One technique that I have always used to incorporate movement into my lessons is the Gallery Walk. I love them! Basically, during a gallery walk you post tasks around the classroom on various surfaces (whiteboards, bookshelves…). Each student gets a recording sheet and they wander around the room completing the tasks in any order that they wish. I know what some of you are thinking: “What?! You mean to tell me that all of my students will be walking around my classroom at the same time?!?!”

Well, yes, that is what I’m saying. But the great news is that your classroom management will be minimal because everyone is engaged. However, you do need to set some expectations before doing this so that everyone knows what to expect. My rules are always: walking only, no more than 2-3 people at one task at a time, and voice levels at a “1.” You don’t follow expectations, you sit out. Easy as that. I’ve never had anyone have to sit out though. Seriously, kids love this activity.

I’ve recently gone Gallery Walk crazy! Really, I’m obsessed! I’ve been designing gallery walks for Math that will integrate movement while reinforcing core skills and concepts. This is great for a culminating activity, review before a test, or as an observation lesson (your principal will love this!)

Below are some of the gallery walks that are currently listed in my TpT store. Just click on the pictures below to access gallery walks for Number Sense, Basic Operations or Area, Perimeter and Time. Or to access all Gallery Walks, just click HERE.

And the best part? If you take advantage of the huge Teacher Appreciation Sale today and tomorrow (May 7-8), you can snag these items at 28% off when you use the coupon code TAD13 at the check-out.

Have a great day!

Shelley

The post Using Movement in the Classroom appeared first on Teaching in the Early Years.

With a simple deck of cards and a few dice, you can play many different kinds of games. Even just getting students to roll two dice and add them up to make a sum is a fun way to have students practice their basic math facts. Some of my favorite dice to use are 20-sided dice like the one shown below. There is a wide variety of uses and they allow students to work with higher numbers.

When should Math games be used in the classroom?

Personally, I prefer to use games as reinforcement. For example, you could teach a mini-lesson, allow some guided and independent practice, and then have students play a game to reinforce their new learning. I also like to use Math games as a center. Students can play in pairs or groups of three. In this case, the game is always one that they have played before (because of the independent nature of centers).

To download a FREE math game from my TpT store, please click HERE or on the image below:

All of my Mental Math Addition, Subtraction, Multiplication and Division units also contain math games that are sure to engage even your most un-motivated students! Please click on the hyperlinks below to access these resources:

• Mental Math Strategy Units: the Complete Addition Collection
• Mental Math Strategy Units: the Complete Subtraction Collection
• Multiplication Mastery: a complete program for basic multiplication facts
• Division Strategies: Using Strategies for Basic Division

To check out some more great math game ideas please check out Laura Candler’s Math Game Round-Up by clicking on the image below:

Have a great day,

Shelley

The post Games to Reinforce Math Concepts appeared first on Teaching in the Early Years.

But how do you do it?

There are many ways to encourage students to love school, but in my opinion, facilitating SUCCESS is the number one way.

Children NEED to be successful.  

Please do not underestimate the power of success. Students need to know that they can do the task that you give them. Imagine if you went to work every day and your boss asked you to paint a masterpiece. If you were a painter and had been painting for years, this would be no problem. However, for the rest of us, it would be a problem! If you had no knowledge of painting techniques, and had never painted much before, you would probably not even know where to begin. Eventually you might become very discouraged and just give up. You would probably dread coming to work, because you would know that your boss’ expectations were just too much.

Now think of that student in your class that never excels at anything. Everything is a struggle and he/she just doesn’t seem to “like” anything. Ask yourself this:

Is he/she successful? Does he/she know what success feels like? Does he/she experience success on a regular basis?

If the answer to these questions is “no,” then this needs to become a priority for you. The good news is that this will take very little extra time on your part; it will however, take some extra effort.

Here are a few tips for making your students feel more successful:

1. Be Supportive. Show students that you care and are on their side. Show your pride when they do something well. Verbalize your support by saying, “I am really proud of how you ___________.” Be supportive even when students are struggling. Create an atmosphere that communicates the message that you are there for them, no matter what.

2. Give students some power. Everyone wants decision-making power, even young children. All students should be given power in the classroom. This can be as simple as choosing between two similar activities, or choosing which center to go to. When students have power over their choices, it will have a positive effect on their classroom experience, which will lead to a feeling of success.

3. Choose activities that students can succeed at. When you give students work that is not within their ability range, it can lead to discouragement, disengagement, and an overall feeling of failure. This does not mean that struggling students need to be doing completely different work; it can simply mean that the quantity of questions to answer is reduced, or that scaffolding is provided throughout the learning.

