their teacher that they needed to work on their voices.

He spoke with them and they were so much better today!

What impressed me even more was this delivery:

I love that he talked with them about personal responsibility and had them take ownership of their actions.   He had them write apology notes for their voice levels and disrupting our learning.

I appreciate that he took the time out of his day to use this teachable moment to talk about how to behave appropriately and be functioning, considerate members of society.  

Huge shout out to him!

Tech Tip: Prezi

One of the online tools I go to when I need to differentiate with my higher kids or early finishers is prezi.

Prezi is a free web 2.0 tool (my favorite kind) and great for classroom use!

Basically, think of what would happen if powerpoint and a roller coaster merged...that's prezi!

Students can imbed videos, upload images or power points, change fonts, etc.

There are premade templates for easy differentiation and sharing is a breeze!

Try it now :)

That's What He Said

I'm an advocate of integrating technology into the classroom.  I'm a "technology native" (as opposed to an immigrant) and whole-heartedly believe students must learn how to use different types of tech to be competitive later in life.  However, they've still got to learn critical thinking skills and I don't believe technology can replace teachers.

I earned my technology endorsement from Nevada State College and love using tools like kidblog, prezi, voki and more in the classroom!

I just stumbled upon this idea:

Naturally, my mind went to "that's what he said" comments...but here it could actually work in an academically appropriate way!

Simply insert speech bubbles in word over an image and tada!  Great group activity with minimal technology (for those who are hesistant about using tech).

This could be great to talk about multiple perspectives and as a culminating activity.  Easily differentiated and can be used with lots of academic subject areas.  What a fun way to add some joy back into the classroom :)

Enjoy!  Happy teaching :)

FCRR

One of my absolute favorite websites for free literacy centers is FCRR.org.  Funded by the Florida Center for Reading Research, the student activities are not only broken up into grade level bands (K-1, 2-3 and 4-5), but broken into the big 5 (phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, comprehension and vocabulary).  Furthermore, because it wasn't awesome enough, the centers are fairly straight forward, almost everything you need is included and they're organized in a logical, straightforward manner.  (What isn't included is die, pieces, etc but those are easy to find).

Plus, they're aligned to the Common Core State Standards!

These are great for reteaching standards, literacy stations and interventions.

In a perfect world, I had my centers printed on different colors of card stock to distinguish fluency from comprehension and so forth.  It started out this way...but then I ran out of card stock.

Since that organizational strategy didn't work, I stuck to printing my lower level stations (2-3) on bright yellow card stock so I'd be able to quickly differentiate without students knowing.

They're accustomed to groups getting different colored stations (so I can easily pick up the forgotten pieces & put them where they go), but they don't always realize the colors signal the different ability levels.

Happy reading!

Math Anchor Charts and Ideas

I love great math ideas.

Here's an easy center to make, it just requires sharpies, a plastic bag, some patience and old water bottle lids (yay upcycling!)

This center can easily be differentiated for any grade level depending on the operations that are used.  For fifth grade, I would use parentheses and all operations signs.  This would be great for making algebraic expressions, practicing multiplication and division, finding unknown values and using decimals to show place value.

Students could easily bring in lids to help you collect the supplies.

With the Common Core, fifth graders have to review geometric shapes and classify them into a hierarchy.  This is a great example of an anchor chart that could help students:

Before we go into 3D shapes, I would review 2D shapes on the geoboard.  Most classes have a set of the old plastic boards and rubber bands, but there is a great free app on the iPad that allows students to virtually manipulate geoboards.  As a bonus, you can expand the board from the traditional 5x5 to a much larger 10x10 board, allowing for more room to make shapes.  This app could be used as a formative assessment where you call out a shape (ex, right scalene triangle) and students make one to show you.  

Plus, there are different colored rubber band options with the app :)

This is a great freebie I found on another teacher's blog:

I've used it in my classroom and it's a great center to review number sense.

You can also use cups to review place value:

For a review of area and perimeter, you can use graph paper, markers and dice for this easy game of war.

Students roll the dice, then create the corresponding array.  Students must strategically place their array on the grid and try to stump their partner.  I like that this is a nice model of how repeated addition and multiplication are the same.

This can easily be differentiated for lower grades by having students add the dice rather than multiply them. 

This is another great (priced) TpT center that my students enjoy:

Plus, it's pink and polka-dotted!  Grab yours here for a buck! 

Happy math time!