Relating Division and Multiplication.

Yesterday I was able to do a fun activity in my math class. I wanted students to relate what we had learned about arrays and multiplication to division. So we made some awesome mosaic patterns.  Students cut stripes of paper to equal pieces and then arranged their total pieces to create a mosaic. They used the same number of pieces in each row creating a mosaic array.  Since they had their total number of pieces already, students were able to practice division. The entire project went really well. I then had students write the fact family for their drawing.

Here is a tree mosaic.

A Rainbow

My example.  It is supposed to be a sunset.

 

Symbols of the United States

We have started our history and government unit in third grade.  I am excited, it is something different for our students.  I teach at a school that tries to tie instruction into environment sciences, so a history unit is always fun.  This year we are creating lapbooks to go along with the unit.  I have been having so much fun thinking of creative ways of displaying what we are learning. One of our first activities is learning about the Symbols of the USA and how the representing the ideals that our country was founded on.  We began by doing a little research on the symbols and creating them out of playdoh.  Students did this as rotations.

                                                         Mount Rushmore
Students then used their research and created sticks. I copied their information form for each onto cardstock.  These became sticks, with pictures of the symbol and placed in a pocket in their lapbooks.

 

This was really fun.  My students really enjoyed the rotations and making the stakes.  You can find that activity along with using the symbols to teach main idea at my TPT store.

Classroom Economy

  For years I have been trying to create a classroom economy and reward system.  As I have continued my teaching I have struggled with the concept of intrinsic motivation and rewards and punishments.  We live in a society we are rewarded for doing well.  I love teaching, but if I didn't get a salary I wouldn't be intrinsically motivated to come to work.  I think my own children would win out. 
  In my classroom I have modified my classroom economy to reflect students' classroom jobs, and my thoughts on intrinsic motivation.
  At the beginning of each quarter, students get to view a PowerPoint that explains the jobs, and the qualities that a person with that job would need. Students then fill out an application for their job choice. Also choosing their second and third choices.  I then choose each student or the pair of students for that job.  They hold that job for the entire quarter. 

  As a class we determine what a pay would be determining on how much work the job has to complete.  Two students have the job of banker.  At the end of each day they go around and pay students for completing their classroom job.  Each student has a credit and debit log sheet that they attach to their name tags.  I got the credit and debit log off of Beth Newingham's blog posts for scholastic.

Each week students total up their earnings and get pay check for that they have earned.  During our lunch time (my students eat in our room), students can turn in their pay check and for our classroom cash.  Students can turn in their cash for a coupon for an item that is for sale in our classroom store.  I store the coupons in a coupon holder

There is a sign below our jobs poster that lists what is available in the classroom store. 

Here is a copy of the coupons.  The coupons can be found on my TPT store.

Space Unit !!

Each year when it is time to begin our space unit I get so excited and can't wait to begin.  This year was no different.  I went out in search for new and improved ideas for teaching about the order of the planets.  This year I found this amazing book for students to create in ordering the planets and recording some of the important facts we discussed in class.  Students also were able to create their own mnemonic devices for the planets.  Both activities were really fun.

The students really enjoyed making their own mnemonic devices.  They are really allowed to be creative in their devices. 

 You can find the Planet Mnemonic for free here.

The booklet is an amazing long foldable that I found over at Lesons Plan SOS. My students loved creating the booklet and really learned the facts about the different planets.
Here are some pictures of my students booklets.

Books for Boys Linky Party

I have been pretty bad at keeping up to date on my blog so I am making it a resolution to write more posts.  I found this Linky party at Swimming into Second and wanted to add to the conversation.  This has been a real passion of mine.  My first 5 years of teaching I taught at an inner city school without a library and many of my students didn't have a large selection of books at home as well.  I made it my mission to get all of my students into reading and finding books that they would all love.

The first series that I found that the boys really loved was the Geronimo Stilton Series of books.  This year as in many other years my boys have read all of the books I have and are looking for new one.

I also try to keep nonfiction text around that deals with what we are talking about in class.  The boys seem to gravitate to the nonfiction text.  

