SMART Response and Spring {freebie}

Is the week over yet?  Oh man do my students (and maybe their teacher just a tad) have spring break fever!  Our break is next week and it really can't get here fast enough.  Don't get me wrong... I love the kids and all...but don't all teachers need a recharge?  I'm sure that is why "spring break" was created! :)

Anywho... on to the amazing SMART Response!

Seriously people, these things are sooo smart!

Our fabulous PTA purchased a set for the building and my grade has held them captive!

So first things first, if you don't have a SMART board... you need one!!  It is so engaging and captivating!  Let's face it... the generation coming to us has been playing on their mom's and dad's iPhone, iPad, and iyounameit since they were old enough to hold their head up so they need some stimulation!  The SMART board is kinda like a giant iPad and there are SO many cool things you can do on it.

So the SMART response system is a great feature to use with your SMART board.  
Here is a quick blurb:

With the push of a button on their wireless remotes, students can instantly tell you how much they know. You'll no longer have to wonder whether all your students are keeping up with lesson material, because you'll see precisely how well each student is doing. With that insight, you can adapt lessons based on test results or how students respond to your questions.

Smart Response Demo Video

I tried it out with my students the other day... SOOOO cool!  I used it while they did a quick math assessment.

It's super quick to make an assessment document to use with the "clickers."  In this case the kids solved a problem in their math notebooks and then entered the answer to the problem into their clicker.  

After the assessment is finished, it gives the kids instant feedback on how they did right on the clicker screen!  It also gives me feedback in the form of a pie chart and also a spreadsheet.

It stores all the assessments into a grade book and I can pull up results on each child or by subject.  It's pretty AMAZING!!

This might be a great Donor's Choose project for those of you who are interested!!  

******************

So it's the first day of spring and it is 23 degrees here in IL! Ugh.  Try getting your students to "think spring" when they are shivering from the cold!  I blame the groundhog...early spring- yeah right!

We worked on this today to channel spring our way... thought I'd share!

Be on the lookout for a GINORMOUS giveaway coming your way this weekend!  You won't want to miss it...seriously!! :)

Another Power Point Video!

Hey Everyone! Happy Monday!

I have no idea if these little videos are helpful... but I think I secretly have fun making them! :)

I promise you I'm not tipsy this in this one... it gets better after about 30 seconds (don't know why the beginning sounds so bad!).

Anyway... this one tells you how to do these things in Power Point:

-create shadows

-change the color of clip art (especially change colored clip art to black and white)

-remove the white box around clip art

-add shadows and glow to your font

I wanted to keep it short but I get so wordy! :)

(it's about 6 minutes)

You can see the other videos HERE


Hopefully my next post will be about this amazing new toy that I just got my hands on:


Um, it rocks!




If you haven't already... make sure to check out this FAB giveaway from a great blog friend! (and I might be in there somewhere :)



Did you see my follower count??  I'm over 600!!  I'm so excited!!! I find myself just staring at the number to see if it is really real!

I'm putting together a super-de-duper giveaway for you all!!  I can't wait to roll it out hopefully by this weekend!!

Around the School #3!

How often do you take the time to actually LOOK at all the other classroom bulletin boards and displays?  I know, I didn't either until I started this monthly post...but I am AMAZED at all the fun that is going on around the school!!

That brings me to my "Around the School" #3- March style!

So let's get right to it!

I love the simplicity of this project!!  How fun to sponge paint and then waaala... a shamrock! :)

CHICKS!!!  I looove this time of year!  It's chick hatching time!  The whole school watches the countdown to chicks (and I love to sneak in and hold a few ;)

I love how the above left pic shows the color of the eggs- yes this K teacher has a GREEN egg!  Then she shows how many of the eggs hatch!
(and how cute are those chick projects?!)

Ok, seriously Kindergarten teachers make the BEST bulletin boards!

Super cute Lincoln!!

Contraction Caterpillars! Love this idea!!

This cute project is a freebie from The Teacher Wife!

Leprechaun is in this Activity Pack
Banners are here

I absolutely LOVE this!!
Here is a closer look:

I hope you enjoyed this tour Around the School!  
 Let me know what you think! :) 

St. Patrick's Day Fun!

Hey Everyone!  I hope this finds you surviving your week!  I am not sure what is up with my class, but they have been a bit WaCkY this week!  I think spring is in the air (or something!)

