Thursday, November 29, 2012

Practicing and Mastering Tables

Anyone who has ever taught math in elementary knows the difficulties students face when working with tables (aka in-and-out boxes). After my students last assessment, I noticed that my kiddos could use more practice on creating, extending and finding patterns within tables that are based off of real-life scenarios.

I have created this packet that I plan to use with my kiddos while they are with me for small group instruction. An alternative would be to pair students up and have them work in pairs as the rotate around the room completing each task.

There are a total of 10 task cards, a 2 page recording sheet and a page that explains to teachers how to use it.


Friday, November 16, 2012

Poetry for Kids

Checkout this great booklet for teachers to use with their kids. Print out this booklet 2 sided and stapled for each kid in the classroom. After introducing poetry, I use this booklet to guide my lessons and let students explore poetry.
Students will start off with getting to know some famous poets than they will come up with a planning sheet to help guide them on topics of interest to them. Next students will explore different types of poetry, their layout and then get to try it out for themselves in the booklet. At the end of it all students get to take home this awesome booklet full of their poetry.









Wednesday, November 14, 2012

Rocker Dog Table Practice

Looking for a new, fun way for students to explore the world of mathematical tables, than check out Rocker Dog. This awesome worksheet is loved by my students who are eager to explore the tables so that they can figure out what a Rocker Dog looks like! How many arms do Rocker Dogs have? Legs? Collars? This packet is full of sequential tables that are required for students to master in 3rd grade and I have never had a student complain about them!



Sunday, November 11, 2012

Classroom Inspirations and Ideas

Welcome to my 2012-2013 classroom tour! My room has a connecting door to another classroom where me and another teacher share a student bathroom that is located in my room. This year I was able to really focus on the idea that I dont necessarily like "theme's". In the past I would choose a theme and then half way into my purchases begin to feel that my hear is changing. That is why this year I decided that long goes the themes and this year I will focus on what makes me happy... color!
 
 
Cubby Area 

 Students share cubbies at our schoo. This is a picture of just half of my cubbies. Each student has a book box that has their mailbox number on it. Students keep everything from their backpacks, snacks, coats and library books in it. Luckily I had a smaller class size this year and was able to use 2 cubbies to store items that I use on a daily basis... hint the blue curtain.
The bulletin boards... are my creation. I was tired of having a wall of cinder block. Nothing seemed to stick to it. I went to my local hardware store and purchased styrofoam insulation (roughly 10 foot long). After cutting it to size I was able to get 2 boards out of it. Next, I covered it with fabric and then added bulletin board border. Total cost.... Roughly $15. Now talk about easy way to add more stapling area!

Task Card Wall
This is my task card wall. I had an extra curtain rod and decided to use it at school. After adhearing 3-3M hooks (the big ones) to the wall I hung the curtain rod and 2 mesh shoe holdes from Big Lots. I added labels to each pocket so that it is easy for students to pick out task cards that are related to what we are currently learning about.
For the most part the task cards are all math related. Students use blank game boards that I printed and laminated and a deck of cards and viola... less space is used! 
 
My Command Center
 My command center can seem hectic but any teacher knows that hectic is our middle name! To the right, students have their turn in trays and mailboxes. Below the mailboxes, grouped students are assigned a green tub where I have added Guided Reading books that are on their level. Students can take 2 at a time and at the end of every other week I collect them all and add a whole new bacth of books. I purposely choose to only have non-fiction books and chapter books in those tubs in hopes that it will help build their stamina and vocabulary.
Past the green tubs is my restoom and connecting door to my neighbor teacher! My desk is smack in the middle where all of my students meet for small group math lessons daily. I finally got smart and marked 6 chairs that students know must always stay at my table. Behind my table is my calendar and word wall. Lastly to the right is our computer station.
 
Sink Area

Math Wall
As mentioned earlier, students do not partake in a whole class math lesson. Each day, I have students rotate every 20 minutes. In this picture you can see my Math Rotations chart.
Above the Math Rotations chart you can see our classroom timeline that we use to order our important heroes that we learn about daily. I used my Silhouette SD paper cutter to cut out my dates.
 