I am always looking for new books for the boys in my class.  This is a great Linky Party!  Sorry have to cut this short, my two year old is on my lap looking for attention.

Author's Purpose

On Pinterest recently I saw a neat activite that a teacher did in teaching author's purpose.  She had her students cut out the pictures from a Scholastic Book Club order form and determine if they were to entertain the reader or inform.  I wanted to do the same thing in my classroom with my students who were studying author's purpose. 
I wanted to create a nice display for their work. Since it is winter time, I was able to find a mitten pattern.  I labeled each mitten entertain or inform.

Then students went through the book order and cut out and glued the pictures of the books to the correct mitten. 
I then hole punched the mittens and strung them together.  I hung them over a line in my classroom as a display.  The students really enjoyed doing this activity.

Winter Themed Centers

It is crazy for me to think that Thanksgiving has passed already and December is right around the corner.  With children of my own this time of year is so exciting.  This year has brought as many blessing as well as some tradegy.  I have been so busy that I can only pay attention to the good things in life as this is also the end of my trimester at school.  Leaving more planning and report cards on my plate. 
I wanted to share with everyone my first winter center creation.  This is a pronoun center that reviews what pronoun should be used in place of nouns.

                                                         You can get it at my Tpt store. 
I will also be participating in the TpT Cyber Monday sale!

Math Project

Having a new math curriculum to use in classroom has me creating many different activities and centers along the way.  I have created sets of math games, for the first two topics of the text.  You can find them here. But with the third unit on adding and subtracting, I felt the material was a little two easy for my math students.  I had used a million dollar math project in the past and wanted to change it up a little for my students.  Our school is currently expanding into a new building, creating campus feel to our school.

Because of that I have come up with a classroom design and purchasing project that has students using all of the skills that were taught in the topic.  In the project students get to design and then purchase the materials needed to supply a classroom.  Allowing students the insight on the expense of the new project and furnishing the classroom.

We are on our third day of the project and the students are really enjoying it and practicing the skills.  It just makes me so happy when I see delight in their eyes to learn.

                                                              Download the project here

Envision Common Core

This year my school has adopted the new Envision Common Core math program. Although it has been an adjustment for all parties, I am really enjoying the program and adjusting all the changes it has brought to our math program.  There are 2 third grade classrooms in my school and we have been using the pre-tests and grouping students on their knowledge of each topic.  This is a practice that is the norm at my school in the past, but grouping was not as flexable.
One thing that I am finding in teaching the new curriculum is that my higher students need more to do during class. 
I have created a series of centers that support topic 2 for our math program that I wanted to share. 

You can find this set of centers at http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Addition-and-Subtraction-centers-for-Topic-2-for-EnVision-Common-Core .

Centers

I am sorry that I have been away from the community for so long.  I got exciting news on my first day of school.  On the first day of school, I also found out I was pregnant!  I am super excited, my husband and I already have two boys but were looking at expanding our family. This is awesome for me, because my due date is exactly 6 weeks before the end of the year.  I was not able to time my other two pregnancies this well. 
So that aside, in my years of teaching I have struggled with managing centers, over the last year I have finally come up with a great way of easily managing it.  In the beginning of the year after I have done my beginning assessments I create my guided reading groups.  I change them up with each of our trimesters. 
I have our remaining centers and create a chart.  I just rotate the centers throughtout the rest of the chart.

I then create cards with the name of each center.  I have two that say book clubs.  Book clubs is what I call guided reading.   Then according to the above chart I place the 1,3,5,7,9 cards behind each other and the 2,4,6,8,10 cards behind each other. They are placed in a centers chart in two columns next to they students names.  The cards should show centers 1 and 2.  Then when we are done those centers I move those cards to the back and cards 3 and 4 are showing for the next day.  It stays organized and easy to keep track of all year long.


I promise to try and post more.  My goal was twice a week and that has not worked. 