We have been having a TON of St. Pat's Day fun this week!  Here are just some of the things we have been doing.

We started the week working on our GIANT LEPRECHAUNS!  These have little activities on each body part- they are great review for this time of the year.

Then the kids color all the parts and they turn out like this....

 So Fun!

Aren't they AMAZING??  :)  The kids go bonkers for these things... and the oohh's and ahhh's I get from other kids walking down the hall is pretty fun too!  You can get this guy (along with a TON of other fun activities in THIS pack)

We have also worked on some creative writing with the prompts

"How to Catch a Leprechaun"

And

"If I found a pot of gold.."

The kids had a BLAST writing  about these topics and their ideas were pretty hilarious :)

(the writing pages are also in the this PACK)

We made mosaic shamrocks (super easy and FUN) to decorate our hallway

The kids loved the "Spin a St. Patty Problem" :)

And we are going to end our week by creating TRAPS to HATS!!

The kids decorate a Styrofoam cup to use as a leprechaun "trap."  Then magically the trap is turned into a "hat!"  The leprechaun will leave a letter for the kids (with tons of mistakes) and we will spend time correcting those silly leprechaun letters!  I CAN'T WAIT to see the look on their faces when the traps are turned into hats (this is seriously one of my very.favorite.projects. EVER!!)

ALL of the projects mentioned above are in this snazzy pack:

And because I love my followers I wil do a buy- one-get-one for you, just email me!

Finally,I wanted to share this CUTENESS banner set that I have in my classroom window.  It is from Miss Kindergarten and she has banners from August- July and they are adorable!! (I have them all! :)  You can see them HERE

Aren't they super fun?!?!

This weekend I will post Around the School #3 (to see previous ones you can click on the Around the School tab above my blog banner)!!  It will be full of fab March ideas!  I also have some great Earth Day project ideas to share too!

AND... I feel a 600 follower giveaway coming soon!!  I'm cookin' up some fun ideas! :)

p.s... the first person to correctly count ALL the "fun" words anywhere in this post (not including the side bar) and leave it in a comment below (with your email) will be sent the Leprechaun Activity Pack for FREE!  Have FUN!! (yes, count that one too! :)

Super fun inferring lesson! {freebie}

Hey everyone!  Happy Sunday!

So only in Chicago can it snow 7" and a few days later warm up to 50 degrees and melt it all away.  My son is so sad watching all the snow melt into giant puddles :)  (me-- secretly happy!)

A few weeks back I posted about some Inference activities and I had an amazing blogger comment that she had just posted a fun activity too!  Well I am so glad that she mentioned it because we tried it out and it was SO MUCH FUN!  

Mrs. Lynes at Simply Second Grade had a cute and simple activity that you can do very easily... and I have the sheet for you too!

So I started off creating this poster- yes I made it fast :)

I decided not to introduce the word "schema" but instead called it use your brain. :)

We talked about how you need both to help with inferring.

Then I showed them a shoe box and ask them what was inside.

It was fun to hear their responses... I got everything from shoes to our "scratch off cards" that I give out as rewards.

I asked why they didn't say elephant or car?  They laughed saying that would never fit in the box.  "Ohhhh so you used your "brain" to decide what could fit into the box!"  "yes!" they said. :)  I said, "do you think that something else might help us decide what is in the box?" Of course because they could figure out where the lesson was going they said... "yes, CLUES!" :)

So then I passed them out one clue.

It was a clue like this:

George Washington

So I asked again, what is in the box?

I had a lot of blank stares. ;)

So I asked, would it help to get more clues?  Does sometimes reading on give you more clues?  There was a unanimous YES!  So I said to walk around until you find 3 people with a different clue than yours.  

Here are ALL 4 clues:

George Washington

circle

silver/metal

value

Guess it?? :)

The kids then wrote the clues on this sheet:

And were able to infer that it was a ....

Quarter!

(sorry for the terrible picture!)

There were so many great lessons here:

~What is inferring

~I need both clues and my brain to infer

~Sometimes I need more clues to help me

~The clues work together to help me figure it out

So much fun!!

Click the picture below to get the sheet we used:

Thanks Jamie for helping me make this!

Before I go, I have to give a special shout out to my teammates who may be reading this.  They wanted to get my blog updates by email (you can do that too! :)

FOLLOW BY EMAIL

(see this above right!)