 Whole Classroom View
This year I opted to have my students desk in a horseshoe shape. Students are still in groups of 4-5 and are assigned a color. This layout has definitly cut down on distrations and talking. It also gives me a great view from the front of the classroom of all of my students adorable faces. No student has their back to me!
 
 Word Wall
Using my Silhouette SD I was able to create these awesome letters that go perfectly with my color scheme. I used painters tape to creat my grid.
You can also see my Monday-Friday drawers wher I keep all of our worksheets for the week.
 
 Library
I am very blessed to have windows in my classroom and love keeping them wide open for the sun to shine through. Note: The stop sign is hung on Back to School night to preven kids from going into my library before I have had a chance to teach them how it is organized. This prevents any headaches of reorganizing before the first day of school... Ehhh... Im getting smarter!
 
I organized and uploaded all of my books using the Classroom Organizer and its iPhone App. Now, this took time. First I divided my books into categories, created those categories on the Classroom Organizer website and then I started scanning my books in.
 
Few things to note:
Create your categories on the site first than start uploading them.
The site does not recognize all of the barcodes (I assume because no one has scanned that book in prior to me) so occasionally you will have to type in the title yourself.
 
After scanning all of my books in, I bought bins and started putting them in bins. Each bin was assigned a color and a identical colored dot was "stickered" on to the book.
 
The Best Part
Now all I have to do is log on to the site and my students checkout books by themselves and return them as well. Once checked in, studnets place it in the blue container. I have 1 librarian a week whose job is to place the books back in the appropriate containers. Since I color coded my books using garage sell stickers, my librarian has no problem putting books back where they belong. This ensures that my books are always in order by their category.
 


Funny Fluency

    This game is used by my third graders during their Reading Center time. It is a choice in my Fluency bucket. What I noticed was that my students enjoyed similar games but needed to be a bit more challenged.
   
   Twisted Tongues is a hilariously entertaining way for my students to practice their fluency. It is comprised of fun tongue twisters that encourages my students to slow down when reading. My students are really enjoying this game and are learning so much about their personal reading. This has also benefited my dyslexic students who also needed to practice slowing down. Check out the comments on my TPT store from teachers who have already tried it out!


     How to Play: Students take turns drawing cards. Depending on the card they draw, students will either read the card correctly the first time, earn a bonus turn or lose a card from their pile.

     Dont forget to leave a comment on here telling me what you thought as well as on TPT so that you earn points!

3rd Grade Morning Work

  After many mornings getting to school and wishing I hadnt forgotten to make morning work the previous day... I finally sat down and created morning work that is easy to print and hand out. I would suggest printing it out in sections and have students place it in 1 of thier braded folders.

  This packet has a total of 139 pages. I have created 4 pages of morning work a week for each week of the upcoming year, leaving the 5th day open to whatever else I need them to do. Each morning, students will trace the name of the month (written in dotted font)as well as record the day and year so they can practice writing dates. The then move on to a math portion. The math portion changes month to month:
-place value -adding and subtracting
-multiplication and division word problems
-fractions (sets and wholes)
-3d and 2d -measurement (area, perimeter, length, temperature)
 -graphs (bar and pictographs)
-money (coins and bills)
 -all operations word problems.
 
Dont forget to leave a comment on here telling me what you thought as well as on TPT so that you earn points!

  Finally, students will end with a morning sentence/ paragraph. Months September- October are sentences. Create your own sentence for students to correct. I will create a sentence that focuses on what we are learning during that time. Students will have to use colored writing tools to add nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs to make it a good sentence. Months November-May are paragraphs.

  Again, create a short paragraph for students to correct daily. I will create a paragraph that focuses on what we are learning during that time. Print these front and back and place it in spirals/folders for students to complete each morning. Lastly, there is Page 2 which has all of the numbers to 100 written out in words for students to use in the months of September and October.

Dont forget to leave a comment on here telling me what you thought as well as on TPT so that you earn points!

Welcoming Expectations

First off, thank you so much for taking some time to visit my site. As you can tell, it is relatively new and the possibilities are limitless. What can you expect? Here I will be posting different things that I use in my class. This includes all subject areas and a few extras. My goal is to be able to share my ideas with those of you out there looking for something new. I would appreciate any comments so that I can learn things from you as well. Teachers are some of the most knowledgable people I know and by working together our resources are ample!