Noun Adventure

  My school year started last week and I have been away from the blog for a while as well, my first day of school started off full of surprises when I found out I was PREGNANT!!! My husband I had been trying for a couple of months so we were really excited.  But can I just say, beginning the school year and first trimester pregnancy equals pure exhaustion.  I am finding myself falling asleep at 8 at night.  I have just been so busy trying to get all of my beginning of school year stuff finished, wanting to post, and my oldest turns for next Monday so his birthday is Saturday. 
  Before I got my exciting news I decided I was going to try my hands at being a super mom and creating capes for all the kiddos that are coming to party.  I finished the last one this evening and am able to sit down quickly to begin this post while my two little boys are playing in the yard.
  The beginning of the school year has gotten off to a great start.  My kiddos are a bit talkative but we are quickly learning to control the volume and when to talk. I created a Noise-O-Meter that is in the front of the room that reminds to students about their noise level.

  One of the first grammar skills we begin with in my room is common and proper nouns.  So last week in practicing how we behave outside and in the hall my students created lists of people, places and things that they saw.  We then turned their ideas into this beautiful tree, which allowed us to segway right into common and proper nouns.

  I am going to promise to post more.  So sorry guys!

Prepping for the Year!

I have finally started to slow down on designing and creating my classroom and sat down to plan.  I have until after Labor Day until I meet my new kiddos.  I sat down and started to plan.  I wanted to start doing a calendar math, daily number beginning to math class each day and do not have the wall space or bulletin board to do that.

The other night I had an epiphany and created a different way to do the same thing.  I created a sheet that I plan on putting on an overhead projector.  I wish I had more technology and could have put it on a SMARTboard.

I am so excited by this enlightenment.  I can change it as the year progresses and I get to do what I wanted to do.  I am so excited about it right now! 

Here is what I created.

And the summer fades...

This week I have spent the last two days in my classroom, getting the last things hung and organized.  The majority of my Monday was sitting in my classroom staring around the room trying to decide where to begin.  I have so many things I want to change and new things that I want to try for this year that I was unsure where to start.  I finally got a to do list together and organized all of my thoughts, so I could begin methodically going through and making all of the changes that I wanted to make. 

This brings me to today. I am almost there; the classroom is almost where I want it.  By Thursday I should be ready to go and get the school year started.  I still have plenty of time for the more important things like creating lessons for September.  I realized today that I have totally been obsessing on my classroom that I haven’t begun writing out my lesson plans.  Though through my planning I did sit down and create a lesson plan template that I think will really work for me this year.  You can check it out below.

This template is for when I teach a whole group lesson in reading.

This one is for when we do centers during reading.

Investigation is what my school calls our science and social studies.

Newbie Bloggers Blog Hop

I have been running into my classroom throughout the summer, preparing for the school year, but I haven’t been a good blogger.  My goals for blogging this year, is to blog every other day and learn more about the blogging community.  I really want to find out how to do giveaways and all the other fun stuff that many of my favorite bloggers do well.  I found this blog hop and thought it was a good way of getting back into blogging for the new year. 

The rules are to answer these questions.

1.       What state are you teaching in: Pennsylvania

2.         Your current teaching position: Third grade

3.        What is your teaching experience: 8 years

4.        When did you start blogging: I started blogging in February of this year.

5.        Share a blogging tip: Include lots of pictures and how-tos. This is a Blog Hop!

Check out all the other blogs

Place Value

I am sorry for being away for so long.  I took some time to be with my family after experiencing a personal loss.  My boys have been a bright beam of light throughout everything.  Soon we will be going to the beach, I am looking forward to getting away with my family.

provided by Mika Crandal photography

I have been trying to move on by working and got a new unit together to go with EnVision math.  My school will be using the program next year and I wanted to get ready to go with the first unit.  This is just a series of center games and word wall cards that go along with the first unit.

Check out the unit here http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Place-Value-and-Numberation .

First award!

I am so excited to have received my first award.  I have been away from blogging for awhile and have missed it.  I hope to get back into the swing of things soon.  This award is really going to help.   Thank you to Melissa over at  http://www.moretime2teach.blogspot.com/ for giving me this award.  It means a lot. 

Here are the rules for the award after you receive it.

1. Follow the person that gave you the award.
2. Link back to the person that gave you the award.
3. Pass the award on to 15 new bloggers.

Thanks so much! 

My Worry is Over!

