Fraction Fun & Some Freebies

Hi everyone, It is Jane Feener back again to share some of my ideas on how to teach fractions.  When I first started teaching I found my students always seemed to struggle with fractions so I went looking for ways to help them master this skill.  In this post I hope to share some of the fun ways I have taught fractions over the years and include a few freebies to help you and your students.

The first thing I always try to do is give students lots of hands on experiences with fraction pieces and examples found in their everyday life.  I talk about chocolate bars, cakes and of course pizza.  I also think it is very important to teach students the vocabulary associated with fractions.  Words like numerator and denominator need to be taught early.

Fractions Booklet

Provide Visuals

I am a very visual learner and I always like to show my students lots of pictures of fractions.  One way I do this is by displaying anchor charts and posters in my class.  Here are some great anchor charts I found on Pinterest.  I am not sure who made them so if you did email me so I can give you credit.  My students say thank you!

I display fraction posters on the math focus wall for the whole time I am teaching fractions to provide my students with a variety of representations.

Fraction Posters

Use interactive math notebooks.

A few years ago, I was introduced to interactive math notebooks and I love them.  If you haven't given them a try you should.  What I like about them the most is that students find them engaging.  They love making them their own and they don't seem to consider solving fraction problems in this format work!  I love that students have their very own fraction reference guide that they can to refer to when they get stuck on something they are working on.  If you decide to give them a try make sure you teach them about how to use white bottle glue correctly.

Fraction Interactive Notebook

Make it fun.

And finally, I try to make learning fractions fun.  I like to have students make craftivities to represent various fractions and complete solve the room type activities to practice using what they have learned in class.  

 A fractions lapbook is great for students to use as a reference.

You can get this Solve the Room
 freebie here.

I have even made assessing my students knowledge of fractions fun by using fraction assessment sticks. You can get them here if you would like to give them a try.

I hope some of these ideas help you when teaching your fraction unit.  

Top 5 Tips for Mastering Multiplication in a Month

Every year it is the same. I give my new 5th graders a 25 problem single digit multiplication assessment and it is obvious by the results, most do not know their facts.

I know it was taught in previous grades, but yet the retention by many just isn't there. For my first few years of teaching I basically just drilled all students expecting them to master the facts in a timed pressure cooker. What I wasn't realizing was that some students just don't learn that way. I finally changed my ways about 15 years ago and started offering different strategies to my students.

Below I will highlight my top 5 tips to mastering multiplication in a month.

1. Make up Raps
Yes, you heard me right. Allow the students to make up a rap about the facts they are having trouble with. It is amazing how much more they will retain if they are given the freedom to create their own raps/rhymes about the facts they struggle with. I have a created a rap for the 6s, 7s, and 8s. You can download it for free here.

2. Game Boards
This one is quite simple. Grab any old game board where students have to shake dice to move forward. The catch is that whatever number is rolled on the dice relates to counting down in the flash card pile and solving that problem. For example, a student rolls a "5." The student would go to the stack of flash cards, count down to the fifth one, and solve the problem. If s/he gets it correct, the game piece stays on the spot. If the answer is wrong, the game piece goes back to the starting point before the dice was rolled.

3. War

This is by far my students' favorite game! Break your students up into partners. Take out the kings, queens, and jacks. Leave in the ace as a value of 1. Deal out all the cards face down equally to each player. Then when a players says "go," each person flips up a card. Whoever multiplies the two numbers correctly first wins the cards. Play continues until one person has all the cards. To add a little challenge you can use the kings, queens,and jacks as well with values higher than 10. 

4. Practice strips
These are real easy to make. Basically, you type out the multiples of each number up to 10 in rows in a Microsoft Word document, making sure to leave spaces between each set of numbers. For example, on one line you would have: 3, 6, 9, 12, 15, 18, 21, 24, 27, and 30. Then on the next line: 4, 8, 12, 16, 20, 24, 28, 32, 36, and 40. When you have finished with the facts you want, you cut them out into strips, copy them on to card stock, laminate them and then bind with a ring at the top corner. Now you have made an easy flip book of multiplication facts for your students! Click here to download this free resource.

5. Practice at Home
Students still need to practice their facts. At the beginning of the year, I send home the flash cards that come with our math curriculum. But you can find free flash cards online as well. Have parents make it a special time with their child. You may want to  Click here for some free flash cards to download.

