A couple ways I've motivated my kids this week.

As usual, it's been a busy week! I'm sharing a couple of the things I've done this week to help Spark Student Motivation. Check in with Joanne over at Head Over Heels for Teaching to see more! 

Reading

Recently, I ended up with one of those weird 20 minute blocks to fill due to special events being planned in the middle of my reading block. I've been noticing that some of my kids' book bins have been a little light on back-up books, and that there have been a lot of kids trying to book shop during Read-to-Self. 

I don't allow them to book shop when they're supposed to be reading, so this is a problem. I decided to take advantage of the time by having an old-fashioned Book Look a la Donalyn Miller (The Book Whisperer). If you're not familiar with the concept, it's simple! You select a set of books that you think your kids should read for one reason or another, and your kids sit in a circle passing the books to the left after looking at them for about 45 seconds. By the end of the 20 minutes every kiddo has been exposed to 20+ new book options. At the end of the Book Look I give the kids the opportunity to add the books to their bins if they found one or two that interested them. If two people want a book, we Rock, Paper, Scissors for first dibs. At the end of this Book Look 18 books (all classics that are worth reading no matter who you are!) found their way into a book bin...some with waiting lists attached! 

Math

I've talked recently about one of the cool things going on in my math class, but I haven't talked as much about how much it really motivates my kids. 

In the past I've done Monster Math Battles to cover a lot of different math skills in class. This year I looped up with my kiddos, and even though they begged me to do another Monster Math Tournament, I wanted to do something different. Two of the biggest skills we've covered so far are multi-digit multiplication and long division. This is something the kids just need lots of practice with. 

I've never seen my kids more motivated
to practice math skills!

I knew I wanted to make it more than just boring practice, so that's why I took my Monster Math Battle approach to it, with a twist! I made it a battle between Ninjas and Samurais! My kids love it! They literally beg to see who will be "fighting" the next day. They can't WAIT to do the math problems to find out who wins each battle. They're totally clueless that I'm tricking them into doing the math. There are 5 battles in each pack, and both packs are available as a bundle for $4. If you like the idea, check out my Monster Math Battles, which come with a full 31 battle tournament in a bunch of different skills. 

In other exciting news, my wife and I finally got our printed hard copies of our Adoption profile. We used a website called Mixbook.com. I am super pleased with the results. The pages are thick, glossy, and very well bound. Honestly, they are of a better quality than the school yearbook! Considering this is probably one of the most important documents I've ever designed in my life...I was really nervous. We actually went with a local printer at first, but were very disappointed. Luckily, the local printer told us we didn't have to pay for the ones they made because that prompted me to try out Mixbook. Now...we just wait for the right birthmother to look through one of these! 

In the meantime...grab this up while you can! It'll only be available for a few more weeks! Many of the products are fall themed, so would be great to use in the coming weeks. 

Monday Made Its for October!

I chiming in with a couple things for Monday Made It again for the first time in a while! Check in with 4th Grade Frolics to see some more!

First up are these Conversation Journals! I'm super proud that I got to use my mitre saw again! I bought it for all the home renovation we've been doing to get the house ready for a baby, and once the renovation was done figured I'd never get a chance to use it again! But it was perfect for cutting these composition books in half. I made up some labels, and that was that.

The kids are going to write to me, and I'll write back to them. So, I have a confession... I made these for one kiddo who really likes to share at all the wrong times. But I didn't want just him to have one and stand out, so I'm introducing it as a new thing that we all do! I think it'll be a great way to get to know my kids better. 

Second is an upcycle, of sorts! Last year I bought myself a fancy Erin Condren Teacher Planner. It was cool, and I was definitely the envy of the faculty lounge...but I found that I never really used the planning pages that much because I plan in Google Docs, and the calendar annoyed me because I had to write in my own dates. So this year I went with a much cheaper calendar book from Target.

But I kept seeing my pretty EC planner sitting in my classroom, and I figured it was kind of a waste to let it just gather dust...and I didn't want to just throw it away... So I went through it page by page and salvaged all the quotes and empty note pages, etc. I put a sheet of colorful paper on the reverse side of the quotes and laminated them together with my home laminator. Now I've got a bunch of sturdy teacher-y bookmarks to share with friends. I laminated the full page quotes as well, and once trimmed I'll have a couple posters to hang in the hall outside my room. I felt much better throwing away the ravaged skeleton of my planner after turning it into some useful things!

