Win, Loss and a Thing of Cost - Back to School Edition

It's Wednesday again!

I hope you will join Matt at Digital: Divide and Conquer

and myself for another edition of...

WIN:

One of my teammates will be on maternity leave

for the first 8 weeks of school.

Yesterday we found out who the sub will be.

Even though we will miss our friend,

we are really excited about the sub that was hired.

 

LOSS:

This is my last Wednesday on vacation.

No need to explain.

 

THING OF COST: 

I've made three different sets of task cards

for you to use at the beginning of the year.

 

Get to Know Your Students

Get to Know Your Teacher

Get to Know Your School

 

Here I am showing you the full bundle,

but I'm also selling each set on their own.

 

You can place the cards around the room

and let the students fill in their responses on the sheet provided.

Another option is to have a card of the day.

You can also use the cards as time fillers

the first few weeks of school.

 

Right now, the cards are 25% off at my Teacher's Notebook store.

The sale ends on the 8/18.

The cards can also be found at my TpT store.

 

 

I'd love to give the bundle away for free to one of my followers.

Comment below and I will pick a winner on Thursday morning.

 

Tell me the name of a song that you turn up

loud when you hear it, but would not

admit to others that you love the song.

 

I'll share first...

Blurred Lines by Robin Thicke.

 

Ready...Go!

Congrats Ursula!  Check your email for my task cards.

 

Don't forget to link up with your

Win, Loss and Thing of Cost.

Multi-Step Story Problems and QR Codes

 

Don't laugh, but I just learned about these codes a few weeks ago.

I've seen them everywhere, but never knew how they worked.

That all changed, thanks to Matt over at Digital: Divide and Conquer.

 

After I learned about them, my first thought was MATH! 

 I love math and my kids love any chance they have to use technology.

So math seemed like an easy place for me to start.  

 

 

I started by placing these cards around the room. 

I put the story problem and the code next to each other.

 

 

Then the fun began. 

The kids went around the room with a partner

and tried to solve the story problem.

 

 

The rule was you had to show your work. 

Most of these are multi-step problems, so I needed to see each step. 

 Once the students solved the problem, they moved on to the scan.

 

After they scanned the code, they were given the answer to the problem.

 

If their answer was incorrect, they needed to go back

and figure out what they did wrong. 

I was circulating around the room the whole time,

so I could help anyone who was stuck.

 



 

I work in a school where many of the students have access

to a handheld device, so about half of them brought one to school.  

Also, they uploaded a free QR code scanning app at home. 

I had my phone and a school Ipad for us to use too.

 

I know not everyone has this type of technology at their school.

A math center would be a great place for these cards

if you have at least one device in your classroom. 

 

My kids loved this activity. 

I looked over their recording sheets and they really did a great job.

Another third grade teacher tried this today and

her kids were just as excited as mine.

 

 

Have you used QR codes in your classroom? 

 

Are you interested in this set of cards? 

I will send these for free to the first two people who email me.

Scan the code at the top of this post to get my email address.

 

Just think...the weekend is almost here!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Take Me Out To The Ballgame

I 'll admit it.  I'm a Cubs fan.

 

 

I know it has been forever since they won a World Series, but each year I

keep thinking that this will be the year. 

 It never is and so I wait for next year. 

Well, next year starts on Monday. 

In honor of the start of the baseball season,

I've created some baseball themed grammar activities for my kids. 

 

We are going to work on comparative and superlative adjectives and adverbs.

Such big words for the kids, but I think they will understand the skill. 

I've got two different sorts for them along with task cards. 

They loved the basketball theme, so I know baseball will also be a "hit." 

 

Have you taught this skill yet?

What team are you cheering on this year?

 

Math Review Cards

It's Thursday night and that means my spring break is slowly coming to an end.  The exciting part is that means we only have about two months until summer.  The part that makes me anxious is we only have about two months of school. 

 

Next year my district is officially implementing the math common core.  To help with the transition, our grade level teams met to discuss what each team could do to help the students for next year.  My third grade team got together with the fourth grade teachers and they let us know what skills the kids should master in order to make the fourth grade common core transition easier for the kids.

 

This is the part that is making me anxious.  I know I will do the best that I can to help my kids out, but there is a lot to do.  There are two things that I really think will help - math talk and daily review.  That is why I created some math review cards.

 

 

My plan is to copy the cards back-to-back and cut them apart.  Each day we can review and talk about two skills and I will still have time for my math rotations.  These cards are only covering a few of the domains, so my next task is to keep working on the other domains. 

 

 

I also think I will organize the cards so that my students can take a set home to practice over the summer.

 

Has your district already adopted the math common core?

How was the transition?

  Any tips to help us out?   

 

Happy Friday!

Basketball Grammar Freebie

It's time for college basketball!  Do you fill out the brackets? 

I do every year and have such high hopes of winning it all.... but that never happens. 

Will I try again this year?  You bethcha! 

Sports are such a big part of my students' lives. 

They play sports, cheer on sports teams and go to the games.  Creating some basketball themed grammar activities for them was a no-brainer. 

 I'm sharing them as a freebie in my store. 

 

Have a great week and good luck with your brackets!

 

 

Reading Website and Task Cards

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.