Math in the Real World

Lets face it, sometimes its hard to show students why we need to learn math in the real world. I'm not 100% sure when students will need to know how to calculate the volume of a rectangular prism, but I do know why students needs to know how to add and subtract decimals. Today I've got two ideas for you on how to show students why they really do need to know how to add and subtract decimals. 

My frist idea came to me one day in my own classroom. Students were so excited to get their November Scholastic Order and I heard a conversation between a few of my students on how much their parents would let them spend and how many books they would be able to get. Then it hit me, why was I not using this as a resource in my classroom? Quickly I created a graphic organizer for students to spend a fictional $50 on Scholastic books. 
After students spend time looking at the order form and picking their books, they have to total up their order, which means they have to add decimals in a real world setting. After they tally up their order they must then answer a few questions about their order which requires them also subtract decimals. One tip that I have with this activity would be to require students to use the "actual price" in the scholastic book, otherwise they won't be using decimals. If you want to try out this activity in your classroom, just click below to grab my freebie graphic organizer. 

My second idea came while I was planning out my Black Friday shopping list. I realized that I was using math and actually analyzing my math. This year I have LOVED using Google Classroom and I knew that students would enjoy looking at the Black Friday adds. So I created a Google Interactive math activity that also relates math to the real world for students. 

Students are asked to look at three different Black Friday ads and make their Christmas list. While making their Christmas list they must show the price, discount and discounted total for each of their wish listed items, for each of the three stores. After creating their list they are asked several questions about their list, and asked to analyze which store their parents should shop at. Can you say engaging, real world math? I can't wait to try out this activity with my students. 

What I really love about this activity is that it can be used in a 1:1 classroom or a classroom with just a few devices. All of the links for the Black Friday ads are provided and students can record their data on paper recording sheets or interactively on Google Slides. If you are interested in this product try it out at a discounted price until Monday by clicking below. 

American Revolution {Part Two}

When I said that teaching about the American Revolution was my favorite subject ever, I wasn't kidding. We have been at it for a few weeks now and it is finally coming to an end (insert sad face).  I find that making social studies engaging can be hard, so for this unit I really pushed myself to find some out of the box ideas. While searching the web I found some wonderful teacher bloggers who have the same love of teaching the American Revolution as I do, and I knew I had to take their lead. 

While pursuing Pinterest I found an activity about Paul Revere that I knew I had to do. Stephanie from Teaching in Room 6   had a great lesson idea for teaching the myths that surround Paul Revere and that midnight ride. During our reading unit where we discuss multimedia and the tone and beauty of a text my students read part of the poem "The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere" by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and go on a online ride along side Mr. Revere. Later on during our Revolutionary War unit we read the entire poem along side a letter from Mr. Revere himself to displace the myths from that ride. 

For my students I knew that I had to do some differentiation. For my higher kids, I had them read the original version of the poem as well as the letter from Paul Revere.  For some of my other students I knew that the abridged versions would be great. I divided my students and had them read either the poem or the letter. Then, students partnered up to discuss the differences and similarities in the accounts. While they were discussing they were to record the myths and facts from that night. We then got together to create our own anchor chart. If you are interested in this resource you can grab it in my store for $1. 

When we learned about the Boston Tea Party we had an actual tea party. While I read the "The Boston Tea Party" by Russell  Freemand my students enjoyed glasses of sweet tea. We also listened to "The Boston Tea Party Song." My plan was to tea paper with my students to use as journal entry pages for an exit slip, but snow days got in the way and google classroom had to take its place. If you are interested in the Boston Tea Party exit slip that is below, click here. You can choose to print it for students or upload it on to google classroom. 

Finally, to sum it all up we are working on a Project Based Learning experiences to show our knowledge of the American Revolution, informational writing, informational text structures and text features. More information coming about this! 

I hope that you can engage your students with some of these activities and spread the love of the American Revolution to your students. 

The American Revolution in Upper Grades {Part One}

I love teaching the American Revolution. It is by far my favorite thing to teach when it comes to Social Studies. I just love to see how our country fought for their freedom. Now, even though I love to teach the American Revolution, it is not easy to teach. I have found that my kids don't know that much about the topic and that seems to slow us down. That is why I have been working hard this year to #setthestagetoengage when it comes to this topic and let me tell you there are some AMAZING things out there that helped me. 

Let me start off with how I address my students lack of schema when it comes to social studies in general. Meet the schema box. This is where I pull tons of books from our school library (which I might add we have a pretty awesome librarian who helps me) that have to do with our current social studies topic. My students can pull from this box whenever they want to. I have found that this helps my students feel more confident in social studies because they can actually make some connections about what we are learning. I have also found that if I add some books about our next topic students begin to make connections between events. 

Another helpful resource that I have for the American Revolution is the pack from Collaboration Cuties. I have been using this in my classroom as morning work for students to build schema on the topics that we will be discussing each day in social studies. The kids really love the flippables that they can use in their interactive notebook. By building schema before the lesson, we are able to dig deeper into events during our social studies block. 

