Decimals and Fractions Interactive Notebook Sort FREEBIE

We started working on fraction and decimal relationships this week.  My students were pretty excited to leave fractions behind, but are also proud to see how they are related to the world of decimals.

 When I begin my decimals unit, I have my students create a vocabulary page for their interactive notebooks.  It helps them to see the importance of the new terms we will be learning, and gives them a quick reference to use throughout the unit.

On the first day we look at metric units, and how a fraction with a denominator of 10 is equal to a decimal.  We practice going back and forth between fractional unit and decimals.  You can use a digital scale to help with this too.  I give my students several different items that we can weigh on the scale, then we write the numbers as fractions and decimals.  We also use tape diagrams and divide them into tenths.  We practice shading in the tape diagram as a model, writing the fractions, and the decimal lengths. Then we model this on a number line so visually students can see the similarities.

The next day for morning work I give my students a quick check page which helps them sort and practice fractions, decimals, and word form. They match the pieces that are jumbled up on the page. Then I have notebook leaders in my groups who check their notebooks with mine and then check their groups.  They let me know any students who were having trouble so I can quickly clear up misconceptions as I start the new lesson.  Any students needing further assistance get help during our math intervention time.

 I would love to hear how you start your decimals unit!  Let me know in the comments below, and be sure to grab the interactive notebook sort page for FREE by going {HERE}! I've made it two levels so I can use a similar format a little later in the unit.

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Equivalent Fractions with a Freebie {Mid-Week Math Motivation}

Hello friends!  One of my goals for 2016 is to get back into blogging more consistently.  I'm going to try and create a post mid-week (Wednesday or Thursday) that shares something I've found in math that has been helpful. My goal is to do this at least twice per month.  If I end up with 3 or even <gasp> FOUR times, awesome.. pat me on the back!  But twice is a good way for me to start.  The post  might be about a website, book, video, product, freebie or idea that I found useful, and I want to pass it on to you!

This week I've been reviewing Equivalent Fractions with my Smarties.  I have a little more work to do to wrap up dividing fractions before moving into decimals, but my kids are struggling with creating equal fractions when we review.  I always like to start my fractions unit by creating equal fractions out of construction paper.  You can read a blog post I wrote about this {HERE}.  This year I was really pressed for time before break, and I skipped over having students create posters of equal fractions.  BOY DO I REGRET THIS!  My kids can not think of equal fractions at all!  So here I am back at equal fractions, picking up the pieces of where I should have started the unit.

We began again with making anchor charts of equivalent fractions-- what is equal to  one and one half, one whole, one half, one fourth, and one third.

I divided my students up into groups of 5-6 and had them complete a gallery walk around my classroom.  They had about a minute at each poster.  They had to keep writing as many equal fractions as they could think of, but they could not duplicate any fractions that had already been written.

I did let them take their interactive notebooks with them because our fraction bars are glued in there, and I have many visual learners.  I love listening to their group conversations as they pass work at each chart.  Many started to notice mistakes.... I mean hello?  2/3 is equal to 4/12? This  was AMAZING because that was where I was headed next!
After we did the gallery walk through each poster I sent them back through again with a two minute time limit.  They had to find any mistakes on the poster and complete an error analysis telling what was incorrect, and then correcting the fraction.

This is what I think the best part of the lesson it, most definitely!

I finished this activity by giving my students a sheet with equivalent fraction cards.  They had to match the equivalent fractions and glue them into their interactive notebooks.

If you don't use interactive notebooks have students do them on a large sheet of paper and show you the results.

I let my students work together in pairs to complete this activity.  Fractions are always less scary with a buddy!  This activity gave me a great way to do a quick formative assessment of equivalent fractions and keeping them in an interactive notebook is a great reference tool.  Hang up a large sheet in your classroom as an anchor chart if you need a quick reference. If you want to use this activity with your students, feel free to download it {HERE}

Have a great week!

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2015: A Year in Review

Happy New Year's Eve my friends!  Did you sleep in today so you can be wide awake at midnight and celebrating the start of 2016?  I always love this time of year because it gives me an opportunity to reflect and think about my life in general.  I always like a new beginning, and in education we seem to get two of them.  One in August or September when the new school year starts, and one in January with the new year!  I've spent some time thinking about 2015, which has brought some tremendous changes in my life.  I wanted to share a few moments with you.  Some are personal, some are educational, well... that's just me.

