Quarter 3 in a Nutshell

Kendamas are all the rage… 

Getting ready for my formal evaluation with artifacts.

Valentine's day! 

Check out that box!

Our winning marshmallow tower. 

I was part of Pawsitiviely Teaching's valentine exchange. It was so much fun getting valentines in the mail! I combined them with Digital: Divide and Conquer's LOVE posters. 

Movtivaion! 

I let the kids correct their vocabulary tests with my special Flair pens. They thought that was a treat!

We had a science and art night at school. My older girl loved it!

I checked out Prodigy for math. 

My kids are HOOKED! 

They practice skills that I assign (or based on their intro placement test).

What they love the most is that they can battle each other! 

Some of the most "whatever" students actually put forth some effort to learn how to do certain problems because they got tired of losing battles. :)

Maybe fourth quarter will be better for blogging. :)

Five for Friday...a day late 5.23

School's Out!

Here's a look at our last week and a half.

1. My math class started Course 2 Coding from Code.org. My district is implementing a coding/computer science scope and sequence for next year. I decided to give my kiddos a head start as the new implementation will start in elementary. They loved it, especially when they would finally beat/figure out a challenging level.

 2. We reviewed the how to use TumbleBooks so that students can continue to read over the summer. It is a great site if you haven't checked it out. 

 3. My math kiddos made "Fraction Flowers." They drew a fraction card and then had to write it as a decimal, percent, equivalent fraction, ratio, and an equivalent ratio. 

4. We had our 5th Grade Lock In. At midnight we held a talent show, and this sweetie busted out his break dance moves.

5. We played "4 Men On A Couch" as part of our last day of school. The kids ate it up! We played for almost 2 hours before even 1 student seemed to be done. It was amazing! I used to play with my cousins at family reunions.

How to play:

Students sit in a circle with one extra chair. The teams are formed just by sitting every other one (I used stickers so they could tell who was their team member) and you have 4 designated "couch" spots. Everyone's name goes into a bowl and then everyone draws for a new, secret name. The person to the left of the empty chair calls a name. Whoever drew that as their new name, moves to the empty chair. Play continues likewise. The point is to remember people's new name, and to get 4 people from your team into those designated spots.

*Bonus* 6. I had a 'high tea' with my friend and team member who is moving to Jackson, TN next week. As you can see, it was adorable! It was also super delicious! 

p.s. If you have any K-6 teaching contacts in that TN area, let me know and I'll pass it along! She's pretty amazing! :) 

Random Problem Check: Spark Student Motivation

I used an awesome freebie this week in teaching metric system conversion! Another plus was that it made our first day back from Spring Break a happy, non-stressful day!

I'm also linking up with Joanne! 

(Yea, yea. I know it's not Saturday, but oh well!)

My coworker, with the advanced  group, said that her kids had a hard time with it for some reason. Because of that and the difficulty they had with multiplying and dividing by 10 at the beginning of the year, I looked at what I could use to pre teach before our program lesson. I planned to start with the metric video from Brainpop.com. Then I found this measure conversion chart by Too Tired to Teach and it helped drive my lesson.

There are a couple of different mnemonics used to remember the most commonly used metric prefixes, but my favorite is

King Henry Died Unexpectedly Drinking Chocolate Milk

This freebie is slightly different using By instead of Unexpectedly, but the kids went with it.

If I had been really thinking about it, I would have dressed in black and treated the beginning of the lesson as a funeral, complete with chocolate milk as a refreshment. :)

We reviewed what each letter stood for and what each prefix means. Then we went right into how to use the mnemonic to help them convert. The chart has a great example that we walked through together. I had found a worksheet site that quickly created some conversion worksheets for me. (I already forgot which one it was. Oops.) 

I would write the problem on the board that we were going over. I was also very specific as to what they should be doing. We put our finger on the label we were starting at. We then decided if we had to move right or left to get to the label we needed. They showed me this by pointing either right or left. 

After we knew which direction we were headed, we counted how many "jumps" it took to get from our starting point to ending point. Students showed me on their fingers how many jumps it would take.

The next part was showing their work. They put their pencil wherever the decimal in the the starting number was. That meant that if the number didn't show a decimal, it was after the last digit. They then had to "jump" as many digits as they had to "jump" on their chart with their finger in the direction we had decided. If they didn't have enough digits, they had to add 0's so they could make their jump. I was very specific that I must see these jumps on their worksheet, even if they thought they could do it in their head. Lastly, they rewrote their new number next to their new label.

