Telling Time with NO Worksheets!

This week our big skill was telling time to 5 minutes!

What fun!

We started by talking about all the reasons that telling time is an important skill.  They came up with some great ideas and some funny stories!

Here is my favorites:
"My mommy is always late and it makes her have a war with daddy!"
"So we don't miss Sponge Bob!"  quickly interrupted by a friend, "Or miss school!"

To get us started with telling time we talked about all of the parts of the clock and we became the HUMAN CLOCK!  This is one of my favorite lessons each year.  Such a favorite that my Teaching BBF and her class joined us for the fun.

You put the kids in a big circle and have 12 kids be the numbers on the clock.  Two students are the hands.  You practice positioning the the kids at different spots and have the extra kids, the ones standing on chairs, try to tell the time.  It is a lot of fun and the kids catch on instantly!

Here is a little picture to make it easier to understand.  I hated to "blob" out the kids faces because their expressions are the best part of this activity.  Lots of little fingers skip counting from number to number.....  teacher happiness!

Once we got the hang of it we and practiced, practiced, practiced!

This lesson takes a tiny bit of prep on the front end.  Just running and laminating the signs and hands.

This activity has leveled writing prompts to use at the end of the lesson.  I have some kiddos that wanted to know about time to the minute, so I explained it to them and they totally got it!  SCORE ONE FOR ME!

The other thing I do to help us learn telling time is a simple game.  Set your phone alarm clock or download a ringer app to go off randomly during the day.  Whenever it goes off the first hand in the air gets to tell the time.  If they are right, FANTASTIC and they clip up.  If they are wrong, I try someone else.  The kids LOVE, LOVE, LOVE it!  This game is a great quick break during the day and after it is over they get refocused real fast.  I highly recommend trying it!  Your kiddos will be time telling like pros within a few weeks!

Teaching is hard work and every now and then we must treat ourselves!  Here is my BIG happy that I treated myself to this weekend.  Yes, it is hidden in the back of my car....  He won't ever look.... RIGHT?

Is there anything better????   I'm in heaven!

I hope everyone has a great week!

Happy Teaching!

Fractions!

We had the best time learning about fractions this week!

We started off by using the FRACTION FAMILY!   Each member of the family is a different fraction and we had a BLAST reading about them, coloring them, and practicing saying them.  Yes, saying them was a challenge for a few friends.  When we tied saying them to ordinal positions in line it really helped them make the connection.

I try really hard not to make a ton of copies and have found that tracing things for fractions is so much more fun.  We traced paper cups and wooden blocks to get our shapes on the paper.  We partitioned each shape into the right number of equal pieces and then shaded them to make different fractions.

We wrapped up our fraction unit with some fun stations on Friday.  The kids built fractions with Lego blocks, drew pictures of fractions, wrote about what a fraction is and our most favorite station was identifying the fractions in a package of M&Ms.   I was completely shocked at how easy the kids were able to apply a large denominator to the activity.  Never under estimate their ability to do something!

As sad as it is to say it, state testing is coming.  My class will be taking the SAT10 again this year.  We started doing a little bit of reviewing this week.  I would rather do a little each week.  We struggle with multi-meaning words every single year.  It isn't that they don't know the meanings.  The problem is that they don't take the time to read and THINK!  So I made this multi-meaning task card set. We love SCOOT, so I'm planning on having a little contest to see how many of us can get all the right answers.

I purposely set up the answers a little bit differently so they have to THINK!

I am very lucky to have a fantastic color printer at home, but I know that printing in color isn't an option for everyone.  This packet has both color and black/white task cards in it.  

My plan for this set is to play SCOOT with all the kids.  If anyone struggles, I am going to put this is a center for them to practice and then let them redo it.

I hope everyone has a GREAT WEEK!

Remember that we are all making a difference....  ONE KID AT A TIME!

Happy Teaching!

Is it really almost February? Celebrating 500 Followers with a Freebie!

I can't believe how fast January is going.  It did help that we had a SNOW DAY Friday!  I don't know what it is about snow, but teachers LOVE IT!