And finally, I'm going to share a new TpT product I just added to my store. If you've seen my Monster Math Battles, then maybe you'll be interested to see these!

Now introducing Ninja vs. Samurai Math Battles! These are mini versions of my math battle concept, with 5 battles taking place in each mini-tournament. The battle's victor is determined by who wins the most rounds, with each round being decided by the answer to two math problems. Highest answer wins. 

My kids completed my Monster Math Battles last year, so when I walked to the front of the room at the beginning of math and put the big "Vs." on the board they actually started cheering! Haha. The kids LOVE doing these. They don't even realize that I'll be tricking them into doing 100 multi-digit multiplication problems and 50 long division problems by the time we're done. Each of the tournaments are available in my store for $2.50! Or, buy both tournaments together for $4.00 in a bundle!

And SPEAKING of bundles...if you haven't seen the amazing bundle my buddies put together to help support our adoption journey...check out my last post for lots of details, or head on over to my store and check out the preview! It's a great deal for a great cause!

Mathematical Monday - Fractions, Decimals, Percent Clothesline!

I'm linking up with my BBB Jess over at I {Heart} Recess for her Mathematical Monday Linky.

Be sure to stop over and see her blog's brand new look!

We've been studying fractions and decimals lately, so I'm going to be talking about something we did during math workshop recently to really solidify the idea of fractions on a number line.

I hung up a couple of clotheslines in the classroom, and had my kids do some laundry!

First, I printed two copies of the game, one on pastel and another on brightly colored card stock. Then I mixed and matched the shirts so that each copy of the game had a variety of shirt colors, and two groups could “play” at the same time.

The clothesline was just white yarn, and I found these tiny clothespins in the craft section of Wal-mart!

There are a ton of ways that the kids can hang the laundry, so it was great for the workshop because it had built in, easy differentiation! At the basic level you can split the line in two and have some kids hang the fractions on either the "closer to 0" or "closer to 1" side of the line.

At a more advanced level, kids can hang up the fractions where the belong on a number line, and even hang up the equivalent fractions, decimals, and I even made some percent tank tops too!

The kids had a great time with it, and I think it served as a really great review for some of them, and really helped a few them get the ideas of place value on a number line and that the bigger the denominator, the smaller the pieces. Find the whole set in my store for just $3! 

In other news, be sure to stop by and enter some of the great giveaways that are going on right now!

Of course there's the giveaways to go along with myself and my BBB's 14 freebies that I talked about in my last post!

And you can stop by either AMC or Emily's blogs to enter their 1,000 follower celebration giveaways!

And Diane is part of ANOTHER giveaway! Take the time to follow some of these great blogs and you can enter all three sets of giveaways! You have to be in it to win it, right?

A Day Our Way - See my schedule!

Hi all! Today I'm linking up with my BBB Amelia over at Where the Wild Things Learn for her A Day Our Way linky party. We're sharing our daily schedules! This is something that intrigues me a lot, so I hope a lot of people link up! I find it amazing how different things can be at different schools.

So, check out my schedule here, then I'll get into lots of detail below!

8:30 - 8:50 - This is when the kids are slowly working their way into the room. Kids eat breakfast in the classroom in my school, so during this time some kids are working on unfinished work, a couple are eating breakfast, some are turning in notes or lunch money. That kind of normal routine. The morning announcements come on around 8:45 and by the time they're done we're moving on to...

8:50 - 9:30 - Specials! My kids get a 40 minute special each day of the week. Monday is Computer lab, which is actually a laptop cart that we use in our classroom. Every teacher teaches their own computer class, so that means no planning period on Monday for me. :(  All of the other specials are taught by specialist, so I do end up with a planning period 4 days a week.

9:30 - 9:45 - I start my Writers' Workshop off with Mentor Sentences. This year I'm using Jivey's Mentor Sentences Pack. I have all three packs, amazon primed all the books, and so it's pretty much a year's worth of awesome activities. My kids love the books, and they especially love the revising and imitating days. The sentences they write are just plain amazing. 

My intern this year is doing her inquiry research study on what aspects of mentor sentences are translating to their writing in other areas. I predict she's going to find that all of it is. My kids are recognizing the parts of speech and using all kinds of vivid verbs and powerful adjectives.

9:45 - 10:25 - The rest of writing involves a mini-lesson and then time for kids to write and confer with teachers. Usually the mini-lesson relates to one of the strategies from my VOICES menu. I may do something like read a mentor text read aloud, model some writing, or teach kids how to use a certain graphic organizer. After the mini-lesson I send the kids off to write. While they write my intern and I usually circulate around the room and confer with the kiddos.