Last week was so stressful for me.  On Monday our shad eggs were delivered and my stressed started.  How was I going to manage the students with the eggs and did I know everything I needed to know.  Half our eggs were dead on arrival and we didn't clear all of them out right away, which caused more to die. 

The week went by really quickly with caring for the eggs.  Each day students removed the dead eggs and counted our live babies.  Our mortality rate was really high,and every night I went to bed dreaming of shad eggs and praying that one would hatch for release into the wild on Friday.  The nature center where we had planned to release the eggs, had contacted the newspaper and had a reporter coming to the release.  AAAHHHH the stress!!!

Here are some live eggs.

By the time Friday got here, my head was hanging inside a water tank, with the classroom lights out searching for fish.  We had two and the students enjoyed the whole process and learning so much.  The cared for the eggs, removed the dead eggs, tested the water and got to see the fry and eggs under a microscope.  It was an amazing project that still has to be cleaned up entirely, but I can't wait to experience it next year. 

Releasing a fry.

We had 5 that we got to release and had an amazing learning experience through the process.

Integrating Science

My class has been continuing their study of life cycles.  We looked at complete and incomplete metamorphosis and have created many things to help us understand the difference between all of the different life cycles.  One thing students created was a complete and incomplete metamorphosis, was to create a booklet with pictures and the definition of each stage.

I just used index cards and then bound them together with yarn. 
I teach in an exciting school where my students are able to experience many different things.  In learning about metamorphosis I was able to get them into the creek that runs behind school where they found different macro-invertebrates and were able to use guides to identify and draw the different macros.

Afterward students chose a macro to study.  I found a great website that has little identification sheets for each and macro.  Students were able to use these and recreated the life cycle and wrote about the cycle.

Here is the great website

http://creekconnections.allegheny.edu/Modules/On-LineActivities/AquaticMacros/aquaticinsectfactsheets/

Life Cycles

Sorry for my long absence.  I was not feeling well and my boys, and husband have all gotten sick or had some needs lately that have taken me away from the computer.  My husband and I were able to take a quick hike, to an amazing waterfall.

Taking a picture of yourself with a cell phone camera never turns out right.

At my school we work in trimesters and have a science-based integrated unit that we focus on that trimester.  The last trimester seems to be the most fun for me.  In our last unit we discuss interdependence on the mountain behind our school and the systems and cycles that take place to create a sustainable environment.
We have worked our way beyond living things and their characteristics.  A trip to the pond near by actually allowed to see toad reproduction in action.

We went back today to follow up and check out the toads' life cycle and we found thousands of tadpoles.

It was just so awesome to be able to observe what we are talking about.  The students really get to understand the cylces and systems when they are able to experience it.

Back in the classroom we began talking about life cycles by looking at their cycle.  Students created posters of what their life cycle would look like.  The drew pictures and wrote descriptions of each stage of their life cycle. 

We then looked at the life cycle of the American Shad.  Our eggs come next Monday and students will be able to care for the eggs and release the fry for one week.  It will an exciting experience to see the beginning of the American Shad life cycle and work on a conservation project.

Our next step is to look at different life cycles, then move on to photosynthesis.

Plot Hike

Today the weather in Pennsylvania was very warm for April.  I took full advantage of the weather and had my students out for a hike this afternoon.  I took them on a new trail and we were able to travel farther than we have been able to go in the past.  In my classroom we are currently working on plot and science fiction.  We have to talking about how the plot of the story was like a mountain.  So on our hike today I took the science fiction book that I was planning on reading.  I read The Secret Science Fair Project that Almost at the School by Judy Sierra.

So at the beginning of our hike we discussed how we have the back ground information, which happens at the beginning of the mountain.  So I read the background information then we proceeded up the mountain.  The Trail has some dips and valleys as you are working your way up the mountain.  So I stopped in one of the valleys and we compared it to the raising action, then read the story.  I proceeded as we continued.  It worked out great.

I was also able to use the hike to discuss what we are also studying about living and non-living things.  We are mostly focusing on water so, at the different creeks and things we passed we discussed living and non-living things.
Here are some activities that I have created to go with our unit on living and non-living things.