2105 was a year of Travel:
I spent most of the summer traveling with my daughter and her softball team.  They had an opportunity to play is Louisiana, Disney's ESPN Wide World of Sports, Atlanta, Montgomery, and Tennessee.  As a result, we stayed in a few amazing places, met up with wonderful friends that we hadn't seen in a few years, and explored the TN mountains.

I'm sure this summer will bring even more travel.  I hope that some of it will be back in the Northeast!


2015 was a year of Science Mastery:
I spent two weeks of my summer delving a little more deeply into my science curriculum.  I worked with my teammate and read over/ completed several labs that I'm looking forward to doing with my students this spring.

Going to Tennessee and walking through several of the caves gave me great motivation to work on my Rocks and Minerals unit.  We have been working on incorporating reading across our curriculum, and creating informative articles and interactive notebook activities for my science units has really helped me become a better science teacher.  My students have enjoyed science MUCH more this year too.  We loved mining for minerals and finding tons of gems!

2015 was a year of Math PLT:
I am the PLT at my school for sixth grade math.  I've really enjoyed meeting with other teachers across our county to learn how they are teaching certain curriculum sections in their classrooms, and to share what I am finding works with my students as well.  Lately I've really been trying to use my small group time as much as possible to meet with students who are missing small individual skills. We've been playing a lot of games like this interactive fraction review game

 and using our Scoot and Compute cards.  

I like these because I can differentiate them easily.  My high kids can work on skills that are challenging in groups on their own, while my other lower groups can work on easier numbers, and I can gradually increase their computation and math language skills.

I also spent time talking to my PLT about increasing math language.  I shared these Conversation Cards with them.  They are FREE in my TpT store if you would like to use them in your classroom.

2015 was a year of Friendships:
I loved being able to meet up with many of my BBBs this year at the TpT Conference, and with my softball travels.  These people really inspire me to be a better teacher and friend.  I have had moments where their positive energy and support has really been what has gotten me through some tough situations, and I am forever grateful that I took the chance and began blogging.

Thank you to my readers whom I have not met!  I appreciate that you stop by with your Coffee Cup to sip and read!  One of my goals is to become more consistent with blogging in 2016.  I hope you will continue on this journey with me.  Happy New Year!!

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Using Foldables and Games to Review Numeric Expressions and Order of Operations

I love being able to teach math first thing in the morning!  It is a great way to start my day.  I use my morning work time to have my students cut out or color in their interactive notebook foldables.  Then when we are ready to start our day everything is organized and ready to go.  In this way I have a full 45 minutes to teach math, and not worry about the few slow kids who are always the last ones done cutting.

Today I wanted to share a few resources for reviewing numerical expressions and order of operations:

1) Foldables Foldables and Foldables-  Have you started to use foldables and interactive notebooks?  I started using this several years ago and it has really changed my teaching. It's NOT about cutting and gluing!  Used correctly, foldables are a great study tool for students who need the kinestic touch to study.  They provide parents with the needed vocabulary to help their children, and a great way to teach students about organizing notes and their thinking.

I used three different foldables with this section of my Expressions and Equations unit to help organize vocabulary and give my students a reference point for justifying and explaning their answers.  One reviews basic operations.  We created a four door foldable and put words that can be found in questions and word problems on the inside.  It's basic, but it gets the point across.

My students cut and colored the front during morning work.  Then we completed an activity where students had to sort key operation words.  These went into the inside.

Here is an example of the inside when they finished.  This was great for teaching them about how to "speak" math.  We refer to it a lot throughout the year when we learn how to correctly justify or explain our thinking in words.

The second is for exponents.  I use this foldable for vocabulary as well.  My students need to learn the different ways an exponent can be written.  They always have trouble with this.  They can never remember that the exponent tells how many times the base is used as a factor.  They also have trouble remembering that the expanded form can also be called product of the same factor and repeated multiplication.  Those pesky test creators always use different names for this and it throws my students off.

The third foldable I use is for Order of Operations.
The PEMDAS explains the order that needs to be used with these numerical expressions.  I really stress the way that I have students enter information in this foldable.  My kids always forget that you can multiply OR divide which ever comes first.  The same with adding and subtracting.  So I always put a lot of emphasis on this section.

You can find these foldables {HERE} if you want to use them in your classroom.