We begin our unit on the French and Indian war, which leads into the Stamp Act. If you are interested in a exit slip for the French and Indian War I have one here and here. Before students can really understand the Stamp Act the have to put themselves in the shoes of a colonists. In years past I've done the lesson where one student is the king and he makes students pay taxes based off of rules he passes. This year, I found an awesome resource by Kristine Nanini and the best part of all, it was FREE. My students got so upset when they had to give up their m&m's to the king and they got even more upset when some of them had more m&m's than others when it was all over. This lesson was so much more meaningful to my students than if I would have told them how angry the colonists were. 

After this lesson, students read more about The Stamp Act, and added this event into their timeline in their social studies notebook. Then they were assigned the task to create a political cartoon depicting The Stamp Act. They loved this activity and it was a great assessment for me to see who know knew what The Stamp Act really was. 

  If you are interested the rubric used to grade this assignment you can grab it here for free! 

Up next was the Boston Massacre and this is my favorite topic to discuss during this unit. So much happened leading up to the Boston Massacre and after it was over. I wanted to do something engaging with this event so I immediately searched Pinterest.  My search led me to a blog that I had never seen before, but quickly became one of my favorites. To Engage Them All has so many wonderful engaging activities for students. Immediately I knew that I had to do the crime scene lesson for my students. Kara has everything that you need for his lesson ready to go and guess what, its FREE! You can't go wrong with awesomely engaging free lessons for social studies. This lesson was a HUGE hit in my class. I even heard some of my students who don't usually like social studies talking about how much fun this was.  I will have to say that this lesson was made for 8th grade students and I did make some changes to the detective guide for my 5th graders.  I set up the crime scene before school so my kiddos had time to stew over what could have happened in our classroom. They couldn't wait for social studies to see what had happened. 

This is just the beginning of our American Revolution. Come back next week to join our tea party and midnight ride with Paul Revere. 

Center Organization

Happy Cyber Monday! If you are anything like me then you just bought a bunch of new and amazing products from TPT. I can't stop buying centers and I'm not sorry about it...until it times come to organize. I have a ton of math and language centers and I've finally found a organization system that works pretty well for me.  5th grade is the only grade I've ever taught and let me tell you, they've spoiled me. I have a similar rotation for my math and reading centers and students know my expectations. Each week I just take my centers and put them in their corresponding basket. 

When I'm I'm organizing a new center, I always laminate and cut out each part first. Then, I hole punch the top left corner of every item in that center. I usually use task cards as my math centers or sometimes games with different pieces. This helps me attach them with a book clip to keep them all together. 

Keeping all of the pieces together really helps me from year to year. I love being able to go into my decimal or fraction bin, quickly grab the center I want and I'm done. I've also found that it works well to include all pieces when I hole punch, even the answer key and recording sheet. It makes is so easy for me to make copies of the recording sheet and then take the answer key off for quick grading.  I don't have to go back to my TPT account and re-download to print the recording sheets again. 

The book clips that I use to hold all of the pieces together came  from Amazon for $7.00 for a pack of 100. After I purchased these I've found a million uses for them and repurchased them several times. 

When I'm not using the centers i store them in bins that I got from the Dollar Store. I found similar ones online for $2.75 each and I feel like the ones that I have aren't that much more expensive. I would recommend getting the bigger storage bins if you are anything like me and have a center buying problem.  

Each storage bin is labeled with the type of centers that are inside of them. I am currently working on organizing these bins more specifically, but as of right now it works pretty well. I would love to see how you organize your centers and if you've got any tips for me! 

Happy Cyber Monday Shopping! 

November Freebie!

Halloween is tomorrow, which means that I already thinking about Thanksgiving. I love this time of the year with all of the festivities! 
There is one special surprise that I have for you today! If you leave feedback on any of my paid products between November 1, 2015 and November 3, 2015 you will receive a November freebie from my store! My Thanksgiving Dinner Decimal Center  is the newest product in my store and I am super excited for you to try it! 

This product includes 12 task cards for decimal operations including addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. Six of the task cards included in this product are standard algorithm, while six are word problems. This product could be used in small groups, as a classroom center or a classroom scoot. Also included in this product is the answer key and recording sheet for student use.  Grab this freebie while you can! 

October Freebie

I feel like I start off every post about how crazy my week was so I guess that means all of my weeks are crazy. This was our first week back from fall break and it was a wild one. October is one of my favorite months, insert basic white girl talk about pumpkin spice everything and fall weather, so once we came back from fall break it was October explosion in my classroom. 
We began comparing and ordering decimals this week and number lines are a must! I had some of these candy corn decimal cards that I'm not sure where they came from and I had a wonderful idea. Why not use those cards for students to make number line with. 

They. Loved. It. The weather was wonderful so my fellow 5th grade teacher and I took the whole 5th grade out side to compare and order decimals. First, we started with groups of five and then continued until we had our whole class in order from least to greatest. The kids were so engaged and it was so interesting to see what strategies they had for organizing everyone. 

So, what I have for you is a Candy Corn Craze Freebie. There are 14 candy corn card with decimals on them that you can use for a whole class number line, comparing war center game or many other activities. Also, there is a exit clip with comparing decimals including the answer key. I hope that you enjoy and please leave feedback. 