There are so many other great tips out there to mastering multiplication. We'd love to hear what you use in your classroom!

Click here to purchase our super bundle of multiplication intervention activities with over 50 pages or resources included.

Mining for Spelling Patterns

Happy Saturday!  I'm Pamela from Hedgehog Reader, and I am here to share a fun way that students can play with letters and words to discover, practice, and reinforce spelling patterns.

Have you ever played Word Mines?  Maybe you've called them something else...  Basically, here is how Word Mines go:

You are given a word (or sometimes a phrase).  To play, you form as many words as possible in the given time using only the letters presented.  (If there is one R, then R can be used only once in that word.  It can be used once again in another word, and so on.)

Call me a nerd (believe me, you won't be the first!), but this has been one of my favorite pastimes for as long as I can remember.  So it was a natural thing for me to develop Word Mines for my students, because I knew it would be a fun way to identify, discover, and play with spelling patterns!

How to Start:

Although it doesn't take long for students to learn Word Mining strategies and procedures, it does require at least one session of whole class instruction to ensure smooth sailing ahead:

• Students are ready for Word Mines when they have started to develop phonemic awareness, and have begun to identify common spelling patterns.  They should also have some sight words under their belts.
• Make sure that any word you give students to "mine" is one that holds plenty of words within it.  Not all words are suited to this activity, so my best advice is to try it yourself first.
• It's fun to use seasonal words or vocabulary pulled from content areas of current study.
• I find that controversy is avoided by declaring the following rules:  *No proper nouns   *No foreign words   *No contractions
• I begin by projecting the word to be mined.  (I've created cute seasonal Word Mines so that I could put them under the document camera, but you can also simply write it up on your board.)  Although traditional Word Mines are done with a word or phrase in its original form, I always scramble mine so that students get the bonus activity of solving the "secret word."
• Depending on the age of your students, it's often helpful to begin with letter tiles, one for each letter in the scrambled word.  This allows students to physically manipulate the letters (concrete reasoning), until they are ready to move into mentally manipulating the letters (abstract reasoning).  This also ensures that letters are only used as many times as they are found within the word.
• I model my thinking aloud as I "solve" the projected puzzle.  I make sure to demonstrate how patterns can help.  For instance, if I see the pattern ALE, I will play with each consonant and blend to see if it fits with the pattern to create a word.  Then I move from ALE to EAL and repeat the process.
• Normally after one such session, students are ready to mine for words on their own, with a buddy, or in a team.

Use Word Mines as a Whole Class:

Once students have a grasp of how to work with Word Mines, these make a great Morning Work activity or sponge activity, either individually, in buddies, or as teams:

• Students stay even more focused if they know they will have 3 minutes for team consultation to tally up total words once the time is up.  It only takes a moment or two to quickly go through how many words each team came up with  (I am not picky, and the students do a wonderful job holding one another accountable for following the rules), and points are awarded for order of most words found.  For instance - If you have 6 teams in your classroom, the team with the most words earns 6 points, and then work your way down to 1 point for the team with the fewest words - so everybody earns something!

Use Word Mines in a Literacy Center:

Word Mines make a great literacy center activity:

• Glue a puzzle to the front of a file folder or manilla envelope.  Hide an answer key inside.  Provide a set of laminated letter tiles.
• Students can record their answers on notebook paper or whiteboards, or on prepared worksheets.
• It’s best to use only one puzzle at a time to prevent confusion; puzzles can be changed out based on your students’ need.  

I've created this FREEBIE for you to try out a Word Mine with your students!  (I have various seasonal and thematic Word Mine resources in my Teachers Pay Teachers store, and I add to my collection often.)

Have a wonderful year with your students, and thanks for reading!

Do you Scoot?

Hi all!  This is Francheryl from Primary Essentials.  I'm here to share an activity you can use in your class to review different skills and give your students a little movement too!

Have you ever heard of or used Scoot in your classroom?  It a great way to review and informally assess your class.  This is not an activity I would use everyday or even every week.  I would pull out this activity every once in a while to spicy up your reviews.  This activity can be used for any content area.

What you'll need:
task cards or question cards for each student in your class
recording sheet for each student
timer

If you do not have enough questions or task cards for each student you can add in some Rest Stop cards to make up the difference.  At the rest stops, students get a break and just wait for the next scoot.
You should give it a try during the upcoming school year!  That's all I've got!  See you around the blogging word!