I also include examples foldables in our notebooks. Here, we made what I call finger foldables for numeric phrases.  I like to keep things color coded. So when we complete these foldables I have students circle key words using the same color they used in the operations foldable I mentioned above.  If addition was green, then all the addition words are circled in green, etc.  I believe this really helps make the visual memory connection in vocabulary.  After we circle the key word and write the operation on the inside of the foldable we translate the expression.
Here is an example of the finger foldables.

2) Fun Videos

Have you seen Ron Clark perform his Order of Operations song? It is perfect to get your students up and singing about the Order of Operations. My students love it, and I love when I hear them singing or humming it during an assessment!  There is a great link from an Atlanta news station which shows the group dancing on desks and performing.  ***You have to watch about 5 seconds of an ad before you can skip to the video **

http://www.ajc.com/videos/news/ron-clark-academy-the-algebra-song/vdKst/

Here is another great video source that I use in the unit from Flocabulary.  There are tons of resources that Flocabulary has to offer.

I found it on YouTube

3) Interactive Games

My students love to play math games... I mean who doesn't like being able to work in a group and talk... and when the talking is about Math-- HOLLA!

Try this Order of Operations Freebie. It really gets my smarties thinking because those placement of numbers is important to win this game!

We also have loved playing Exponent Dominoes to practice making the connections between exponents, numbers in expanded form, and standard form numbers.  I printed these in yellow, orange and white cardstock to give them a Fall theme because I teach this unit in the fall.  But they work just as well any time of year. 

Have access to IPads?

You may also want to try this IPad game.  It is perfect for centers.
5 Dice- Order of Operations Game
This game is similar to my Order of Operations Freebie.  Students are given a target number and five dice.  They must create a numerical expression that is as close to or equal to the target.  You can set the game to use just addition and subtraction, or all four operations with grouping symbols.

I hope these resources are helpful!  Have a great day!

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Squared Away on a Sunday: Testing and Surface Area Lab (FREEBIE)

Anyone else have the Sunday night blues?  I don't usually have regrets about starting back to school on Monday mornings, but this is testing week for my Smarties.. and well I'm a big fan!  I think part of this is because I have to give a new test in a new state this year, and I don't know what to expect.  Eveyone is our district has been uptight about test administration, so I don't know what to expect!  We are testing Monday-Wednesday this week, so I wanted to plan a few fun things to do once we are finished.

In ELA we are going to watch Wall E and work a little on our CCSS standard for media comparision.  We are going to work on character traits, theme and symbolism within a science fiction genre.  This lesson is courtesy of my good friend Erin at I'm Lovin Lit.  She is so put together!  It is in her Spring ELA Bundle.

In Math I'm going to continue with Surface Area by doing a measurement lab with my students.  I gathered together boxes of rectangular prisms and pyramids, laminated them, and cut them into nets.  We are going to use our handy dandy measuring tapes courtesy of IKEA to measure and find the surface area.  You can find the Surface Area Freebie I made {HERE} if you need something.  

In Science we are going to use our Board Builders program to create projects on the Planets in the Solar System.  We have a huge grassy playground so we are always going to measure the distance of the planets if it stops raining long enough!

I'm going to use this awesome clipart from Messare Clips and Design to create planet signs.  

So, what have you Squared Away this Sunday?  Any fantastic plans for the week that I should know about?

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Five for Saturday: Theme, Crawfish Boils, Books, Geometry Video, and Field Trips

  We have had a really busy week in the land of Coffee Cups and Lesson Plans!

1)  We have spent our ELA time talking about the characters in our novel, Flying Solo by Ralph Fletcher, and discussing possible themes.  I love when it gets to this time of year in sixth grade.  Yes, it is stressful because testing is coming up.  Yes, it is difficult to keep everyone on task and paying attention, but YES they are capable of digging deep into literature and THINKING about the nuances of what they read.  I live for these moments, and we had one this week when we were talking about THEME!  I had previously done an intro lesson, discussing the difference between a theme TOPIC, and an actual theme.  I also show my students a video that has a pretty straight forward message to make sure they "get it."  These lessons are from Erin at I'm Lovin Lit.  They are in her Interactive Notebook for Literature.   She also has them individually {HERE}

  After a day or so with the basics, I used the same tree visual and gave my students five themes from Flying Solo.  We talked about how each theme would relate to the story.  Then I picked one of the five, and gave them the theme sentence.  They had to work in pairs to come up with four pieces of evidence from the book to support the sentence.  This my friends is where the magic happened.  They dug deep!

