Is Your State Having a Sales Tax Holiday?
To see if your state is having a sales tax holiday, check this list. The list will give you the link to your state’s tax free holidays if your state participates! Many states are having a back to school tax free holiday the weekend of August 3rd. Save yourself a few bucks!
How Can Short (or tall) Teachers Hang Items with Ease in Their Classrooms?
I have done everything in the past to hang items from the ceiling at school. I’ve climbed on tables and chairs, borrowed tall people, and sweet talked the custodian with a candy bar. Hanging items from the ceiling is something that I always dread doing since it takes so much effort. Now I don’t have to borrow my custodian or climb like a monkey because of these new hooks I ‘ve found–Magster ceiling hooks. Magster ceiling hooks have a convenient pole that I can use to attach magnetic hooks to the metal part of the ceiling. I just lift the pole to the ceiling until the magnet attaches. They are easily moveable and can be taken down with the same pole. Now I am just thinking of things to hang up for next year.
Here is what came in my starter package:
Above the wood sticks join with the black pieces to make a long pole. The U-shaped black piece holds the hook. The other white plastic items are the hooks.
Above you can see how the wood pieces join to make the pole to hang the hooks.
Here is me standing on the floor (not on a chair, not on a table) with my 5 ‘ 3″ self and hanging a hook.
Ta Da! That was easy and quick!
I can even use this to hold my posters…See!
The pole makes it super easy even to hang posters above! (I hate that my ceiling is cracked right there. They won’t fix it though 🙁 )
Surprise! I’m hosting a give away of one package of these wonderful hooks which you will absolutely LOVE! All you have to do is make a meaningful comment on any post on my blog, and leave another comment below about what you would hang if you won the new hooks. The contest will close on July 10th. I will select two winners at random and announce them on July 12th!
One More Fabulous Free Common Core Resource!!!
I will start out with my most favorite state’s common core resources that I have seen so far. This one ranks up there with the depth of the Georgia State Units. Not to keep you in suspense, but North Carolina has done a superb amount of work on these units. Each one has lessons and student tasks ready made to go with each lesson. These units are not ALL conclusive though. There are some holes or standards left out, but what is there is excellent quality work! Thank you North Carolina!
First you will come to this page. Click on the grade level of your choice.
Then you will be taken to this screen below. There are many resources here including the unpacked CCSS. To find the unit lessons click where the yellow arrow is, but the other resources are definitely worth exploring as they will give you an overview of the unit, parent/school connections etc.
When you click on the unit link, you will be taken to the cover page of the unit that looks like the following.
Then when you look inside the unit, you will see complete lessons….
…with tasks and or recording sheets included…
I hope these save you time from recreating the wheel :).
How Can You Fit Estimation in All the Time?
Before the walls are completely cleaned off for the end of school, I snapped a few pictures of the things I hung up around school to help students estimate and measure all the time. Maybe these will give you some ideas that you can incorporate in your school or classroom.
I placed a scale near the restrooms so that students could weigh themselves in kilograms. Students needed extra experience weighing themselves with kilograms since that unit isn’t common for us in the U.S. Most digital scales you can buy now have a switch on the back that will convert weight to pounds or kilograms. Just check the box before you buy one.
I also had multiple rulers and yardsticks hot glued to the wall so that students could estimate the length of walls as they stood in line waiting. Here is one of the walls that I had a yardstick glued to. Unfortunately I waited till the end of the year to snap a picture and the sign is a bit tattered , but you get the idea.
Losing My Dignity as a Mathemagician…
You know how you try things out at the end of the year preparing for the next year? Well, I tried out something and DID lose my dignity, but the kids loved it! I dressed up as a mathemagician …more specifically The Masked Mathemagician! I told the kids that Ms. K had sent the magician to tell the special news. I did this to announce our Math Wars awards. I had one big contest at the end of the year where I awarded students in the top three places for Reflex Math AND the top three classes in K-2 and 3-5. I bought a cape and mask at Wal-Mart in the toy section for $6.97 and borrowed a glittery black hat from a teacher down the hall. At the last minute, I thought to use a ruler for my magic wand. I just used a plain one, but I think I will glitz it up for next year. I’m also thinking of adding white gloves. Anyhow, I ran into our morning meeting (that we have every day) dressed up, and children’s gasps could be heard as I ran in. One of the teachers told me later that the students stopped eating when they saw me. (Our morning meeting is in the cafeteria.) After I announced the winners, I took off my little costume in the side room, so that the kids wouldn’t see me change. The kids told me all day that they saw me dressed up. I kept telling them that it wasn’t me dressed up, but my friend. Most kids knew it was me of course. One kindergartener said, “Really it looked just like you!” 🙂
I dressed up like this on a whim because of a presentation called “Math Math, Better Than a Bath” that I saw at the NCTM conference this year. The presenter described wearing a silly hat etc. to do math contests like creating silly math poems and math jokes. I think in the myriad of test prep and accountability we forget that kids live in a world of make believe, imagination, and fun. To really reach them, sometimes it is necessary to speak their language of imagination…and this coming from someone who likes to remain behind the scenes and not make a spectacle of themselves…me!
