Wordless Wednesday

Well, I will leave you with one word - YUM!

 

 Happy Halloween!

Halloween Math Centers for 2nd Grade PLUS Freebie

This week was a short week for us, Monday being a Student Free Day. We were lucky to have the afternoon to ourselves for planning and preparation which was great!

Because we lost a day and reports are coming up, instead of normal math centers, I decided to put out review activities so I could pull students for individual assessments. I chose 9 activities so we'll do 1 each day after our whole class lesson and activity this week and next week. I also put the kids in mixed ability groups of 2-3 students. Even though the content was review, the activities were new and from my Halloween and Fall math packs. 

I have to say the kids had a ball! I kept them working for about 25 mins and each time we stopped they asked if they could go onto the next activity! 

 

We changed up one of the activities from my Halloween Math Pack for 2nd-3rd grade. Instead of printing out the trick-or-treating bags and candy for my Candy Sharing center, my kids used jack-o-lantern buckets and fake spiders to act out the division sharing problems.

You can grab the packs these activities are from at my TpT store. 

Another game we've been playing to master addition math facts the last two weeks is Witchy Brew. You can download it for FREE here in google drive. 

I'm also LOVIN my tubs of counters and a double dice. I have enough for every student in the class. Each holds 20 counters, a double dice and a paper clip to act as a spinner. We use them just about every day. For this game, they roll the double dice (or 2 dice), add them together and move the number of spaces. My students who are already pretty good with their facts use 1-10 dice instead. 

Do you have a favorite Fall or Halloween themed activity? 

Halloween Math Center - Giving Directions 2nd Grade

Recently we've been focusing on giving and following directions in math. I must say, that the kids LOVE when we do direction.

We started with a little bit of review with following simple directions (left, right, up, down). With this worksheet, students had to follow the directions given for each trick-or-treater. Some students just used their fingers to follow the directions and mark where they ended up, others drew lines, dots or arrows to help them keep track. 

 Mostly however, we've been focusing on moving beyond these types of directions to using 1/4 and 1/2 turns to the left and right and moving forward. I've been asked at least 10 times a day to play a little game using these directions. You've probably played it before. Basically the whole class stands up and faces a certain wall and you call our directions one at a time (e.g. 1/4 turn to the right, 1/2 turn to the left etc). Everyone who doesn't face the correct direction each time sits down. It's fast paced and fun. So simple, but they just love it!

We have used the Giving Directions sheet from my Halloween Math Pack a number of times. They used the worksheet as is, so they had to write directions for the trick-or-treater to pick up as much candy as she could. They used teddy counters to help with identifying the 1/4 and 1/2 turns.

The next day, I used the same worksheet but drew pictures on the board. Each student wrote directions in their math journals, paired up and used their teddy counters to follow each others directions (kiddo 1 read their directions while kiddo 2 followed them with the teddy counter, then swapped). This worked a treat because they were able to identify missing steps.

Finally, I used the same sheet AGAIN, but this time they chose their own beginning and ending piece of candy, wrote directions for their partner, read them out and checked if their partner was able to finish in the same space. They also started with their teddy in the same space and shielded their grid from each other. They took it in turns to give directions (which they both followed, so student 1 might say 1/4 turn left and move forward 3 and they would both move their teddy. Student 2 would give a direction and they'd both follow etc) and checked after 5 directions each if they ended up in the same space.

If you'd like any of these worksheets they are a part of my Halloween Math Pack.

Peek at last week

Last week we went over 2D shapes. I like one activity in the planning given to us through C2C. Students made a triangle and quadrilateral using straws they cut to different lengths and pipe cleaners cut into 5cm pieces. They used sticky tape to attach their shapes to a piece of paper.

 

You can see the pipe cleaners inside the straws. The pipe cleaners bend, creating the shapes. Some students made more than 2 shapes which also worked out well.

Next, they coloured in each shape they made within their larger shape. 

Finally (not shown) they labelled each of the shapes they coloured. Students were able to make pentagons, hexagons, right angled triangles, rectangles, rhombuses and just plain quadrilaterals.  The kids really enjoyed it and since I demonstrated it to the class first, it was a very successful small-group lesson for my first year student teachers to take on. The kids couldn't wait for it to be time for their group to do this activity!

Here's just a random chart....

I teach 'theme' as THE MEssage so we always talk about "The theme, or message, that the author..." Writing it like this helps them remember what 'the theme' means since the letters for 'theme' is spelled in 'THE MEssage'.

Grid Freebie

Here is a little freebie poster that I've just done up to show the little saying that was taught to me by one of the kids in my class when I taught Grade 6 to remember to read the x-axis before the y-axis (wow, that was a long sentence!). 

It is simple: You crawl before you walk! When you crawl you are horizontal so you read the horizontal axis first, you are vertical when you walk so you read that second. I thought it was pretty genius and I've been using it ever since! I'm pretty sure he learned it from a previous teacher, so thank you if it was you!

Click on the pic to download. I've done two up: one with letters and one with numbers along the x-axis. 

Edit: I often receive emails asking if I know of other Aussie blogs. Well, if you are an Aussie, or even if you're not, I've created a page that has links to other Aussie blogs. Click on the link under the blog header if you want to check out some Aussie talent!