Math Workshop-Place Value Resources (Freebie Alert!)

I write this blog post as I watch my poor poor UConn Huskies have another rough football game.

Sigh.

Anyways! Math Workshop is one of my favorite parts of the day. 

I love teaching my mini lessons, I love my guided groups, and I love watching my kids have tons of fun in their stations.

Three years ago we transitioned to a math curriculum based off common core standards. 

The first year was rough. Kids were missing a lot of the building blocks they needed to be successful and we spent a lot of time working hard to fill in the missing pieces before we sent them off to fourth grade.

Last year it was significantly better. I could see right away what a huge difference it made that students were exposed to the common core curriculum in second grade. I was hoping to see the improvement continue this year, considering students had been immersed in this curriculum since first grade. 

However this year, with trying to work in a brand new ELA curriculum, I personally felt my math workshop instruction had not been as strong as the two previous years. I post-tested my students on Friday fully expecting to have so-so results and several friends who would need to revisit the concepts in small group.

I was so relieved and ecstatic to find that 90% of my students exceeded the goal of 80% (most pretested with scores in the 20-30% range) with most scoring 90% or better. My students that did not hit the 80% still increased from their pretest scores by over 40% and are already receiving extra help in both math and reading. With the long week I had, the results almost brought tears to my eyes.

I attribute my results to my solid math workshop routine (see a previous post for more info here) and my math workshop stations for this unit I have worked on and used for the last three years.

It is important to me that all of my stations have tracking and accountability for my students. 

This year I started using TenMarks and FrontRowEd as part of my "Terrific Technology" station but I also like to mix gaming and tracking sheets.

I love www.abcya.com they have some great quick mini games that my students can play on their laptops. Prior to our shift to one-to-one devices I only had one student computer and access to a handful of iPads. That was when I created three (free!) tracking sheets to go with ABCYa's Base ten Bingo.

Check them out in my TPT Store!

Place Value Bingo With Subtraction

Place Value Bingo With Rounding

Place Value Bingo

At "Games Galore" I expect students to be reviewing skills and concepts in pairs of small groups while having some competitive fun. It is important to me that they have "never ending" activities so I can work with my guided groups.

Digit Flip (2 and 3 Digit!)

Two math stations in one! Great for differentiating. My students absolutely love this game. I included digit cards to print and laminate but for a fun twist it is easy to play with cards as well. Students can play "two digit flip" to review ordering of numbers and expanded notation. For a challenge, or when students are ready to move on, they can advance to "three digit flip" Teachers can also up the ante by allowing students to play with multiple decks of "digit cards" at once.

Rounding Rampage (Rounding to 10s and 100s)

Another bonus buy with two math stations in one! Great for differentiating. A great game for students to play independently while they learn how to round! I use the same digit cards for Rounding Rampage as I do for Digit Flip (and many other stations), Less Prep Work!

Three Digit Addition & Subtraction Slides & Ladders

This station is a complete fan favorite. I introduce it during our first unit of the year with both 2 and 3 digit addition and subtraction equations. Kids must solve the problem (and their partner must agree!) in order to be able to stay on the square. As we move on into multiplication and division I have gameboards made for multiplication and division facts as well. I send home copies for kids to play and review at home. Families love the fun twist on addition and subtraction. 

Packet Includes:

4 game boards to practice three digit subtraction or addition

4 answer keys for game boards

4 printable game pieces 

Directions

Tracking sheet

So excited to see the great results I got from these resources.

During "Practice Makes Perfect" I expect students to review and explore concepts independently. I try to give them stations where they can modify the level of challenge (or I can assign) based on their own needs. 

Check out the links below for more Place Value & 3-Digit Addition/Subtraction Practice 

 

Addition Challenge

Representing Numbers in Four Ways

Rounding Numbers

Subtraction Challenge

3-Digit Subtraction

In order for my students to be able to work on their own, we build 'tool-kits' with all of our songs and strategies. I had out hard copies of these strategies and keep a set in our "LiveBinder" (check back soon for a LiveBinder post!).

Click here to get your own copy of our toolkit!

While working in guided groups during our normal math workshop block I focus on problem solving skills with my students.

One-Step Word Problems

Multi-Step Word Problems

Last (but not least) I love my "Superhero Power of One" lesson I have taught for the last three years. I wish someone taught ME this strategy when I was 8 instead of 25! It makes subtracting across zeros incredibly easy. Plus the kids love that it is a SUPER POWER!