Hi to Laura, Jamie, and Lois... you guys are GREAT and I admire all you do every day for our students!  I LOOOOOOve working with you! :)

(Lois, I need a pic of you! :)

Tips for making a preview file- a NEW video!!

Happy Friday!!

Congrats to Liz for winning my newest Math Strategies pack!!

LizMarch 5, 2013 at 6:35 PM

This looks fabulous!

Liz

Teaching in the Valley

teachinginthevalley@gmail.com

Be on the lookout for another chance to win

sometime this weekend- on Facebook ONLY!

It will be a pin-it to win-it contest! :)

I am so excited to share another video with you today!  This one went a LOT faster- guess I'm getting the hang of it :)

It has some tips when creating a preview file for your products on TpT.  However, it could come in handy for other things too!  I hope that it is helpful to you!

(sorry it is so long- I get a little bit wordy! :)

 

Next post will be about a fun inferring activity that I learned about from another fab blogger!

Have a GREAT weekend!!

Double digit ADDITION~ no algorithms allowed!

Do you remember how I was wishing for a snow day?  Wish granted!

• 

The call came at about 5:15 a.m. and at about 7 a.m. my husband says, "Are you SURE school is canceled?  There isn't any snow!"  I jumped out of bed to see... no snow!  It didn't start really snowing until about 9 a.m!  Weird... the roads are fine- guess they wanted to be overly cautious.  It's all fine except this will be our 4th week of only 4 days... I just want a NORMAL week of school!  But the day off is great so I'm NOT complaining! :)

My last post gave you a sneak peek on addition without the traditional algorithms.

I have been teaching addition with algorithms for 14 years.  The thought of throwing that out the window made my head spin...literally!  At our last math meeting we were told that under the new Common Core there is absolutely no algorithms allowed.

{GULP}

So I went on a panicked hunt for some information regarding this and didn't find much out there.  We do not have our new text book yet (get it this May) and I had no idea how I was going to go about teaching my students when I had to learn it myself.

{Double GULP}

Enter this book:

It really opened my eyes on why we need to teach our students in the non-traditional way.

The author states that the "method" is not the objective, the ability to compute is the goal.  So true!  He also states that when adding in the traditional way:

53

                                       +24

We are so focused on having the children add from right to left which goes against everything else we teach them (not to mention READING!).  This can also devalue the digits themselves.  For example, traditionally, we separate the numbers and add down- 3 + 4 (ones) and then 5 + 2 (tens).  But wait... it SHOULD be: 50 + 20 yet the traditional method takes place value away from the digits themselves.

Interesting!

So I decided to "explore" other methods.  I had the kids solve a double digit problem without giving them any direction!  I was EXPECTING panic... but that is not what I got!  They came up with all kinds of ways!

Some drew circles and counted.  Some made tallies.  Some solved it by tens and then ones. And there was one.... that solved it that other way. :)

It was GREAT!  

I "introduced" (I put that in quotes because technically you are to let kids explore and not "teach" them methods- however I AM a teacher) a way called "split strategy"-

funny thing?  It makes TOTAL SENSE:

44 + 67= ?

40 + 60 = 100

    4 + 7 =   11 

                 111

You split the tens and the ones and then add them back together.  Nice!

Here is what has REALLY worked for me regarding this new way of teaching.  I had a place at the bottom of my sheets where the kids wrote a note to me.  I could check for their understanding or lack there of...

I love the honestly the kids have! 

I don't know why it took me so long to think of this because I could quickly read their notes and then group the papers to create partners- the ones who "get it" with the ones who need more help.

I had instant peer coaching and the kids LOVED working together.  We often pulled out the place value blocks to help with the visual piece.

This "new" way of teaching has created some kind of spark in me that has turned into a FIRE!!  So much so that I have created a giant resource!  I am hoping that it will help other teachers when they realize that the lovely algorithm will be out the window for them too!  :)     :)     :)

This pack has over 40 pages of parent letters, posters, detailed instructions, worksheets, and assessments to help you along the way! 

Want to read more about it?  Click Here :)

And yes you guessed it... I'm giving one away too!  I will choose ONE person who leaves a comment and email below.  Winner will be chosen on Thursday night!

Don't want to wait?  It is 20% off RIGHT NOW and will be only until Thursday night!

ps... Special thanks to Suzy and Tania for looking at my pack for me- such a BIG help! :)