You’ll Love These Practice Pages at Your Fingertips
This week I have tried out Super Teacher Worksheetssite for the first time. This site has helped me so much when I’ve been in a rush. They have worksheets and activities for just about EVERYTHING! I have been struggling to find decimal activities for 5th grade, but just look at some of the things I found! Decimal Number line practice and ordering decimal card sorts. There are several of each of this type of practice so kids have time to perfect the skill.
Decimal Number Lines–A Freebie!
Ordering Decimals Card Sort
I was also needing some counting resources for kindergarten, and I found this card sort for them…just when I was thinking of making one, Super Teacher Worksheets came to the rescue!
Not only that, but I also found some ten frame practice worksheets. I LOVE ten frames and these will work out great for 1st and 2nd grade to practice their math facts.
Ten Frames Practice
I love how the site has their resources listed on the side of the screen so that you can quickly find the topic you need. They even had a file cabinet for you to store all of your resources as long as you have an account with them.
See the “My Filing Cabinet Button” in red in the middle.
Then I taught a lesson about fact families in first grade and I was thinking I sure do need a smart board lesson with a fact family house. Guess what? Super Teacher Worksheets had one of those, too, through their sister site Modern Chalkboard. I just adapted it for addition/subtraction instead of multiplication.
Fact Family Smart Boards
I’m a just a little biased because I teach math all the time, but Super Teacher Worksheets also has science, math, literacy, social studies, seasonal, and math (oh, did I say math again??) resources! I know we all need some grammar worksheets since we (my district) don’t even have grammar books anymore. Super Teacher Worksheets also boasts some fun puzzle generators and math drill worksheet generators, too! Not only that, Super Teacher Worksheets has some teacher helpers such as desk name tags, award certificates, sticker charts, calendars and more. Many of these items are free, so make sure you check it out! SEE…
Sticker Chart
Super Teacher Worksheets only charges $19.95 for an entire year’s subscription which is only about $1.67 a month–a great value. Many of their worksheets are FREE and Modern Chalkboard’s resources are ALL FREE! 
More Common Core Test Items
Apparently, the Smarter Balanced Consortium IS smarter or at least busier! They definitely have more sample test items posted than the eastern side of the U.S. We have only a sprinkling of sample test items with PARCC. If you go to Smarter Balanced’s website they have printable PDF’s of test questions available to download as well as some others which are animated to view. Directly below is one of the test questions from the printable PDF’s. Clicking on this items will take you to the page where there are links to other grade level’s test questions.
The following two test questions are from the interactive animated sample items. Clicking on either of these will take you to the site where more of these are available.
I’m totally printing those so at least we know what we will be aiming towards next year. One thing I have noticed is that the Smarter Balanced consortium’s test did include a multiple choice item (when I say multiple choice, I mean an A,B,C, or D response). I have not seen any of those with the PARCC assessment’s sample items. I wonder if they will be different when it all comes down to test time?
Use This New, Free, Quick, and Easy Classroom Management Tool
If you haven’t already heard of Class Dojo, a cutting edge classroom management tool, let me fill you in.
Our fourth and fifth grade teachers are using it and they absolutely L-O-V-E it!! Class Dojo is a website which allows you to load all of your students and keep up with their behaviors, positive or negative, based on a point system. You can upload the behaviors you want that match your classroom rules and expectations. For example, you can include behaviors such as “off task”, “participating”, “showing respect” etc. The entire system is on a website and/or it can be used as an app on an ipad or iphone (and android).
The marvelous thing about this is there is no walking over to a behavior chart to change a card or clip etc. You can carry the ipad around with you and immediately respond to behaviors. Then when you want to reward or use a consequence, you simply click/touch the child’s name. Each child has a cute colorful avatar beside their name.
They also have a little red bubble that shows their points accumulated. Students avatars can be projected onto a screen or smart board so that they can see their avatars and points. A whole classroom can be given a point at one time too–say for example all of the students walked quietly in the hall or all students were working hard on an assignment. I also really like the “random” button. You can push the random button and different names will flash on the screen until the program finally lands on one name. Then when it stops on that one name, you can look to see if that student is using appropriate behavior and record his/her point accordingly. This especially keeps the kids sitting up straight if the names are projected on a screen.
What’s even better is that there can be instant parent communication. Parents can have a code to view their child’s behavior and see how they are behaving. Students can even change and decorate their avatar to look like they want it to. The best part about Class Dojo–it is totally FREE!!
Another Cute Door {or Bulletin Board} Decoration!
Here it is… FINALLY! My new door decoration for this year. I named my room the “Math Cave” since my room is so small and huddled behind a bunch of bookshelves. I feel sort of like my room IS a cave! All of the eyeballs you see are like imaginary creatures in the cave. The comments in speech bubbles around the door suggest that the creatures are afraid of the dark. To bring in some mathematical thinking, the purple poster in the center prompts the children to count the creatures’ eyeballs in groups of two to find out how many creatures are in the dark math cave. You can download the bulletin board speech bubbles and sign for free right here if you want to recreate the door idea. I made most of the eyeballs out of leftover cutouts from the cricut cutter when various letters were cut out. It really bothers me that the words “Math Cave” are off center, but I glued them down and couldn’t very well rip them off without destroying the background. Oh, well, there are more important things to worry about at this time of the school year! The leafy green border is like vines growing around the cave.
Below are posted two pictures of my door. The second one is closer up so you can see the words more easily.