Below is pictured my $6.97 cape and mask, borrowed glitter hat, and magic ruler wand (which I will be improving in the future).
Cute, Cheap, and Easy Trophies
This year for the final Math Wars contest, I decided to use Reflex Math instead of a paper pencil timed test like I had been doing. A little plug for Reflex Math here…I LOVE it as do the kids (more about Reflex here). In case your school or district is thinking of purchasing this program, get it! It has definitely made a difference in our students’ math fact fluency. Since I wanted to give out awards for the Math Wars with NO budget, I made some. I had some large gold stars left over from another project, but I needed something to stabilize them on so I found four cones in a package for $3 at Wal-Mart. Since hot glue is the answer to just about everything that needs to be stuck somewhere at school, I hot glued the stars to the cones. Then I got some scrapbooking stickers at Hobby Lobby to label the stars. The stickers were 40% off the week I got them. Then I found some little medals for the kids on clearance for 75 cents for a package of about 8 (yay!) I bought extra packages because I can always use these for something. The medals are plastic but look almost as good as metal ones. Since the ribbon in the package was kind of short, I used some nicer ribbon that I happened to have on hand from another project. Pictured below are my trophies and medals.
Free Math Common Core Tasks
I just ordered these Battista books to help implement the common core math standards for each grade level at school. To my delight, the books list a link to extra free resource tasks! There is a book for place value, multiplication and division, fractions, geometric measurement, and addition and subtraction, hence there are FREE resources for all of these.
These free tasks are at Heinemann, the publisher’s website. To access the free resources, first click on the book icon of the topic you are interested in.
Next click on the link that says “companion resources”. This will take you to all of the free tasks for that particular math book.
Here is a sample of one of the tasks:
Wondering What the PARCC Assessment Will Look Like?
Now there is less to wonder about. Admittedly living in disequilibrium and uncertainty all year about how students will be tested in the future, I now see a glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel. I perused the PARCC assessment items that are up to view. There are now more questions up than there used to be, so now I have a better understanding of how students will be asked common core questions. Now I know how rigorous I need to be in my question asking of students. I suggest you take a look to if you are one of the PARCC states.
I noticed that students are doing a lot of writing about their mathematical thinking, so it looks like math journals will come in really handy. Also, students answer questions in which there could be more than one right answer or more than one way to arrive at the answer. They also seem to love fraction number line questions!
Here is the site. http://www.parcconline.org/samples/mathematics/grade-3-mathematics Click on the grade level you want to look at.
Then click below to access the tasks. Also take the time to read about the 3 different types of tasks.
Then click on Elementary School Tasks.
Another Great Common Core Resource with Free Tasks
I’ve just been searching to see if there are new PARCC assessment items out so that I could have a glimpse at the way we will be tested. I have checked periodically this year to see what the PARCC items will be like, but there was never much available to see. Well, while clicking on the tasks I was taken to another page which has lots of sample free common core tasks which are VERY similar to the PARCC assessment Here is the site: http://www.illustrativemathematics.org. Just click on the right sidebar where it says illustrations.
You will have to click along the bottom on the blue numbers to go to higher grades.
Fun and Easy Tool to Teach Number Sense for Kinesthetic Learners
Here is my absolute favorite session from NCTM (National Council of Teachers of Mathematics). The presenter was a lady from Canada who brought The Learning Carpet for us to see. The learning carpet is a 10 by 10 grid of empty squares that you can use for many things, but it is especially useful for a large 100’s chart.
The number cards are 6 1/2 inches square and made out of card stock. Students in groups of five can see how fast they can place the number cards on the carpet. This can be easily differentiated by giving the easier numbers to the struggling learners and the larger numbers to the students who need a challenge.
Students can also be asked to pick up the numbers whose digits makes sums of 10 or any number. Students will start to see patterns such as how different sums follow diagonals. I felt dumb when she showed us this because I had never noticed that the sums make diagonals.
In the above picture you can see the gray squares on the mat. You could easily make this on a tarp with paint or tape to show the number boxes. The gray boxes are 6 1/2 inches and the black stripes on the grid lines are 1/2 an inch. If I made one of these carpets, I would make the squares actually bigger so that feet could more easily fit inside the boxes. I ordered the book with all the games that you can play so I could make my own if I wanted. Next year, there may be money in the budget to actually purchase some of the carpets.
The amazing thing about the fact that there are no numbers on the grid actually teaches more number sense. Students are made to think about number relationships to find spaces on the grid. If asked to find any number on the blank grid students have to understand the relationships between the numbers. For example, if trying to find 57 on the grid, students will know that all the sevens are in a column so that 57 will be in the column with sevens. A marker can be thrown on the grid and then students have to tell what number space that it landed on. They can walk on the carpet to help them figure it out.
The grid can be used for bar graphs or coordinate grids. The grid can also be used for area and perimeter like below.
There are so many fun activities you can do with this carpet, and I love the idea of the students actually being able to get up and stand on it to be involved. If you want to order the resources you can buy learning carpets and resources here. The kindergarten teacher who designed these is in Canada, and this is the only place you can buy them. They don’t sell through a larger distributor like Amazon etc. I have no stock in these, I just think that it is a great idea whether you order the ones she makes or make your own.