4. Implement multiple intelligences into your teaching. It is natural for us to teach in the way that we learn best. For many teachers (including me) that is in a verbal-linguistic way. However, many of our struggling, unsuccessful students learn best in other ways, particularly kinesthetically. Implement hands-on activities into your lessons. Use manipulatives, make foldables, and alter your projects/assignments so that they incorporate a kinesthetic component.

5. Build on Strengths and Interests. Take what students are interested in and start there. In my very first year of teaching, I had a sweet little boy who was completely disinterested in school. He was weak in every area and did not want to learn. In the first few days I found out that he loved semi trucks. So I called a few truck companies and got them to send me literature and catalogues about semi trucks. And that is what this boy read every day during our silent reading time. Even though I knew that he couldn’t read most of what was in the catalogue, we were making a positive association with reading and he actually started to like it (even when we started incorporating other books). By the end of the year he was reading and writing almost at grade level, and his parents raved about the fact that he actually enjoyed coming to school. (One of my best moments ever!) You can do this too. What are your struggling students interested in? Start there.

Now for some homework. Think of the one student in your classroom who struggles the most and feels unsuccessful in school. This is probably the student who “dislikes” school. In the comments section below, make a list of three things that you are going to do tomorrow that will make him/her feel more successful, and subsequently, more happy and engaged.

The post I Hate School {Facilitating Student Success} appeared first on Teaching in the Early Years.

Happy St. Patrick’s Day!

Shelley

The post St. Patrick’s Day Hats! appeared first on Teaching in the Early Years.

1. Mental Math encourages actual understanding, not just memorization. When you teach students how to add an equation such as 19+23 using carrying, you are teaching a series of steps. For some students, this will work great, and they will catch right on. But for some, it is downright confusing. Where do I put the number? Do I carry the first one or the last one? BUT, when you teach students to break down the numbers and add 10+20 to make 30, 9+3 to make 12, and then 30+12 to make 42, students learn a deep understanding of the numbers. Suddenly that “1″ in 19 is not just a 1. It’s a 10. And the “2″ in 23 is not just a 2. It’s a 20. Students GET it!

2. Mental Math is logical. It just makes sense. I do think that there is a place for carrying and borrowing, but I am a huge believer that students should learn to do math mentally first. I have had grade 3 students solve an equation like 243+362 in their heads in mere seconds. For real. And that’s without pencil and paper. There is less room for error, and because students are more aware of the numbers, they are more likely to question an answer that doesn’t “look” or “sound” right. {Ever had a student answer a question like 240-150 with some crazy answer like 360 when they’re borrowing and you say to them, “Does that look like it would be the right answer? Let’s think about it…” Well with mental math, students ARE thinking about it right from the beginning, so they won’t make the kinds of mistakes that they do when simply following a series of confusing steps.}

3. Mental Math is fun! It is! I’m serious! When I began teaching this way, I really was re-energized about math. It is easier to understand, easier to do, and just all around exciting! I was actually getting better at math along with my students, which is probably why I’m a bit obsessed with it. Trust me, if you can teach math with excitement, your students are going to feel re-energized about math too!

For those of you already using mental math, congratulations! You are helping your students in so many ways! They are learning skills from you that they will use for life! For those of you who are not currently using mental math, but who want to start, you are probably confused and unsure about where to begin. I have written a few other blog posts and filmed a few videos about mental math which you can find by visiting my Mental Math page by clicking here. Also, keep checking back here for more mental math tips and strategies. If you’d like to receive updates by email, be sure to enter your email address into the box in the top right hand corner of this page.

In closing, I would love to hear from you in the comments section. Do you currently teach mental math? If so, what is your greatest challenge?

I look forward to hearing from you and addressing some of your successes and challenges in future posts/videos.

Have a great day,

Shelley

The post Three Reasons to Start Teaching Mental Math appeared first on Teaching in the Early Years.

We are all aware of the advantages to effective communication. In many cases, children will be more successful in the classroom if parents are well aware of what is going on. Additionally, effective communication throughout the year ensures that parents are not “surprised” when parent-teacher conferences roll around.

But how do you do it?

During my first year of teaching, I had “Parent/Teacher Communication Journals.” These were simply notebooks that I wrote in every two weeks to each family. I included a short paragraph explaining the great things that their child had done during the two weeks, as well as any challenges they were having and ways that they could practice and be supported at home. Parents could then write back to me with a response. That year was probably my best in terms of communication with parents. Parents loved the journals and there were never any surprises about how their children were doing in school. The one disadvantage to this method was that it was very time consuming.

Many teachers like to touch base with parents by telephone at the beginning of the year, and then periodically throughout the year. If you choose this method, please make sure that you don’t get into the habit of only calling with bad news. Call parents just to tell them how good their children are doing!

Here are a few other ideas for effective communication with parents:

Email – Send home emails once or twice a month to each parent, but please remember that tone of voice can be misinterpreted in an email. Keep it professional and to-the-point.

