Doubles Game Freebie

This week for our Math Facts rotation, I quickly made up a game to practise our doubles. It's a free download on TpT. 

It comes with two identical game boards that I printed back to back. The first focuses on double 1-6, the second on 7-12. Students simply chose the side that they needed to work on. This is my favourite way to differentiate in my math facts tub - give the same board, focusing on the same skill, but just change the numbers. The kids are usually pretty good at choosing the game that is appropriate for them. 

We used a normal 1-6 sided die for the first side (roll a number and double it). For the second game I printed out the numbers 7-12 and added them to those clear pocket cubes you can get on Amazon or from teacher supply stores. I think I got mine from Really Good Stuff in the U.S. (sorry for the blurry pic!). I just LOVE these cubes! We've been using them a lot the last couple of weeks as they are so versatile! 

I took these photos on Friday when we had our Book Week parade. The kids don't usually wear princess gowns and glittery slip on shoes to school! My kids looked absolutely adorable, I wish I could share some pics!

Halloween Addition and Subtraction Game Freebies

If you are like me, you love the Halloween season! Even though Halloween isn't a major holiday in Australia, it is getting more popular and it's just so much FUN! 

Here are some math rotations I've used with my class that have a Halloween theme. I use T.I.M.E. for my rotations - Teacher's Choice (usually this is working with the teacher, unless I have individual assessments to do), Independent Work, Math Facts and Easy Revision. You can read a blog post about T.I.M.E. Math here. 

For our T (Teacher's Choice) Tub, we are working on solving and representing addition and subtraction number stories. I am using my Fall Word Problems with my lower group. We are drawing a picture, using unfix cubes in a 10-Frame, number path and number sentences to represent each problem. 

You can pick up my pack of 80 Fall themed addition and subtraction problems for K-1st Grade in my TpT store. 

For our Math Facts rotation, I made some 'broomsticks' (addition and subtraction facts written on craft sticks) and wrote the totals 7-12 on Halloween themed tubs or 'cauldrons'. Students pull a 'broomstick', solve, and sort the sticks into the 'cauldrons'. 

Here's a recording sheet I made to go along with it if you want to make this activity for yourself. I added some Hundred Charts to work out the answers as differentiation for those who needed it and some flash cards for fast finishers - they love testing and timing each other!

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

Do you love Halloween as much as me?!

Photo Randomness

I've got no real direction for this post, just random photos that I've taken over the past month or two at school!

On the 100th Day we read One Hundred Hungry Ants and viewed the book on youtube. We paused the video and made the lines of ants with unifix cubes (1 line of 100, 2 lines of 50 etc). Would the ants have gotten to the picnic faster if they stayed in 1 line? My kids couldn't decide, they were very divided in their opinions!

This is the rotation board I've been using for about 7 weeks (this term). I love it, so easy. I use photos of my kids to show what group they are in (covered with the smilies). Easy to change kids to different groups when needed. Also the flowers are my spelling rotations using Words Their Way.

At the start of this term, we did a lot more work on making inferences and visualising. I got these poems from Deanna at Mrs Jump's Class. I have this awful wall that can open in my room so I put them up there to try and add some colour. This was before it was finished, I have 26 kids so there was a lot more of their work to add when this was taken.

Here was a chart I made up when we were focusing on inferring and others when we were learning length in math.

Have a good weekend everyone! :)

Non-Standard Measurement Freebies

This week in math we were working on non-standard measurement, focusing mostly on length. I was only able to snap a couple of photos of one of our whole class activities this week. For this activity, we had a box (I grabbed 3 blue and 3 pink kitty litter boxes from the dollar shop) of different supplies in our groups and we had to choose an appropriate unit to measure each object on our sheet with. We did a similar activity on another day but we measured real objects in the classroom.

When finished, we underlined the shortest and circled the longest object. We then had to explain how we knew which object was the longest and shortest. During the I Do and We Do parts of the lessons during the week, we had worked on writing 3 sentences to explain how we worked it out: 

First sentence:      Say what you did and what you measured with. 