Now that we have a super successful first unit under our belts I cannot WAIT to dive headfirst into multiplication and division after this 3-day weekend. 

Don't forget to leave your own Place Value and Regrouping Tips in the Comments!

 

Another New Classroom, Another New Set of Pics

This past summer was a whirlwind of packing and unpacking...and more packing...and more unpacking...

As we moved from 5 team members down to four I had to move my classroom down the hall. 

While it is nice to be in a quad with my team members instead of down the hall on my own it is definitely a double edged sword. I love the social aspect (and having three teachers and two aids in the quad who can keep an extra eye or ear out if need be) buttttttt I am having trouble getting more work done since I am near everyone else.

While I have an AC (that somewhat works and by somewhat might take some staleness out of the air...) I ended up further from the bathroom and the printer/copier...two seriously important items during the school day.

Overall I love my new classroom (and I cannot thank my incredible husband enough for all of his help) but it was made that much more difficult by the fact that I also moved in (and out) of my summer school classroom. Needless to say at the current moment I am very much looking forward to Christmas Break where I'll have more days off than I did all summer!

Check out a few new pics below! 

I'll be following up with some more posts about each one...

Small Group Table

(Top New Room, Bottom Old Room)                                                       

This is one of my FAVORITE upgrades in my new room. 

Check back soon for some tips on integrating stability balls in your classroom.

Rocking Chair/Morning Meeting Area

(Top New Room, Bottom Old Room)

I was lucky enough to stumble across this awesome blue and white flowered fabric while cleaning out the cabinets in my new classroom. My husband had picked out the shiny blue fabric for my last year. Somewhere in the course of the year it came away slightly stained and tattered. 

Both wall hangings actually came from Dollar Tree. I was nervous that I would damage the whale when I took it down so I bought the palm trees as well. I absolutely love the way it brightens up the whole back corner. I even used it for a backdrop for some first day of school pictures. 

Last year my door was fairly boring. I had fish labels on the door and eventually added cards and letter to/from my students. This year the hubby (super handy with a straight edged razor) helped me to wrap the door in blue fadeless paper. Check back for future posts and my super cute Captain Mickey and Sailor Minnie name tags! 

Updated job chart! This time I (and by me again the hubby) used felt as the background for all of my bulletin boards. Check out last year's post about my job chart (http://mrsnpartyka.blogspot.com/2013/10/all-hands-on-deck-pirate-job-chart.html) for information on the jobs and where to get your copy!

Last year I hated how dingy, dirty, and scratched my desk was. There just never seemed to be enough hours in the day to do something about it. This year it was a priority and my wonderful husband and his straight edged razor again saved the day. We (and by we again I really mean he) wrapped the desk in fadeless green paper. I use the bottom half of my old whale wall hanging from my last classroom to spruce up the side. I then decorated the front with magnets I made myself using Lilly Pulitzer 5x5 designs and some of my favorite designs from Lilly. (I hope to share some of my magnet templates in a future blog post so make sure to check back!)

Another dingy metal area I spruced up (this time on my own!!) with fadeless paper and Lilly magnets!

Plenty more ideas, freebies, and TPT ideas to come. Make sure to check back for more posts in the next few weeks as I get back into the posting routine. 

For now enjoy this freebie 

Click here to get these numbers!

Ringing In The New Year (FREEBIE ALERT!)

Well...this week we had ONE half day of school, so I suppose you could say we eased back into it!?

My students and I did a quick writing project. We have been working on parts of sentence so the students had to write two complete sentences for this quick check in. WHAT was their resolution for the New Year and WHY.

As I had a few students who were absent, so my bulletin board is still under construction but the final result is just too cute NOT to share.

I printed this paper in black and white for their rough drafts, and in color for the final.
(CLICK HERE FOR YOUR WRITING PAPER FREEBIE!)

I had a student help me cut out the ovals for the faces, and gave each student a piece of paper to "cut" their own hair.

I drew two versions of a party hat on white paper and 2014 in bubble letters then photocopied these onto different colors of construction paper. I prefer this method to having students try and share tracers, saves a little bit of time.

Students colored and decorated their hats and glasses with crayons, colored pencils, and of course some sequins for some added sparkle!

Once the students assemble their people, I stapled some ribbon to the top, cute out circles for their hands and attached their final drafts. The final projects are just too cute!

Since I have been procrastinating a trip to the teacher's store, I printed out some cute clipart from http://www.mycutegraphics.com/ to jazz up my bulletin board!

