Spooktacular Solve It Freebie!

Well I was hoping to finish my new Halloween freebie today and I actually did - I kind of surprised myself. I must have been inspired as I was watching Dance Moms today. Seriously I cannot get enough of that show. Between that and Princesses Long Island, it was a great day for reality TV!

But onto the freebie. I love the fun that holidays bring into the classroom and wherever possible I like to make the curriculum fun by incorporating holiday themes.

My new freebie, Spooktacular Solve It contains 24 Spooky Number Task Cards. Each task card contains different instructions to find the spooky number. The task cards review place value, even & odd numbers, ordering numbers, least & greatest and has a little addition and subtraction thrown in.

Click {HERE} or the pictures to check it out - let me know if you enjoy!

Word Problems and (Almost) a Freebie

How do you feel about word problems? Do you ever find that your students stare at the words and have no idea what to do? I seem to find this way too much with some math skills. I remember doing my practicum at the beginning of the year, in a fifth grade class, and asking doing a quick assessment on written form and place value. I was **shocked**. Some of the answers I got were completely unexpected. After that I remind myself to not assume that the students know the skills. Always do a quick formative assessment.

With some of these skills, I think the best thing to do is complete a basic skills review. That's where my Daily Math comes in and I've tried to do it again with my new math series:

These units include teacher task cards (in color and black & white), student versions (for use in interactive math journals), a student recording sheet and of course, the all important answer key. The task cards and student versions include the Common Core State Standard covered and are a quick (daily) way to review basic skills.

I've offered a few ways to use these in the class.

1) Assess oral listening skills by reading the cards to the students, and having them answer in math journals or on recording sheet.

2) Use the PDF version to project onto an interactive white board for students to read and complete.

3) Provide students with the student prompt version and have them glue into and complete in their interactive math journal.

Click on the pictures to check the units out. So far I've completed the Back to School and Fall packets for third grade.

Now onto the (almost) freebie:

I'm working on a new Halloween-themed math freebie, so check back soon for that!

Fall & October Currently

Well it's getting rainy and cold, the leaves are changing, Starbucks is serving Pumpkin Spice Lattes and my Scholastic order included a few Halloween books - it must be Fall! Here are a few of my fun Scholastic finds:

Substitute Creacher by Chris Gall. Perfect monster book to scare students into behaving.

The 13 Nights of Halloween by Guy Vasilovich. Fun, creepier version of The 12 Days of Christmas.

Frankenstein Takes the Cake by Adam Rex. Fun follow-up to Frankenstein Makes a Sandwich.

In a short follow-up to the Pete the Cat Saga of 2013 talked about {HERE} and {HERE}, we are still completely Pete obsessed. One student even showed me the handwritten note that "Pete" left for her at home. I must apologize to her poor parents. I have to say, listening to 20 five-year olds sing and read all the words to all of Pete's books makes it so worth it!

Finally, I guess I should get to October's Currently. I kind of dropped the ball on linking up for the past few months and I'm not sure why. Oh yeah, it's because I complete fell of the blogging train. I don't know if I was ever actually on the train since I write pretty sporadic posts, but anyway, I'm back to link-up.

I think mine all speak for themselves, no explanations needed. 

As for the treat, seriously if you have a SMART Board in your class (and access to Youtube) Just Dance Kids videos are perfect for movement breaks. Short, fun and work in any weather. We have had too many indoor recesses already.

Go link up with Farley over at Oh' Boy 4th Grade to share your Currently thoughts.

My New Favourite Word Wall!

How is it already Sunday? I've slept most of the weekend due to this awful cold. Hopefully I'll start to feel better soon or this will be a looong week!

What are your feelings on word walls? I think they can be a fantastic resource as long they are used. Most classrooms have to make the most of every square inch of space, so to have something up on the walls and not make use of it, I feel is absolutely wasted space.

I also think students have to take responsibility for the word wall too. They have to know that it is a resource that they are to use. Have them put the words up and whenever possible, direct them to the word wall when they need to spell a word.

I was thinking about the word walls I've created and I decided I wanted to do a little update to make sure it was as user-friendly as possible. To the headers, I added colour pictures (great for younger students who are still learning their letter sounds), red vowels and primary dotted lines to show proper word formation.

So far I've updated my black & white chevron, black & white polka, rainbow chevron and rainbow polka dot word walls. Click {HERE} or the pictures to check them out. You can also find the old versions{HERE}.

Let me know what you think!

A Little Freebie!

Well I'm going to make this quick because the first back to school cold has hit and it is a doozy.

I've finished another addition to my Place Value Mystery Cards series - Decimals! The free packet comes with 36 mystery cards. The first half go up to the hundredths place, and the second half go up to the thousandths place. Click {HERE} or the pictures to check out the freebie:

Hope you enjoy!

Now I'm off to drink my weight in orange juice!

Go Away Big Green Monster! (& the benefits of computers in the classroom)

Well this will be quick because I am exhausted (is it really only Tuesday?). We've continued our colour studies this week. Yesterday was green day so of course, I had to read Go Away, Big Green Monster! by Ed Emberley. This book is fantastic for teaching colours and also story retelling.

So yesterday I kind of assumed this book was in the school library, but upon further inspection I couldn't find it (no, I'm not a last minute prepper at all). Lucky for me, I was able to find a Youtube version.

I read the story to the students, then as I read it a second time, I had them draw the big green monster. I got this idea from Carolyn at Kindergarten: Holding Hands and Sticking Together. Let's just say I was a little worried about this. I have a few, uh "free spirits" so I though I might get a few orange monkeys or blue elephants but I got 20 fantastic green monsters. We then watched the video and it was so fun seeing the kids' reactions when they first saw the big green monster!

So happy to have a computer and SMARTBoard in the classroom!

Daily Math Update & Some Classroom Happenings

Yay - it's Saturday! Before I know it, it will be Monday again. So what did the week look like? We spent the week practicing our names with a bunch of fun activities. We did a name sort - unscrambling the letters in our names and then counting how many letters we each had in our name. The students then sorted our names into groups, according to how many letters, and completed a class graph.

I know of a few fun books for talking about names:

  

   

But, I'm always looking for more books to add to my library. Do you know of any other fun name books?

We also started talking about colours. For blue day, we made adorable (if I do say so myself) Pete the Cats, with each student choosing the colour for the shoes. We also added a little bit of writing - Pete loves his             shoes.

For yellow day, we made school buses and drew the bus driver and riders. Wouldn't you know? A few Petes showed up driving the buses (yes, we are apparently still Pete-obsessed!).

Some of our favourite colour books this week:

We'll continue colours next week and I would love to hear some more suggestions for colour books. A few more I still plan on using:

On a completely unrelated note, I have been swamped since school started but I did manage to finish the next packet in my Daily Math for first grade students:

Click on the pictures or {HERE} to check it out. I also updated my Daily Math First Grade Bundle to include this pack:

Click on the pictures or {HERE} to check it out.

Well now I'm off to enjoy the rest of the weekend!