Thanksgiving

I love Thanksgiving. Fall is my favorite season for so many reasons - the colors are so warm and comforting, the food is PHENOM (candy on Halloween and home cookin' on Thanksgiving? YES PLEASE), and hellooooo everything pumpkin spice!! This year I've added even ANOTHER reason to love this season, my newest little pumpkin Mackenzie Jo! She was born 10-4 and I am sooooo in love.

Teachers love Thanksgiving too, because it's a time to TAKE A BREAK & REFRESH. I feel like the weeks leading up to Thanksgiving Break are some of the most exhausting. Our district takes the entire week off, but in the past it hasn't been that way. I LOVE HAVING THE ENTIRE WEEK. So do the teachers in my district because we vote for it every year! Lol.

I love to incorporate holiday themed lessons into my teaching, but I don't want it to be fluff work. I want fun and meaningful lessons and activities that keeps students engaged but allows them to have fun! That's why I created "What's On the Menu".

With this activity, students plan a Thanksgiving meal by looking at a store ad. Students pick out the foods to be served & calculate costs of multiple servings. They can also create an invite to Thanksgiving Dinner & draw what will be served on a plate. It's SO much fun and my students LOVE IT! They don't even realize they're adding, subtracting and multiplying decimals and using real world problem solving skills! They're just focused on FOOD!

We always seem to be working on fractions during Thanksgiving time, so I've created a couple fraction activities too - Pumpkin Pie Fractions & Thanksgiving Fractions. 

  

If you're looking for a reading activity, I've made a Thanksgiving themed edition of Morning Message. It's a week long review of essential reading skills - Monday focuses on Main Idea, Tuesday is Character Traits, Wednesday is Theme, Thursday is Inferences and Friday is word meaning. 

I hope you'll try out one of these activities! I LOVE FEEDBACK and I would love to see pictures of your students using these sets in action. Have a fabulous Thanksgiving, friends! 

Teaching with FOOTBALL

For the past 3 years I've followed the Houston Texans' wins and losses with my class and tracked them with fractions. It's been a great way to get familiar with fractions and has lead to meaningful discussions about numerator and denominators, why they change and what they mean. It's also been a great way to give my students real-world practice with fractions! 

I've had such fraction success with this simple program that I've decided to make it available to all NFL teaching fans!! No matter what NFL team you like (GO TEXANS), there's a set for you!


Here's what YOUR board could look like! 

Each set comes with your team's name, a "Games Won" and "Games Lost" goal post, and a Numerator/ Denominator mini-poster. Just find your team below, click the link, and start tracking!! 

Fractions... Decimals... Number Lines... Snow Day?

Today is a "Snow Day" for my district... I'm in a coastal town in Southern Texas... We don't get snow. So today is a WASTE OF A TEACHING DAY!

I know, I know, I should be thankful for a paid day off in the middle of the week... But I LOVE to teach. I LOVE my students. I LOVE my school.... So I WANT TO BE TEACHING! Not to mention, because of district benchmarks, holidays and a random late-start weather day last week, I haven't been able to get in a full week of teaching since before Christmas! Ugh!

Since I'm home today, I've looked at Benchmark data (lame to some but so interesting to me), worked on RTI ideas and paperwork and most importantly, made a new TPT product - Rockin' Number Lines!!

I'm super excited about this product... I decided to make it because I have a handful of students still not understanding numberlines. The majority of my classes get it, so I want a quick, fun way to review with them. Have you ever heard of Quiz-Quiz-Trade? It's a Kagan Cooperative Learning Strategy that ROCKS.

Here's how it works:
- Each student gets a card and holds it in their hand all sneaky like (since the answers are on the back)
- Students find a partner and take turns quizing each other, then they trade cards and find a new partner to quiz
- For this set of cards, the students will need to see the number line and identify the point as a decimal or fraction (the set contains halves, thirds, fourths and fifths)

What's awesome about this is the students are constantly getting new questions to answer AND ask... So if you use this as a 5-10 minute activity, they've been exposed to numerous questions and answers AND they've had the opportunity to teach their classmates AND if they miss a "quiz", that card becomes theres to ask so they're exposed to the question again AND, AND, AND... the list could go on and on. But to sum it up, Quiz-Quiz-Trade is a fabulous activity and KAGAN is genius.

ADDED BONUS: Once you're done using the task cards, throw them in a center. If you purchase my set of DVD Games for Centers or Stations, there's always a math game ready for the kiddos to play - grab some task cards, grab a DVD case and BAM! Instant game time. My students LOOOOVE these.

Hope you can get some use out of these Task Cards! Stay warm peeps!

5 Months of Learning Squeezed into ONE POST

The end of the school year was a WHIRLWIND. Which is why I have not posted since January! I will try to catch you up with everything we did though, so get ready for a massive picture post :)

As we got ready for the STAAR test, lots of fun (and sometimes delicious) reviewing took place...

In February, we reviewed fractions, measurement and conversions while we baked cupcakes:

In March, we reviewed area and perimeter by making a zoo. I cannot for the life of me remember where I got this idea, but I know it was from Pinterest... Basically, my students designed an animal enclosure and had to solve for its area and perimeter. Then they got to color!

In April, WE TESTED...

After the STAAR test, we learned TONS of science! Here are a few of the topics we covered (and that I remembered to take pics of!).