I was in a hurry to get the board up, but now I regret not laminating the pieces I used to use in the future. Oh well!

 

As an added bonus, one student brought in plastic New Year party hats to share with the class!

I let the students wear them while working as "thinking caps"

 

The bulletin board in progress...

 

 

 

 

Said is DEAD!--FREEBIE ALERT

Said. Simultaneously one of the most common words (ranked no. 47 out of the 500 most common words...) and one of my least favorite words (definitely in my top five, after a few gross swear words.

What word do students write again, and again, and again? Said.
I said. My mom said. We said. He said. She said.

Never is there an I mumbled. My mom cried. We clamored. He murmured. She exclaimed!

When they read, since they do not know a ton of words that mean said, their fluency, accuracy, and comprehension suffer.

I had to put a stop to it. As a class we decided it was time to lay SAID to rest. Said is DEAD.

I introduced the lesson by working it in with a book I was planning to read anyways. We had been building up to exploring text-to-text connections and character traits using The Three Little Pigs, The True Story of the Three Little Pigs, and Porkenstein--in honor of Halloween!


(Get vocabulary cards for Porkenstein here--check my blog post on Word Work for ways to use them!)

 

The first time I read Porkenstein, I replaced every exciting word with "said" and made a great show of how BORED I was.

 

After that we discussed how knowing more words for said would improve our accuracy while we are reading and improve our writing by giving us juicier words to use.

 

Students were given sticky notes to collect better words for said while working at their Daily Five stations. We continued this activity over the course of a few days and shared a couple of words during our closing meeting daily.

 

In order to get the children excited I swapped out our Facebook bulletin board (check out that post here) to a cemetery scene.

 

I already had the black background up so I traced some tombstones on black construction paper and outlined them with oak tag. I wrote cute sayings on the black construction paper with chalk about said being dead.

 

My grandma--who taught first grade forever--gave me a bunch of goodies including a package of realistic looking paper leaves. So I scattered them all over my "cemetery" and added some cute clipart from http://www.mycutegraphics.com/ to complete the look.

 

I lined the edges with our acrostic poems about Autumn that students had written on paper decorated with autumn leaves. 

It worked out perfectly--I got the board done while students were at their special, and they had a fire drill at the end...so we walked inside and right into our bulletin board. Their responses were priceless. They were even MORE excited about finding words to replace said with.

After giving the students time to collect words, we started sharing them and creating a list. I typed right onto the smartboard as the students called out words. We continued going around and around the room until they would not think of anymore. At the end we had collected 116 words!! (Last year my students only got to 60!)

Collecting the words took an entire mini lesson time slot but the kids LOVED it.

Then, for my next mini lesson, I took the list and divided up into 19 sections, I have 19 students, and assigned each student a number. Each student was responsible for copying over their words in black marker onto a ghost outline and cutting them out.

Then I gave students a reference list to add to their writer's workshop binders.

Check out our final product below!

 

Check back each month for the new word to bury!

 

 

Word Work-On A Cruise Ship of Course!-FREEBIE ALERT

 

Word Work (or Work on Words) is one of my favorite Daily Five stations!

 

It is ALWAYS  a popular one with the students as well.

 

Why? Because they get to plan a ton of really fun games while working on their vocabulary, grammar, and spelling skills!

 

It's been slow going but we've learned almost all of our word work stations.

 

Current favorite?

 

Word Wall Bingo

(version one-second grade words, check a future blog post for my 3rd grade spelling words!)

 

Scoop and Spell

 

Trace It, Write It, Add It

(version one-second grade words, check a future blog post for my 3rd grade spelling words!)

 

Sight Word Bingo *Fairy Tale Style*

(works with reading comprehension and sight word recognition! kid favorite!)

 

Puzzler

(great for the hands on learner!)

 

ABC Order

 

Memory Match

(check future posts for vocabulary word/definition cards to use!)

 

 

Check my future blog posts for more FREEBIES including vocabulary cards to use

& information on CrabBoggle!!

 

 

Super cute buckets from the dollar store to keep with the underwater/beach theme!

 

 



 

 

 Hanging seahorses?? DOLLAR TREE <3

 

I had three extra cubbies so I chose to use them for word work--seeing the activities gets the students super excited, and I like that I have free counter space and they can easily get all of their materials.

 

Check back soon for a freebie with my Disney Cruise Line Word Work Labels!