Francheryl

Put a New Twist on Your End-Of-Year Activities

Hello!  It's Nicole from Learning Lab!

I cannot believe that another school year is winding down!  It seems like each school year goes by more and more quickly!  With summer right around the corner, I wanted to share a few end-of-year activities that I have done in my classroom.

I think almost everybody does some type of memory activity with their class.  I have found that many of my kids are bored with the usual memory books and activities.  A few years ago, I thought of a way to put a new twist on the old end-of-year activities.  

The traditional memory books involve students creating an artifact for themselves.  By the time they have been in school for a few years, the excitement for creating memory books has faded.  How about having the students use their memories to create a book for your next class?  Kind of like a guide to your classroom.  An Official Guide to ___ Grade!  

My students LOVED this idea!  They spent more time and put forth more effort that I have ever seen kids put into their own memory books.  Give a kid a real audience and they will perform!  I added additional covers so this activity is able to be used for grades K-6 and differentiated some pages for varying levels.  

Here is a Flipagram of the pages in the 5th grade book that I will be using with my kiddos this year.

                       

You will get a kick out of what your students will write on the "Meet the Teacher" page.  It is amazing, and sometimes hysterical, what they have picked up about your personality and how you run your classroom. 

A few times, I have needed just one more writing piece to get me through the end of the year.  How about a friendly letter to your next class?  Again, when you give a kid a real audience, they will perform!  My classes have never worked so hard to get a writing piece done.  The details were great and the handwriting was on point!  

If you need a graphic organizer to get your class started, this is what I use with my kiddos.

In addition to these new twists on old end-of-year activities, I changed my end-of-year gifts for my students.  In the past, I gave them new notebooks and pencils for them to journal throughout the summer.  When I talked to previous students and their families, a lot of them did not get around to writing in their journals.  The number one reason was, "I didn't know what to write about."  

This year, I created summer writing journals with writing prompts!  Now they won't have an excuse!  I also left some pages blank, just in case they find something else they want to write about.  

I hope you are enjoying the last few weeks of the school year (or your first few weeks of summer if you're already done).  Remember, this is the last time you will be with this exact group of kiddos.  Soak it all in and enjoy it for what it's worth!

For more ideas, I would love to see you over on my Instagram.  You can find me by searching for @Learning_Lab.  It's my favorite place to share school ideas, my new TpT products, and photos of some really cute kids!

See you again soon!

Top 5 Classroom Activities for the Madness of March Basketball!

It's that time of year when students, and teachers get excited for the college basketball tournament. We have our Top 5 ideas for you to incorporate basketball into your classroom.

1. Have a Shoot Out
Yes, that's right. Students will have a shoot out in the classroom! Have each student crumple a piece of paper into a ball. Then, have a garbage can placed about five feet away. Have students compete against each other. You could even make a bracket for this! Then when are down to the final four, make it a big deal and announce their names like an announcer would do at a game. When the winner is found, crown him/her the shoot out champ!

2. Cinderella Story
Every year in the tournament, there is a team that wasn't expected to make it. Or there are teams that beat a higher seed in the first few rounds. Have your students think of other Cinderella stories where people overcome obstacles. This may involve some research using trusted websites. When the students have gathered their information, have them write a "Cinderella Story" about overcoming the obstacle.

3. Geography
For a fun activity, you could give the students the lists of the teams in the tournament. Then, with a blank United States map, they would have to find the city and state of each team. You would need to use a website that would have this information such as: http://www.ncaa.com/ and search for the school in the search bar. This would be a great way for the students to practice their geography skills!

4. Buzzer Beaters
Students love to compete against the clock. Have a timer or some sort of buzzer in your classroom. Then come up with some fun activities to see if students can do them in the allotted time. An example could be, sharpen 5 pencils in a minute, or see how many times they can write "Buzzer Beater" on their papers in a minute. Fun, and exciting for the students.

5. Teamwork
Playing a team sport like basketball requires working together and complimenting each other's talents. Take some time during a day this week, and stop what you are teaching. Have a beach ball on hand that is full of air and ready to go. Divide your class into teams of 3-4. Then get a stopwatch and time how long each group can keep the ball up in the air without hitting the ground or any other object. Have a timer keep track on the board. Then do a second round to see if the team can improve their time. Your class will love it!

We hope you enjoyed our Top 5 list. For other printable activities that you could use that are classroom ready for a small fee, click here.