10:25 - 11:25 - We switch classes for math. I teach a multi-age 3rd and 4th grade class, but teaching two grades of math at once is REALLY HARD. (I did it for two years before we started switching) So now when we switch I only have 3rd graders. I send all of my 4ths down the hall, and several different teachers send me their 3rds. I teach a group that is made up of only high achieving, fast-paced learners. The trade off for that is that I have 28 math students. 

Teaching the 'high' group isn't all rainbows and ponies though! It definitely comes with its own set of challenges. These kids need constant challenges. A lesson that would usually take 20 minutes with another classes might take 3 or 4 with these kiddos. I pre-assess each unit of study, and often discover that I can skip entire sets of skills because the kids already know them. (I always spiral back to them to make sure.) 

I pretty much always have to have an ongoing project that the kids can work on whenever they finish the day's list of work. My If I had a Million Dollars and Math is Everywhere projects are my most recent!

I started the year off doing a standard Math Centers type rotation, where the students spent 15 minutes at each of four centers. I quickly learned with this group that they functioned better with more independence and less structure. So now we have a "daily list." Basically, I start the day off with a mini-lesson and then the kids have a list of activities they need to do. (Shhh...don't tell them but it's really just the things I would have had them do as centers, just no 15 minute time limit.)

Most often the list involves an independent practice activity (like IXL.com or a worksheet from their math book), a math game (like Multiplication Kaboom!), their Math Project (currently Math is Everywhere), and right now I also have them doing the Multiplication Monster Math Battles. (The kids LOVE this by the way.)

At any time during their independent work I may call them over to my table to work in small groups. This is great because it allows my groups to be completely flexible. If I need 7 minutes with one group and 20 with another then that's what I do. If I need the group members to be completely different each day then it's fine. 

11:25 - 11:36 - After math and before lunch the kids switch back to their homerooms. I turn the lights off and my kids come right in from math and take a seat on our class carpet in a circle. We spend this time working on centering and mindfulness. Basically, to make it simple, I walk the kids through a meditation. I'll be having a much more detailed post about what this like and what the effects have been later!

11:39 - 12:09 - Lunch! I take the kids to the cafeteria and then I usually go sit and chat in the staff room for about 25 minutes. Sometimes I take some stuff to work on. I usually don't eat lunch. 

12:15 - 12:30 - Right after lunch the kids come in and we begin our reading block. I start off by doing a focus strategy lesson from my "upgraded" CAFE menu. Most of the time I use our class chapter book as the vehicle for modeling the strategy. My kids love listening to read-alouds, and I love reading them. My favorite part of the day is probably reading from our current chapter book. 

12:30 - 1:30 - During this time students do the Daily 5 reading activities. We have three rotations a day. My kids do Read to Self and Word Work every day. I use Words their Way as my word work. I've talked before about what that looks like in my room. So if you're interested, go check it out! The third rotation changes throughout the week. Depending on the day of the week it is either reading response journals, listen to reading, or read to someone.

While the kids rotate through the daily 5 centers I will pull kids for small group strategy lessons or one-on-one conferences. 

1:30 - 2:00 - Recess! In my school all 7 intermediate (3rd and 4th) classes go out to recess at the same time. We have a large playground, but it still stresses me out keeping up with that many kids at once! Teachers in my school have recess duty daily, so we always go out with our own kids. Of course, if the temperature drops below 20 degrees we aren't allowed to go out, and have to have the dreaded indoor recess! Of course, my Book of Awesome Tasks helps out with that a lot!

2:00 - 2:45 - On Mondays, Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays we have either Science or Social Studies. Our science and social studies units of study rotate each year between two sets of units. So what I teach this year in those subjects, I won't teach next year, but then I will teach the year after that. Right now we're studying Air and Weather in science, and Japan in social studies. To go along with our study of Japan I read the book Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes. While I was at it I wrote this cool novel unit for it! At $4 it's a steal!

Tuesdays are a little different. Three Tuesdays a month we have something called All School Gathering. This is where the entire school convenes in our gym and watches a presentation that is prepared and put on by the school's fifth graders. Other classes in the school prepare skits and presentations as part of the ASG. The fifth graders and other presenters get the experience of public speaking, and the messages they're giving to the students are usually related to citizenship skills. Sometimes it can get a little tough for the kids to sit for 40 minutes though...

