Learn Zillion - Free Common Core Lesson Website

I'm always looking for free Common Core resources.

I came across this site and just recently started to check out all it has to offer.

www.learnzillion.com

You will find math and ELA resources.

The lesson for each standard is actually a 3-4 minute video for the kids.

 

I love it because I can print the slides before showing it to the kids.

Here is an example of a math standard.  

There are five short videos to explain how to find elapsed time.

The videos break it down for the kids, step by step.

There are also lesson for ELA standards.

 

This third grade lesson uses the story "The Story of the Three Little Pigs."

There are five short videos to teach specific ELA skills.

The videos use the story about the three pigs.

I haven't used any of this yet, 

but I find any type of video gets the attention of my students.

Have you used this site?

What are features I didn't mention?

Do you know about other free sites?

 

 

Moving During Spelling and Black History Month Word Work/Vocab

It's Friday and so I actually have some time to write a blog post.

The weather is warming up enough for the kids

to go outside for recess!  

When we were stuck inside, I was always

trying to come up with ways to get them moving.

This activity is another one of my

"5 minutes before the lesson starts" ideas.

I typed up little cards with some spelling words 

and also spelled each of them incorrectly.

I cut them apart and gave one to each student.

They wrote their word on our small dry erase boards.

 Then came the moving part.

First they had to find the person

that had their matching word.

They had fun because one person always had

the word misspelled.

 Once everyone had a partner,

they moved again by sorting themselves into two groups:

spelled correctly or misspelled.

Each time I chose two different parts of the room

for them to make the large groups.

We then switched words and played again.

This went on for about five rounds.

Afterwards, one student came up and said she thought

the game was so fun and hoped we would play it again.

The simple things that make the kids happy!

Going along with the theme of spelling

is my new word work pack.

It's my first one and the theme is 

Black History Month.

 

 

 

 I love teaching my students new words,

but finding fun ways to learn them.

Also, next year we are getting rid of spelling tests,

so I need something to incorporate spelling lessons.

I think this is going to work out great.

I'd love to give away a copy of my word work pack.

Leave a comment below:

Do you have off on Monday?

Lucky me - I have the day off!

FREE Winter Olympics Math Challenge and A Huge Giveaway!

Have you ever checked out Greg Tang's math website?

It's awesome!

Right now he has an Olympics challenge for the kids.

 

There are grade specific challenges: K-5.

He also provides a parent letter!

It's super easy to print and copy.

My kids received the info on Friday,

but it can be sent at anytime.

Second item - A HUGE Giveaway!

Kelly over at An Apple For The Teacher has reached 300 followers 

and she's having a giveaway.

Click the picture below to head on over and enter

to win a $25 TpT giftcard and a ton of products!

 

Enjoy the rest of your weekend!

Throwback Thursday - Free Reading Website and Area/Perimeter Task Cards

Today I'm linking up with Primary Possibilities for

 

This is a post I originally wrote 3/2/13.  Looking at it now, there are so many changes I would make, but I'll keep it the same.  Enjoy!

I honestly cannot believe that our state testing starts on Monday. Where did the school year go? I try not to teach to the test, but some of our class activities go in that direction. Since this is my last week to try and teach the kids before the test, I decided to take a look at some of the data I have about them. One reading skill that came up as needing review was sequencing. So that is what I was going to teach this week. Sunday night I was working on my plans and feeling really tired and not very creative.

So, I went to a site that love to use ….

www.readworks.org

Have you ever checked out this site? I love it for many different reasons. Here are my top 5.

#1 – It’s free! All you need to do is register and you have full access to the articles and lessons.

#2 – You can look up lessons by state standards and grade level.

#3 – The lesson plan format is “I Do, We Do, You Do.” I know so many of us use this format in our classrooms.

#4 – There are a lot of informational text articles and we all know that is big with the Common Core.

#5 – The lessons can easily be broken down into short sessions. This week I taught mini-lessons with my small groups and then they went to finish the work on their own. Later in the week we came together to review our work. It was a great assessment for me to see who still was having a hard time with sequencing.

There are more reasons to use this site, but I’ll let you discover them on your own.

Another thing I love, besides this website and my family, are task cards. I’m always trying to figure out how to use them in my room. This week we are working on area and perimeter of rectangles. In my mind, and I’m sure in the minds’ of my third graders, this is boring. Both are good skills to know, but don’t really relate to a third grader.

So…I decided to make some task cards for us to use.

I know my class prefers to be moving around, a lot! So these will work great for us. I’m going to post them around the room and then let the kids get going. Once everyone is finished, we will go over the problems together and I can use the results as an assessement. Or maybe I will have the kids go over the problems in small groups. We’ll see how the day is going.

Do you use task cards in your room?

Do you have any ideas for helping a third grader relate to area and perimeter?

I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Enjoy the rest of the week.