Saturday, June 30, 2012

Olympics Math and Literacy Activities

I didn't think I'd end up making a new pack these holidays, but I had some ideas for things I wanted to do next term and it kinda snowballed into 15 activities and over 100 pages!

I know most of the U.S. won't be in school for the Olympics, but we here Down Under are and I'm sure the kiddos are going to be SUPER excited. This will probably be the first Olympics that they can remember, since they would have only been 3 or 4 during Beijing. So... I made my pack Olympic themed. 

During our first week back in Term 3, my poor little things are going to be sitting an old Year 3 national NAPLAN test in language arts, reading and math. So a REAL test that is similar to what they would be expected to do in almost 12 months time. Why? The D word - Data. We will look over the tests (sat under NAPLAN conditions) and work out what we need to work on. Some of my little things won't even be able to read the first passage in the Reading test, let alone have been introduced to some of the content in the math test...

Anyway, it got me thinking of some things I could be doing to help prepare them for next year which is how this pack got started. So I made up some task card activities similar to NAPLAN questions: 
  •  spell the underlined word correctly
  • identify the mispelt word and spell it correctly. I've tried to include commonly mispelt words, past tense verbs and homophones.
  
  •  punctuate the sentences (capitals for sentence beginnings and proper nouns, a range of ending puncutation and commas have been left out).
  • which sentence is puntuated correctly (multiple choice slides for a whole class lesson. Students use fingerprint cards to show their response free from Angela Bunyi).

I also had a looksy (sp?) at what we need to cover this term and what I know my kids need and made up a couple of little things that will help like
  •  part-part-whole models and writing number stories
  •  calendar work
  •  number sense - more and less 
  
And some revision activities for my Essential Revision Guided Math tub:
  • meaurement
  • data
  • chance
           
So that's basically what's included, plus a few other things thrown in for good measure. You can read about the specifics of each activity in the description at  TpT here, TN here and for Aussie teachers, you can check it out at Teachers Marketplace. As always, it's 20% off for the first few days.