I was so excited that there were only a few students that seemed utterly confused by this. I took the last 5 minutes and had students work on finishing the worksheet independently. I told them that after the 5 minutes, I would call out some random problems that could be worth some treats. I figured that most off the students should be able to finish easily. While they were working, I worked with the few that were confused. What I noticed was that they seemed to be the only students who didn't go through the problems with us actually showing their work. Once I had them do that, the lightbulbs clicked!

At the end of the 5 minutes, I chose 3 problems. If a student got it correct, they lined up with their worksheet and received a couple of M&Ms. I'm not sure if it was giving them a specific amount of work time with a countdown clock or the chocolate, but I really liked that they didn't know which problems I was going to check. It also proved a point to a few of the students who dilly-dallied and didn't finished due to their choices. 

Tried It Tuesday- Explain Everything

I'm linking up with Fourth Grade Flipper for her Tried it Tuesday!

We started a whole new math curriculum this year. My school has been Saxon for eons! (Well maybe not, but definitely a long time.) We were told that we could no longer be an exception school and all schools were to teach the district program. 

This has done a couple of things.

1. Frustrated students… 

They knew what to expect from Saxon and it was very direct. The new way of thinking is really confusing and frustrating them.

2. Frustrated parents… 

Some of our parents chose our school because they liked Saxon math. They don't understand this "new" way of thinking and aren't able to help their kids.

3. Frustrated teachers… 

We always scored at the top in our district and those that have been teaching Saxon knew it inside and out and already had all their differentiation ready to go. We also get to work with frustrated students that may or may not have horrible attitudes about the math due to things they are hearing.

These and a couple of factors led me to want to try a modified Flipped Classroom. It's not truly flipped because the students are watching the lesson videos in the classroom on their school iPads. (We are 1:1 in grades 3-5.) 

In the process of setting up the lesson videos, I tried a couple of different ways to make the make the videos. The first 4-5 are horrible, but they got us going. I will definitely need to redo them next year. I finally remembered about a fun app that I learned about in our Apple training when we got the iPads a couple of years ago.

Explain Everything

Cost $2.99

It has a lot of features and ways to annotate or draw attention to different area on the screen.

You can go back and edit annotating and sound. 

I'm still learning and getting better at this.

This was probably the best thing for me. 

It has a direct upload to YouTube! 

It also has other export options.

I still have a lot to learn about this app and working in a modified Flipped Classroom but I'll share what I learn as I go. 

Just as some extra information, my students have a Gaggle account. This gives them an email, access to assignments and a filtered YouTube. This is the work flow I plan to use to have my students watch the video. Today was day 1 of them trying to watch on the iPads. It did not go so well, but hopefully tomorrow will go better! 

Here is one of my most recent lessons.

Here is a link to my school website {here} which will eventually include all my 5th grade Go Math lessons.

Thanks for stopping by!

*Steph*

A Book A Day --Playing Catch Up

Wow! It has been a whirlwind the last week or so. My husband has been in an engineer training class to drive the fire trucks for the past 4 weeks in the evening/weekend. (Yes, I am married to a fireman and yes, I know I am lucky :) ha ha! ) Mother's Day was a relaxed, but spent most of the day not at home. Then, the fourth grade from my school went on an overnight field trip Tuesday-Wednesday. Grades were due today and we have 3 more school days. Phew! I'm going to be playing catch up on quite a few things for the next few weeks. I also have a big statewide Girl's Camp to help take care of the food for the girls in my church ward and 2 other wards. Here comes the end of the year and summer! YAY! Bring it on!

Anyways…. just some books to play catch up…. I don't know what days they are….

The kids find this book hilarious! I pull it out when we discuss homonyms and homographs. The pictures really help them decipher the meanings of the words.  

Our librarian has used this book at the beginning of the year to help build community. I think it would be fun and eye opening to give each kids their own color and have them create a bigger picture. You could even divide them up into smaller groups if you don't have enough for each kid to have a different color.

This last book was recommended to me by one of our 1st grade teachers. She said that her students love it and that my daughter would probably like it too. She was right!

Pete the Cate and His Four Groovy Buttons by Eric Litwin

As you can tell, my 17 month old daughter has loved this book well. This is a great story for anybody! You could use this book when introducing subtraction. It even has subtraction problems written in the book. My husband said that it had a good lesson for me. I tend to stress and worry. Pete the Cat does not. Check out the official Pete the Cat website. It has videos and activities to go with the stories.