I used my time off Friday to get some ideas and projects ready for this week and next month.  Yes, I said next month!  I can't believe it either.

We are still working on arrays this week, so I decided to revamp an old project. I made new task cards and added a few new pages.  I'm going to use this to reteach this week.

It is a combination of my favorite things.  I have really fell in love with projecting anchor charts on my screen.  It keeps me on track and the students are so much more engaged.

If you aren't familiar with how to do this, it is SO easy!  Just open any pdf you have - select view- select full screen or slideshow (this part depends on your operating system)  That is it!  Now it works just like Powerpoint!  If I go and teach without something on the screen, by kids start asking where are the pictures.  So I know this keeping them engaged!

I added some extra anchor charts to this packet so we could discuss and do a few problems together on white boards.  It has 2 versions of a memory game.  One set that is pre-made and another one that is blank.  I'm going to work with my below level kids at my table, while the on level kids do the pre-made game.  That leaves the blank one for my above kiddos.  I'm going to have them work with a partner and create their own game.  Then they can "show off" their game to another group if they finish before I do. This will give me at least a good 20 minutes of uninterrupted time to work with my low kids, with the rest of the class actively playing the game or creating their own.

It also has 5 different array tasks for us to use each day.  I wanted one good problem for us to work each afternoon right after recess.  They keep saying practice makes perfect!

We need to review author's purpose next month to keep it fresh for state testing.  So I created this little flip book.  It has cut and paste situations (of course related to Valentine's Day) to get the kids thinking about what the purpose would be.  It is part of a larger file that just got revamped with new activities!

We work on telling time - every single day!  The way I do this is through an app.  I just downloaded a free alarm app and I set it to go off several times during the day.  When ever it goes off, all the kids hands shoot up!  I call on someone and if they can tell me the time, they clip up or get a treat.  It is so fun and the kids enjoy it.  It has gone off during evaluations and the administrators LOVE it!  

This game is hot off the press!  I just made it this morning.  My class loves SCOOT games and I didn't have many for February.  So I made one to practice telling time to the nearest 5 minutes.  It turned out real cute and I can't wait to laminate it this afternoon.  To celebrate my 500th TPT follower, this game will be free all day today!  Download it quick and let me know what you think!

I hope everyone has a wonderful week!

Happy Teaching!

Inference and Arrays!

Hi Everyone!

Our big skills this week are arrays and making inferences.

We started out this morning looking at the title page for A Quilt Story.  We made a list of all of the things we thought about this picture.  Of course the first thing to tackle was the number of kids that didn't know what a quilt was.  It was all blankets to them!  So we had some fun talking about background knowledge.

We read over this anchor chart.  We talked about lots of examples and they really impressed me.

We worked on looking at real pictures and making a list of the
Who?
What?
Where?
When?
Why?
How?

Then we compared ideas and together wrote a sentence to infer what was happening in the picture.  We only got two pictures done today, but it is a step in the right direction.  RIGHT? That is what I'm telling myself.

We are also working on arrays this week.  It might be one of my favorite skills to teach.  Last week we partitioned rectangles and I introduced repeated addition, so this skill is a BREEZE!

They feel so grown up now that they can multiply.  We worked strictly on white boards today. Tomorrow we are going to break out some stickers and make some fun projects to practice our arrays.

This is the anchor chart we made together after we practiced some problems.  With a little bit of help from me, the kids were able to come up with most of this themselves. I let each of them put one of the colored stickers on.  It's the little things that make them happy!

I have an open bulletin board right now.  That in itself is SHOCKING!  So I decided for the next few weeks to put the anchor charts for our weekly skills up on it.  This way I can showcase some of the amazing work that the kids do.  A little recognition for a job well done!

If you haven't heard TPT is having another SALE!  I'm having a sale, as are most TPT sellers, so get all those items off your WISH LIST!  I can't wait!  I have so many things on my wish list and I love to get them on sale.  Here is the code!  Happy Shopping!

I hope everyone has a great week!

Happy Teaching!