Maximize Your Space with this Pencil Holder Creation
I saw this idea on Pinterest last year and am just now getting around to using it. The original post showed a wine rack that held the wine at an angle with plastic cups holding different writing utensils. I loved this idea because it gives more desktop space to work. I have always felt that I had a dozen pencil cups sitting on my small group table, which didn’t permit much room to spread out for one of the people sitting there. Since the wine rack stores pencils in a vertical direction, it allows for me to have more desktop space–just like tall buildings in big cities! I’m taking a hint from China and building upward!
I found the wine rack at a junk store for $4.50 and the plastic cups at the Dollar Tree–2 for a $1. I’m still going to be looking for a wine rack that will hold the cups at an angle, but for $4.50, I couldn’t pass this up!
In case you’re looking for a picture of my door that I posted about earlier…it is coming. I still have to put some finishing touches on it before I take a picture.
Get Straight Letters On Your Bulletin Board Every Time!
Have you ever been frustrated after carefully stapling your letters to the bulletin board only to find that your letters were crooked as you stepped back from the board. Here is the solution I use. Tack each letter to the board with a pushpin and step back from the board. If you notice that a letter is crooked or off center, you can easily move the letter by pulling out the pushpin. You don’t have to remove staples!
Back to School Sale in My Teachers Pay Teachers Store!
To welcome you back to school, I will be holding a sale in my Teachers Pay Teachers store. All of my items will be 28% off. Many other sellers’ items will be on sale as well August 18th -19th. Stop by and pick all those items you’ve been swooning over. Pick up an item to help you start your year off right. Just click the link below to go directly to my store.
5 Days of Work Later…
My room is starting to come together after throwing away lots of stuff and moving some things into storage, I have more space! Everything is all dusted off! As you can see I have graduated from the enormous trashcan to my normal one. My trashcan went MIA at the end of last year…mysteriously the custodian found me another one. As you can see my normal trashcan runneth over. Surely cleanliness and organization will follow me all the days of my 13-14 school year!
Hmmm…I still need something for all that ugly white space on the walls…I think I will wait on covering it. I may make some charts with our teachers during a planning session to hang up there.
Coming soon…you will get to see a picture of my creative math door!!! You’re going to love it!!! I’m so excited about putting it together, but I must focus on what’s important first–getting ready for my PD presentation on Wednesday! :/
If I could have a frivolous full time job, it would be bulletin board and door decorating extraordinaire! Any takers? 🙂
Day 1 Monday…Going Home Covered in Dust!
Here is a look at what I came back to Monday–my little room piled to the ceiling.
Dusty Day 1 and I’m back!
As you can see I am the goddess of math manipulatives. The secretary says if I get any more math tools that you won’t be able to find me!
Before I came to school, I had all these cleaning ambitions, but when I left 6 hours later all I could boast about was this one shelf that I cleaned out. I guess the custodian thought I looked like I needed the WHOLE trashcan cause he brought me one and 3 additional trash bags! I threw away notebooks that I had saved from 4 years ago…you know “just in case” I might need them for something! I finally decided that if I hadn’t used it in all those years, that I wasn’t going to.
- Ta-da! All color coordinated and everything!
How Can You Make a Life Sized Hundred’s Chart Cheaply?
At the last NCTM conference, I went to a session about “The Learning Carpet” which is a giant 10×10 grid. This life size grid helps students see number patterns on a 100’s chart. To actually buy one it costs around $300. The presenter told us that she started out with a tarp to make hers before she had the carpets manufactured. Intrigued with the multiple ways the carpet could be used, we set out to teach people about the carpet in our own district and make our own. Several of us made them with small patterned duct tape. They took us about 3 hours to make, and it works best if you have help. Each square is 6 1/2 inches wide. On the real “Learning Carpet” the lines in the middle of the squares are 1/2 inch wide, but the duct tape we used is over an inch wide. There are number and letter cards that go with the mat which we made as well on card stock. One of our teachers took the initiative to get together before school started to make the “learning tarps” so we could help each other. To buy the tarp and duct tape it costed us about $30. Which is the better buy? Hmmmm…you do the math! Below are our results.
Turquoise and pink chevrons…wooo!
Yellow and paint splatters…
Orange and bubble design…
As you can see from this photo, it is easiest to lay all the horizontal stripes first and then go back and lay the vertical stripes.
I tried to make a learning carpet a different way just to see if it would work…my little experiment! I built a stencil from a piece of poster board and spray painted the stencil on a full size sheet. To make the stencil, I cut the 1/2 inch outlines away from the squares while leaving a little piece of poster board attached to the squares so that the stencil wouldn’t fall apart. The stencil is the green rectangle with paint on it that you see lying on the sheet.
I just moved the stencil and lined it up each time I spray painted to repeat the pattern. Towards the end I started getting several smudges since the stencil was getting soaked with paint. Sturdier cardboard may have worked out better. Two cans of spray paint are necessary to paint all the squares on the sheet. The total cost for the poster board, the sheet, and the spray paint was about $20. Although the spray paint/sheet method was messier, it is much easier to create this project alone than stretching the tape exactly straight with the tarp method. Plus you can easily throw the sheet in the washer when it accumulates too much kid dirt!
A few paint fumes later…my finished product!
If you truly wanted to have a learning carpet, this stencil method would work to spray paint a carpet remnant with low pile as well.
Read my original post about “The Learning Carpet” to find out more about how this can be used in your classroom.