Second sentence:  Say what the measurements are. 

Third sentence:     Say which object was longest.

This helped most kids get past the "I looked at it and just knew" explanation!

This week we only did one rotation over four days using my T.I.M.E. rotations. 

For T: Teacher's Choice we rolled cars labelled A-F down a ramp (made from a Really Good Stuff portable desktop pocket chart propped on a tub!) and measured the length each car travelled. I have groups of 6 so 3 students sat on each side of the ramp. One measured the length with unifix cubes by laying out trains of ten and then extra ones (great counting practice!) and the other side measured with paddle pock sticks. After 3 cars, they swapped what they measured with. Because this was the first week back after our Winter break, I had mixed ability groupings and did the same activity with all the groups. Most of the time, I do homogenous groups and tailor the Teacher's Choice center to what each group needs.

For I: Independent Work, I put out a tub of classroom objects that each student estimated the length of in unifix cubes and then measured. When we reviewed estimating whole class, I had to reiterate that the estimate didn't have to be perfect, it just had to be sensible! Earlier, I had students wanting to change their estimate to make it the ACTUAL measurement. This saying, which they could finish saying for me (!) really made them think and write down a sensible estimate.

For M: Math Facts I put out some review games from Lory Evans and Donna Boucher. The links take you to their TpT stores. I always put in a 100 chart and flash cards. The 100 chart they use for working out equations they don't know. 

For E: Essential Review (which I call Easy Review with my firsties this year) we reviewed 3D shapes. I love this tub because we get to review topics that may not show up again in our math units for a little while. Sometimes I put in activities that we did during whole class lessons a few weeks earlier for independent practice or I put in new activities that covers concepts that I want them to reinforce (like this week with Natalie Lamont's C3PO's 3D shapes booklet).

You can pick up just the four sheets that I made this week on Google Drive by clicking here and here. Visit the TpT links above to grab the other great centers. 

You can read more about my T.I.M.E Math set-up here and here.

Quickie

Another quickie post today. Here's a freebie from my Cooking Up Gingerbread Fun pack. Click the pic to grab it from google drive.

I didn't get many pics of my kids doing these activities last week but here's a few I managed between running records: 

It's funny how adding some baking trays to the above adjective/adverb sort activity instantly made it the favourite for the week!

I hope to be back soon to show you some awesome buys I made during the TpT sales!

Freebie Reindeer Fact Families

A little while ago, I mentioned that I buy a lot of my books from Scholastic Warehouse Sales. Well, the last one for the year is on this week or next week depending on where you live. You can find the brochure detailing where the events are being held here.

I've also got another freebie for you. This one is Reindeer Fact Families. 

TpT and TN

Freebie - Number Sequence Elves

I'm gearing up for the last 15, YES 15, days left of the school year! Where has the year gone?? I don't know about you, but the first half really dragged on for me but the second half has just shot by!

I want to keep my kidlets working hard though... I find this keeps their behaviour under check. So I'm making up some math activities to review some things we've learned this year. We actually did my Gingerbread Man Activities last week, but I didn't really take any photos because while they were quietly (and they sure were!) working, I was pulling kids to do some final running records (arrghh, the bane of my existence!). 

Anyway, since I love you all I'll give you a new math centre each day this week. 

 TpT and TN

And don't forget the sales going on at Teachers Notebook and TpT, both my stores are 20% off at the moment. Teachers Notebook will automatically deduct another 10% from your order total - that sale is on NOW! The TpT sale starts Monday (U.S. time) and you can use the code CMT12 at checkout to also get an additional 10% off the reduce price of all items.

I sure do love comments so please leave one if you're feeling the love!

(and yes, for those who've asked me before, I did spell 'behavior' with a /u/ and 'center' with an /re/ but that's how we spell it here in Australia!).

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.