Tried It Tuesday: Color By Number for Big Kids

I only have a 2 more Tuesdays after this one (yay!) but I thought I'd link up for the first time. 

Fourth Grade Flipper 

(I'm still not sure how to make images links.)

I was able to work with Kristine Nannini from Young Teacher Love in the editing of one of her products. That was a first and pretty exciting for me! I love that Facebook and blogs have allowed me to connect with people all over. Being in Alaska, sometimes I feel a little secluded as times don't always line up due to time zones. However, I decided to try out her Color by Number for Big Kids with my fourth graders.  

I set the stage for my kids by saying that we were going to try something new. I had an activity created by a teacher from Michigan. The kids were pretty excited to be working on something created by a teacher from a different state.

We used this as a review and actually took a couple of days to complete this. I only have my math lesson group for about 45-50 minutes and I have some major behaviors that I must stay on top of when presenting a new activity, especially when it allows for a little more freedom. I chose two of the different sets (there are bunch to choose from depending on what standard you want the kids to work on) and made the copies. Instead of making them task cards, I made 3-4 copies of each set onto a different color and then used a ring to keep each copy set together. 

(Sorry for the fuzziness of the photo. I must of had a smudge on the lens I didn't notice.)

I then split my kids into 2 different groups. The common core language is still new to my students, so I chose the 2 sets that I felt they would be able to do on their own fairly easily. I allowed to them to move and work with someone that was working on the same set.

They were able to check their answers and color their picture based on the color by number guide. I was really excited about trying this out that I didn't think through some of the management and flow like I should have.  Next time, I think I am going to have them try to color their picture before they get to actually check their answers. That way, they have will have a chance to go back and fix their answer before looking at the key to check their work.

This group worked on Set D.

I loved this idea and product! It was a nice break from the grind of our normal day to day routine, but it was still practicing valuable math skills. 

*S.Udy*

A Book A Day {Day 3}

Day 3

Another day with Confessions of a Teaching Junkie!

Sticking with the math literature theme, I decided to show 2 books by the same author. These are fun reads that help introduce arrays and the idea of remainders. 

One Hundred Hungry Ant and A Remainder of One 

by Elinor J. Pinczes 

With both books, I have manipulatives under the document camera for students to move around according to the story. (I don't have little ants, but that would be cute if you did!) I do it this way for a couple of reasons. I really don't have the extra time to count out a hundred little pieces for each students to do their own. If I had a parent volunteer, that may be something I could had asked them to do. Also with my intervention math class, behavior management was a big deal this year. I did not give things to the kids that they could possibly play with unless there was no downtime between instructions.

With the book, A Remainder of One, I keep the divisibility rules. I haven't actually used them for an activity yet as we didn't get much past a basic introduction of long division. The rules are a great resource for division and now that I am moving up to 5th grade, I may  actually spend more time on long division! 

Do you integrate math with other subjects? 

S.Udy

A Book A Day {Day 2} & Math Literature Organization

Day 2 here I come!

Hosted by Confessions of a Teaching Junkie

Today as I was thinking about what book to post, I went to my stash of math literature. While earning my Masters degree, I took a class based on connecting math and literature. I received a bunch, I mean a BUNCH of different books that have math connections through that class.  

When you have that many books, organization is always needed. I decided to use the system that my instructor uses for her books. FIrst you need to get a box of different colored folders. I used the cheap paper folders and they work just dandy. Each color is then assigned a topic.

Blue = Numeration & Operations

Yellow = Geometry

Green = Measurement

Black = Graphing

If you want, you could break it down even more by standard and strands.

Label the folder with the title of your book, put your book inside one pocket, and put any extra resources in the other. Viola! Everything you need in one place and could even be an excellent activity for a substitute.

Now on to the book for today…

The Greedy Triangle by Marilyn Burns

This is a great book to introduce polygons. However, you can also use it to look for relationships between the number of sides, angles, and vertices in a polygon. As my kids and I read it, we filled out this worksheet & activity that I found for *FREE* on TeachersPayTeachers. I was late on finding this so we weren't able to actually use the marshmallows and toothpicks. Next time! I really like the column that has the kids think of example of that polygon. It's always a good thing to make connections with students' prior knowledge.

Do you connect literature and math? 

I plan on sharing more math books throughout the month of May!

S.Udy