The other Tuesday each month we meet with our Small School Gatherings. This is where my kids all go out to other teachers and a group of kids from around the school come to me. Each group is made up of 2-3 kids from each grade level from Kindergarten to 5th grade. Every teacher spends this time differently. Teaching a group that has every age in it can be a real challenge. Finding activities that are developmentally appropriate for that range of ages is tough. This is why I usually have my kids participate in some type of service learning project. Whether it's terracycling, pulling weeds in the school garden, making valentines to send to troops overseas, or writing thank you notes for something donated to the school, I try to make good use of this time. 

2:45 - 2:50 - We do a Status of the Class. This is when we might do a check-in for the Great Pencil Challenge (from Ladybug's Teaching Files) or do our class jobs before getting packed up. 

2:50 - Students are dismissed to their buses. We don't call the buses one at a time or anything. They pretty much just release the downstairs hallways first, and then the upstairs hallway. Every day after the mad rush of students, all of the teachers line up outside and wave goodbye to all of the buses.

3:00 - Meetings, planning, prepping, etc. usually ensues until at least 4:00, but more likely 5:00. Thats when I pack up my bag and go home to do the other 2 hours of work I have to do! Sheesh, it feels like it never ends sometimes! 

But it's worth it!

How is your schedule different? Check out the linky to see some other people's days!

I also wanted to share that Erin, who happens to run the budding blog Learning to be Awesome, is the winner of my recent Pin it to Win it contest! Congrats! I hope you like my Mandala Math Facts product!

Spark Student Motivation - Math Fact Fluency

Hi all! I'm linking up with Joanne over at Head Over Heels for Teaching for Spark Student Motivation Saturday!

This time I'm sharing about motivating kids to learn their math facts! I'm in charge of a rather large 3rd grade math class, which is when kids start to really learn multiplication and division. Coming from 5th grade last year, I know that kids sometimes still don't have their facts to the point where they need to be. I think it's pretty important for kids to have their facts down pat so that when we amp it up to multi-digit multiplication and long division they can work at a good pace, and not make simple mistakes. 

So, even though it isn't the most exciting thing in the world, fact fluency practice is necessary! I have two things that I've just made for my own classroom to help motivate my students when it comes to fact practice.

My kids LOVE playing kaboom during my math workshop. I have several kaboom games for them to play, but I just created a Multiplication Fact Fluency Kaboom game for them. If you're not familiar with Kaboom, it's a fast-paced card game where players draw a card, try to answer it and then accrue cards that they answer correctly. If they draw a bomb card...Kaboom! They lose all their cards. Also, the cards can just as easily be used by an individual student as flash cards, or for a whole class version of the game. I just added this Multiplication version to my store for a measly $2! Check it out!

Finally, I really wanted a way that my kids could track their progress as they learn the different multiplication and division tables. I've seen a lot of different versions of this before (build a pizza, etc.), but I wanted something unique. I also didn't want to cut out a hundred little mushroom and pepperonis. 

My class has really been focusing lately on becoming centered. I've even introduced a 7 minute block of time in the middle of my day where we take time to sit and I walk the kids through a daily meditation. So in keeping with that theme, I created Mandala Math Fact trackers! 

Basically, each time a kiddo masters (100% in 1 minute) one of their tables, they get to color in one layer of the Mandala! I made up quick quizzes for each of the tables, both multiplication and division, and 5 options of mandala. I think the splash of color will look great outside my classroom, and I think the kids will really like practicing patterns and rotational symmetry each time they get to color in a new layer. 

This kiddo mastered his
1s, 2, 5s, 10s, and 11s!

This kiddo has mastered
her multiplication facts!

I added the pack of 5 custom made mandala, and quizzes for each of the multiplication and division tables to my store for $4! It's worth that just to not have to cut out all of those pepperonis and mushrooms, right?! But seriously, I think my kids are going to enjoy it, and I love that it is as simple as printing, copying, and using!

And because I hate making blog posts where it seems like I'm just advertising something...which wasn't my intent (I promise!)...I'm going to do a Pin It to Win It competition! Simply pin the cover of the product you want a chance to win to pinterest, and then post the pin link in your blog comment! I'll let Killer B choose a random number in a couple days to see who wins what!

Also, a quick heads up to anyone who isn't a Facebook follower yet...I'll be changing out my Free Follower Freebie soon, so this would be a great time to go over, like my page and grab your freebie! There's a button at the top of the right column that'll take you straight there!