For example, a theme topic for this book is Grief.  I gave them the theme statement  Grief is about loss and a return to life.  We talked for a few minutes about the OBVIOUS, LITERAL evidence that would exist.  (For those not familiar with the book, a classmate dies, and the class during the novel is still dealing with and grieving for him).  But they dug deeper!  They talked about the grief another student was carrying over having to quarantine his dog, and even deeper over the grief a third student had over the time he does not have with his father.  I was so proud.  Fear not teachers feeling the push of testing. Students are digging deep!  Be a guide..don't give up on them!

2) We went to a Crawfish Boil last weekend at a friend's house. Being a native New Yorker transplanted into the South, this was a totally new thing for me.  Everyone around here is talking about crawfish lately.  I think the season for eating them is starting.  Our friends have a HUGE pot to boil the crawfish and invited us over to join them.  My kids were in awe over this!  We loved every single minute of it.  If the season is just starting, it is going to be a good one!

3)  I finished reading the first book in The Testing Series by Joelle Charbonneau.  If you have students that like the dystopian literature, I think they will love these books.  The heroine Cia, is a great problem solver, and intuitive thinker.  I great role model to teach character traits and the Hero's Journey circle.  Speaking of the Hero's Journey, if you teach this common story analysis in your classroom.  I used it last year while teaching The Lightning Thief and there is a freebie {HERE} if you need a graphic organizer.   The blog post contains a video that I used to introduce the concept, and a link to the organizer.  I hear they will be making movies out of the series.

4)  We started Area this week in Math.  I introduced it with this neat song to help students remember the difference between Area and Perimeter

5)  Finally, at the end of the week I took my class on a field trip to learn about The Bankhead Tunnel and Geology.  My students thought the tunnel was really cool, although we had to walk down about 4 stories of steep steps to reach tunnel level.  Yikes!

We also went to the University of South Alabama to the Archeology Museum.  There we participated in a huge geology lab, identifying rocks and minerals using scratch tests, observations, and even taste.  We also learned about how archaeologists study people, and layers of earth to learn the history of our city.  My students LOVED eating in the campus dining hall.  If you have a college campus near you, check out the programs they may have to offer.  It was an amazing field trip!

I'm linking up with Doodle Bugs today!  

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Using a 3-2-1 Reflections Graphic Organizer for Informational Text with a FREEBIE

We have been working hard with informational text lately!  Sixth grade feels like it is ALL about being able to explain our thinking about what we are reading, and backing up our claims with evidence from the text.  We have been practicing this concept with fiction, nonfiction and poetry a lot!  I've been trying to instill in my students the need to use quality vocabulary in the answers.  Drawing on the academic vocabulary within the text helps them "sound" like sophisticated sixth graders.

One of the ways that I work in vocabulary and details is with a 3-2-1 Reflections Graphic Organizer.  We recently read informational text about the increase in the number of child immigrants that are illegally entering the United States.  Using our 3-2-1 graphic organizer we found academic vocabulary that was related to the story, two details that supported the story, and wrote one question that still remained after the article was finished.

If you are interested, you can grab the organizer {HERE}.  It is a FREEBIE in my TpT store.  I've provided two different copies.  One is similar to the organizer mentioned above, the second is blank so you can add what you need as far reflections. We've used them when looking at compare/contrast text structure as well as facts and opinions.  If you were analyzing a poem, the 3-2-1 might be good for figurative language or thematic details.
I'm going to continue working with text structure informational analysis throughout the week.
We'll be using my Buddy Bookmarks

Sorry I didn't get a picture of these in use.. the one I took was blurry.  These are part of my Navigating Nonfiction Text posters and bookmark set.  I love these because we can use them with ANY text.  I'll also be incorporating some of the Reading Rectangles from my Reader Response Pack.  We are going to focus on Compare/Contrast structure next, and I'll even be incorporating that language into my math topics with integers.  It is important for my students to understand that these types of structures are in all subject areas, and the 3 2 1 Reflection organizer will be a quick formative assessment for me to use.  

Do you have any further suggestions for this type of organizer?  I'd love to hear! Have a great week!

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