-Matter

-Moon Phases (with Oreos... YUM)

-Food Chains & Dissecting Owl Pellets

We also did a Science Fair project (which detergent worked best). Students broke into groups according to the detergent they thought would work best, stained some socks, washed them, and made boards to show the results. SO FUN!

I also managed to squeeze in some art lessons with my homeroom...

-Vincent Van Gogh

-Pablo Picasso

- Andy Warhol 

That's not all we did, but that's most of it. This school year was AMAZING. My students worked their tails off yet we had tons of fun. I feel so privileged to have gotten to work with such a fabulous group of kiddos!! I already miss my babies! 

CAMT 2012 Rocked My WORLD!!!

Wednesday - Friday I was at a math conference... I know I've only been a teacher for a year, but I've been to enough conferences to know the majority are BORING. CAMT, the Conference for the Advancement of Mathematics Teaching (annual event for Texas teachers) was not. It was MIND BLOWING! It's not a sit-and-listen-all-day conference, it's a get-up-and-choose-what-you-want-to-learn-about (and leave-if-it's-boring) kind of conference! And the vendors... OH THE VENDORS! I spent a lot of money... SO WORTH IT.

I went to a lot of sessions on measurement since our kids struggle so much with it. All of the sessions I went to were great... Only exception was one that had us exploring grams with Sweet'N'Low... By separating the substance into milligrams.... With hotel key cards.... Are you seeing the problem?? My friend and I thought this was a great visual / concept, but very inappropriate. We decided using sand and shovels was a better idea?? Any one out there have another suggestion? ?
The activity at left is finding out how much an object weighs in pennies. SO CUTE! The idea came from the Children's Museum of Houston.

I also attended a Marcy Cook session. The Place Value activities she has created with just some simple number tiles are amazing. TEACHERS. ARE. SO. SMART. Rachel A. and I bought 4 of her activity sets. :)  (We're also smart, we went halfsies on a bunch of goodies so we share and save money!)

Next was Dinah Zike Foldables. This is one popular lady. I tried to attend her sessions on Wednesday and Thursday but they were full. There were hoards of people in line to attend.... I finally made it into a Friday session (it was for K-2 so the foldables were simple, yet still supremely cool) by getting there 40 minutes early... Of course this would be the session that was NOT full, started at 8:00 (putting me there at 7:20), and that people were walking in late to..... Blah! Oh well, better to be safe than sorry.... I bought one of her books and snapped this awesome fraction foldable idea from her booth. Rockin'!!

I also went to a Fractions without Distractions session, put on by a LoneStar Learning associate. CUTE fraction ideas. Like that PLATE! Take two different colored paper plates, cut a slit halfway through both of them, slide them together, and BAM! You have fraction circles for your kids to use.... GENIUS!

 

Finally, KIM SUTTON with Creative Mathmatics. Rachel A. and I are kinda Kim Sutton stalkers. Yes, I snapped secret pics of her. SHE'S A MATH CELEBRITY!!!

Kim Sutton spoke at our district last winter. I got a hug from her and some free stuff for helping during one of her examples. I brag about this a lot... To teachers... Because no one else understands! (or cares... Lol) Rachel is the one that kept running into her this time. They had conversations AND Rachel sat near her in another conference... They're practicall CAMT BFFs! Jealous!!

During her session we sat front and center so we got in plenty of K.S. time. LOVE HER!! If you don't have any of her stuff, GET IT. It's so fun, easy, helpful and QUICK! It takes no time to do her drills and kids love them. My suggestion? Get a random numbers CD.

As you can see, CAMT was amazing. Hooty's Homeroom was there too, but we didn't run into each other. We were SO BUSY running to-and-fro!

Question for all you fantastic teachers out there... I went to a session on Tabor Rotation. Anyone heard of it or use it? I really like the idea but I want more info... Thanks!!

GIVEAWAYS!

I looooove to blog hop... Check out these awesome giveaways I found! You're welcome :)

My FREE Fabulous Fraction unit is STILL available for 4 people-- just leave a comment & follow my blog!

Delighted in Second's $20 TPT certificate! 

Teacher-ific in 2nd $25 Target gift card! 

Fantastic Fractions & Five Freebies!

I've been working on tons of fraction activities for my classroom, and now the really great ones have been complied and made into a packet for my TPT store!! The pack includes my Fraction Matching Connect Four game (matching picture fractions with number form), my Fraction & Decimal Number Line (practice putting fraction pictures, fractions in number form and decimals onto correct spots on number line), AND my Equivalent Fraction Matching w/ recording sheet (matching equivalent fractions). Phew! Long story short: Lots of fraction goodies!!

Now for the FIVE FREEBIES! The first 5 people to comment and follow my blog get this Fantastic Fraction fabulousness for FREE! If you miss out on the freebies no worries- it's for sale in my TPT store! :)

Laters!!

FRACTIONS!

I'm taking a break from writing and busying myself with math ideas.

Fractions were a weak area for some of my students so I've been racking my brain for fun fraction reinforcement / centers.  This is one of the ideas I came up with:

I'm hoping I'll have some "peer tutors" (kids who get it) again this year so I can partner them with a struggling / almost there student for this game.

Here's the idea: Both students have a game board. They take turns flipping over a number card and finding the match (or equivalent fraction) on the board. First one to make 4 in a row wins! This would also be great for one-on-one tutoring OR with a few kiddos in small group.

Like it? You can buy it! Just visit my TeachersPayTeachers store HERE.

Thanks for reading! :)