 

xoxo

Front of the House--I mean classroom--FREEBIE alert

 

Above my whiteboard you'll notice my super cute alphabet from Oriental Trader.

The perfect alphabet for my underwater themed classroom.

 

My biggest obsession this year is the roll of magnetic backing from Michael's.

With my teacher discount and a 40% coupon I spent maybe 6 dollars for several yards of magnets.

I used them to jazz up the front of my classroom.

 

I call my class schedule our "cruise itinerary"

(click here to get yours!)

Each morning I take a minute to make sure our schedule lines up with my lesson plans.

It helps me focus and think about the day and the students like seeing what is next.

It is really helpful when trying to build independence. It gives me a place to send students when they ask questions about the flow of our day and our routines.

 

I also use it as a discussion point during our morning meeting when we review what we are going to do that day.

 

Learning targets! Putting your objective in child friendly words and commuting with students how they will know when they are successful. I had to mix in a little Disney cruise line flair here--check out my mickey in the middle of my targets!

 

Each day I write my targets on the board, we discuss them at the beginning, middle,

 and end of every lesson

 

(click here to get yours!)

 

I even put  magnets on the back of my calendar--it makes switching the months super quick and easy.

 

The number and ocean magnets are also from Oriental Trader. I got a HUGE bag for less than $5! 

 

I'm so happy I have extra white board space--magnets are SO much easier than tape, tacks, and staples!

 

 

Underwater Library--FREEBIE ALERT

Sadly, I spent a decent portion of my summer days working on leveling my library.

The benefit? Much easier to book shop with my students and teach them independence in book shopping.

Currently we use guided reading levels, but as I went through I also wrote the Lexile level on my books since rumor has it we are switching school wide to lexile levels in the near future. (Work smarter, not harder!)

While checking out different websites for leveling books I stumbled across my new favorite website!
http://classroom.booksource.com/

This website has a great companion app that works on the iPad and the iPhone and allows you to scan the books in your library.

Once you scan the book it will tell you the guided reading, DRA, and lexile level--then you can add the book to your library.

After books are added to your library you can use your iPhone or iPad to check them out to students! I LOVE this feature--I can track what genre and levels my students are choosing to read and families know what books are in our library so students can plan ahead what they might want to choose next to add to their book bags.

Plus if I need a book for a read-aloud etc. I can check what student has my book. Love, Love, Love!

 

While I leveled my books by guided reading level and color

(I use a combination of two websites to level my books http://www.scholastic.com/bookwizard/ and http://www.lexile.com/ when I can only find either a Guided Reading OR Lexile level I use the conversion chart http://www.readinga-z.com/readinga-z-levels/level-correlation-chart/ from Reading A-Z since we use Raz-Kids and give the DRA as an assessment!)

 

Pink: K and under

Orange: L and M

Yellow: N

Green: O

Blue:P

Purple: Q and up

 

 

My book bins are organized by author, genre, or interests

Examples:

"Touched by the Teacher" books that are special to me, or I may use for read aloud etc.

"Rainbow Fish Books" books in the Rainbow Fish series

"Chapter Books about School" a basket of chapter books that are set in schools

 

 

My baskets are a mix from "Really Good Stuff" (http://www.reallygoodstuff.com/book-and-binder-holder-with-stabilizer-wing/p/159490/) for my blue bins

And my baskets are my favorite shape from Dollar Tree!

I used commercial strength packing tape to secure my labels to my blue bins, and used one inch binder rings to secure my labels to the Dollar Tree bins.

I LOVE binder rings--I've easily gone through 200 setting up my room and stations...

 

 

 

This bench ones was on my favorite Target finds late this summer.

The cushion was ugly so I covered it with some cute fish fabric from Wal*Mart.

 

 

 

Around the tables that I use to hold my book bins I "dressed" them with an underwater skirt from Oriental Trader.

 

I love the fun feel it gives to my room, and it makes my library and circle area feel like a nice separate nook!

 

I love having morning meeting  and mini lessons in the library nook--it's just so cozy!!

(click here to get my morning meeting packet)

 

To complete the fun underwater theme in my library I found this GREAT reading tent from

Oriental Trader (http://www.orientaltrading.com/under-the-sea-canopy-tent-a2-58_5015-12-1.fltr?Ntt=reading)

 

And this super cute Buzz and Woody table and chair set from a Benny's store near me--on sale for $10.25 this past summer. What a find!

 

A close up of my reading labels! Click below to get your FREEBIE

(editable!!)

 

Click here to download