I hope this freebie can help bring some October into your classroom and help your kiddos with ordering decimals! Happy Fall Ya'll! 

Erin Condren Teacher Planner

I'm probably the 123,433,284th person to blog about their Erin Condren teacher planner, but I must say that this is the first one I've had and I LOVE it. I've always just typed up my plans from week to week so this year I decided to try something new. I am loving just being able to jot down what I am doing each day and then referring back to my more detailed typed plans if I need to. This year I'm not required to turn in any lesson plans, but my principal sits in with our team planning once a week.  When I first began researching EC teacher planners I immediately found 3rd Grade Thoughts and her awesome planner hacks. I fell in love with her editable headers and knew I had to have the immediately.  My first week of school plans looked like this, my handwriting is awful and it just isn't as cute as I was wanting it to be.

 So I decided to add the beautiful headers from 3rd Grade Thoughts, but it wasn't enough either. I hate my handwriting so I wanted to create some side labels too and that is exactly what I did. It took me about 10 million tries, but I finally got it to work and look how much better my planner looks...even though my handwriting isn't the best.

 Here is a shot of a blank week, I just love how nice and neat everything looks! I also love how I can change up the colors and fonts if I want so I will never get bored with the possibilities!

If you are like me and want to cover up the side of your ECTP then you can grab my freebie here!  Everything is completely editable to fit your own personal style and can me made to match the freebie you got from 3rd Grade Thoughts. 

If you haven't purchased your ECTP yet click here to get $10 off of your first purchase! 

First Week of School & a Freebie

The frist week of the 2015 - 2016 school year is over and let me tell you I am one tired teacher! We had a super busy week in 5th grade and one of the highlights was getting to spend some extra time outside learning about relative and absolute location.  We started off by spending a day talking about relative location and giving directions to places from our school. Students were responsible for written down directions to their house, and then sharing them with a partner. They all loved getting to share where their house was, and especially getting to hear about where my house is. We spent time discussing the cardinal directions and how we can use maps for relative location. At the end of the first day students worked to give relative locations from places in the United States. If you want this freebie, just click the picture below. 

On the second day of this lesson we reviewed relative location and then I chose several students to pick random items from our classroom to take outside. When we first got outside I had the students lay down their items wherever they wanted on our basketball court. Then we had blindfolded volunteers listen to directions to the random objects. We discussed how helpful the directions where and what made good directions to the objects. The kids really loved this part, especially those who got to be blindfolded. 

After this review of relative location, I had several students work together to create a grid. Once the grid was made, we placed the objects in the squares and students then gave directions to each objects. They determined that using the grid helped them give more exact locations for the objects. We then worked to make a definition of absolute location. 

After we spent our time outside, we went back to the classroom and focused on lines of latitude. Its pretty confusing for 5th graders to understand that even though the lines run east and west, they are labeled and read north and south. I have found that by teaching them the saying "latitude is flatiude" it really helps them remember the difference. 

Next week we are going to put latitude and longitude together and head back out side to our parking lot that has the United States painted on it!

BTS in a Flash!

I am so excited to link up with Fancy Free in 4th, Ramona Recommends, and Not So Wimpy Teacher for their back to school in a flash series. I start school on August 5th, which is too soon! I feel like summer just started and I'm not read to set my alarm clock again. 

This week's them for the BTS in a flash is teacher faves, and let me tell you have I have a lot of favorite things. My favorite color is pink, my favorite food is basically anything, my favorite book is "Gone with the Wind" and I also have a lot of back to school favorites too!

My favorite back to school activity is something that I learned in college and have never forgotten. I'm not sure if it has a formal name, but I've always called it the "Brown Bag Activity." Even though my students moan when I say "Get your agendas out to write down your first homework assignment" on the first day of school, they always seem to get over it by the next day. The brown bag activity is a fun way for me to get to know each of the kids, and maybe the kids to learn something new about each other. If you are interested in learning more about this activity, its a freebie in my store! Click the picture to head on over! 

First of all, there are two favorites in this picture. I have always been lover of the flair pens, but then I ran across these beauties. I am in LOVE with the liquid flair pens, if you've never tried them, walk run to the nearest store to check them out. I actually bought mine of amazon, because that is another one of my favorite thing, but we'd need a whole blog post about that. The second favorite of mine in this picture is my Erin Condren life planner. If you are interested in purchasing your own and want $10 of, click the picture above! I'm also addicted to buying stickers and everything else that goes with the planner. I just bought my first teacher planner too and I'm in love with it also. Does anyone have any good sticker recommendations for the teacher planner? 

Most teachers drink coffee, right? Not me I prefer to get my caffeine in a bubbly way. Ask any of my past students, I love Diet Coke. I'm not going to get through the first day of school like a VIP with out my Diet Coke. 

Last in this back to school favorite is my favorite back to school read aloud. Teaching the big kiddos we don't often get to read picture books, even though I try. I have found that the big kids love Mrs. McBloom and her crazy classroom. I use this book to talk about keeping our room clean obviously but also working together to get things done. This helps me lead into creating our classroom mission statement and setting up rules and expectations for the school year. 

So, what are your favorites for back to school?