Be sure to check out the other cool ideas in the linky this week! I especially liked Joanne's Snowball Fight!

Five for Friday - December already?!

It seems like I was just writing my post for November!

It's been a bit since I've been able to make time for a decent blog post. I have had so many half-written in my mind...but I suppose they only count when I actually type them up to share!

So I'm going to link up to Doodle Bug's Five for Friday and try to cover it all in one post!

1. Vacations

This week was a short one, but a doozy. We had Monday off because it was the first day of hunting season. Last week we had school Monday, a snow day on Tuesday, and a teacher planning day on Wednesday. So needless to say when the kids walked in the door Tuesday morning they were not totally in school mode. I fear it'll only get crazier seeing as Christmas break is just 10 school days away! 

2. Language Arts this week

We finished Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes pretty quickly, and have moved on to reading The Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler. I love this book, though I know it's not everyone's favorite. It's about two kids who run away from home to go live inside the Metropolitan Museum of Art. That's where they discover a mystery to solve. The book provides a lot of opportunities for teachable moments, and has some great vocabulary.

My mentor sentence activities came from Trouble with Trolls. It's always fun to read a Jan Brett book and point out all of the hidden things, and side pictures. Mentor Sentences are still going really well. I've even turned on some colleagues to using them. My favorite part of the week is Thursday when we write our imitation sentences. The sentences my kids are coming up with are awesome. 

We've moved into informational writing now too! So, Jivey basically writes one out of ten of my lesson plans, because I heard about this book from her blog too. Haha. It's called Animals Nobody Loves, and is great because it packs a lot of interesting information about some unique animals into just a couple paragraphs per page. Because we've only just begun this unit of writing, we mostly used it to talk about the differences between narratives and informational writing, and the idea of choosing "expert topics" to write about. It's surprising how many kids want to write their first piece on something that they know almost nothing about. One of our first projects for informational writing is to brainstorm a list of Expert Topics and Sub-topics. 

I have a product in my store that I've just updated with a couple more cool things. It includes a poster about Informational Writing, a graphic organizer to help kids work on formulaic writing, and my brainstorming organizer. Check it out! Just two smackeroos!

3. If I Had a Million Dollars Project Based Learning

My kids started a new project based learning project this week! They really loved the Zoo Design project we did a while back (from Matt over at Digital: Divide and Conquer) and I really love them having a go-to project to work on as one of their math workshop centers!

So today at the beginning of math I played the song "If I had a Million Dollars" by the Barenaked Ladies, and then explained that the kids would be given an imaginary million to spend. There are rules of course. They have to buy a house, a vehicle, and set aside money for college. After that they get to go wild! We spent some time on zillow.com today and every kid found a house they would be happy with in the city of their choice. They're excited to see how far they can stretch the million. I think the real compliment was when a kid came over from his class (I teach kids from all the different classes during math time) during indoor recess today to ask me a question so he could work on the project some more. 

I put together the materials I made in a small packet, and have the packet available in my Teacherpayteachers store for just $2.00! Click here to go check it out! 

4. Centering Activities

This year I am part of a team of people in my school who are working on instilling both a growth mindset and mindfulness into our students. As part of that I've begun doing "centering" activities with the kids. These can be as simple as turning the lights down low, sitting in a circle, closing our eyes, and listening to soft piano music while thinking. Today I had the kids sit in a circle with me, we shut off the lights, closed our eyes and I rang a Tibetan singing bowl. When the kids couldn't hear the bell anymore they had to clasp their hands together. 

I borrowed one of these from my teaching bud down the
hall. It's a Tibetan Singing Bowl.

I think the kids really enjoy doing the activities, which serve as a great 4-5 minute brain break, though I have found that some of the activities don't mesh well with one of my students with autism. I'm eager to keep experimenting though!

5. Japan

This week we finally started our Japan Unit! We had a fun activity where I placed artifacts from Japan at centers around the room and the kids rotated as they tried to discover the items' uses. They also were asked to determine if the artifact is unique to Japan or if we have something like it. This activity led to a great class discussion afterwards.

I also read "The Way We Do It In Japan" to the kids. It's a great book that meshes narrative and informative writing. It's about a boy whose family has moved from America to Japan. A lot of great comparisons are made throughout the story.

And that was some of my week! What great resources do you know about for teaching Japan? What about Informational writing? Do you take time to get your kids centered? Any great tips to share? I'd love to hear them!