Classroom newsletter – Send home a classroom newsletter once a month. Include what the class has been doing, what is planned for the next month, and highlights. A nice touch is to add pictures of students engaged in fun activities and hands-on learning.

Invite parents in – Hold an open house and other events throughout the year where parents are welcome in your classroom. Take the time to touch base with each parent.

Provide contact info – Ensure that parents have a way to contact you with questions or concerns, for example a school email address and phone number.

Keeping Track of Communication

If parent communication is one of your goals, you are going to want to ensure that you are keeping track of who you communicate with, when the communication took place and what was discussed. To make this job easier, download this free parent-communication tracker from my TeachersPayTeachers store by clicking HERE or on the image below:

I would love to know how you communicate with parents. What challenges have you faced in terms of communication? How has it benefited you and your students? What methods do you use, and what would you like to start doing? Please leave a comment below to let me know!

Have a great day,

Shelley

The post Communication with Parents appeared first on Teaching in the Early Years.

This contest is now closed. Congratulations to the winners: 

Diane Gembe Mentzer
Tonya Ballew Dye
Nancy Fisher

I will be in touch shortly with your prizes! Thank you to all who entered!

For those of you who did not win, please accept this 15% coupon code toward any purchase in my blog store as a sincere thank-you for taking the time to leave such great teaching tips. Visit the store front HERE and enter the coupon code CONTEST at the check-out for 15% off. This code is only good until Saturday, March 9. Enjoy!

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

I am ecstatic to show off my brand new website design! The staff at rtcamp did an amazing job! Now, I must celebrate.

Sooooooooo, how about a giveaway? I am going to be choosing three lucky winners. Each one will receive a $30 gift card for my TpT store (with no expiry date) as well as a $10 Amazon gift card. Yahoo!

And now for the best part – this is the easiest giveaway ever! All you need to do is enter using the Rafflecopter gadget below and then leave a comment below this post (scroll wayyyyy down). In your comment, share your best teaching tip! That’s it!

Three winners will be chosen next Friday, March 8. Good luck!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

The post A New Design! {and a Giveaway to Celebrate!} appeared first on Teaching in the Early Years.

I also just recently posted a set of seven Spelling Book-tivities, as well as a short and sweet Thanksgiving version. Click on the the pictures below to be directed to the product pages.

 

Have a great day,

The post Reading Response Book-tivities! appeared first on Teaching in the Early Years.

Will a flash sale make it up to you?

So, to apologize for my error, I am holding a flash sale tonight (Tuesday, October 23) from 7:00-9:00 pm CST. My entire TeachersPayTeachers store will be marked down by 20% for these two hours.  If you happen to miss the flash sale, you can use the coupon code OOPS in my blog store for 20% off your entire purchase. This code will expire tomorrow night.

Have a great day,

 

The post How Embarrassing! appeared first on Teaching in the Early Years.

Place an elastic around the center and ta da! You’re done!

• Leave a pail in the staff room and collect coffee grounds for a week or two before the day that you make fossils. Be sure to stir the grounds frequently or they will go moldy. And we don’t want that. Ew.
• Allow your students to bring their own artifacts from home to add a personal touch.
• When I did this with my grade 4′s, I put the students into groups of three. Within each group, each person brought one thing. One person brought the salt, one person brought the flour, and one person brought the mixing bowl and spoon. I supplied the coffee and coffee grounds. It worked really well like that. Each batch will make about 4 or 5 fossils, depending on how big you make each one.
• Drying time is about 2-3 days. They will need to be flipped a couple of times as well.

• cutting/hole punching too difficult for young students (solution: pre cut and pre hole punch)
• time consuming prep (solution: ask parent volunteers to help)
• too small (solution: enlarge the circles so that the largest circle is about the size of a paper plate)
• mix-ups in order and labeling (have a clearly labeled, accessible model for students to refer to)
• steps may be confusing (solution: set up a workstation for each step; example: tracing is done at one station, cutting at another, etc.)

• Use in Math:
  • fraction book
  • make a strategy book of different strategies for addition, etc.
• Use in ELA:
  • parts of speech
  • sequencing
  • book report (one circle for setting, one for characters, etc)
  • genres of literature
  • building words
• Use in Science:
  • study of planets, animals, plants, etc

• Use Google Maps to find your country, town, street, etc.
• Make it into a PowerPoint presentation
• Read to a book buddy

• Do a “My Family” project
• Christmas theme (each circle in an ornament; place a fact on each ornament)
• Use the circles for vocabulary or number of the day (for example, represent a number differently on each circle)
• Use it as a response to reading assignment; summarize one part of the book on each circle.
• Building sentences (a different part of the sentence on each circle)
• Classroom routines (summarize a different one on each circle)
• Editing (LOVE this idea!) One circle represents punctuation, one represents uppercase letters, etc. As students edit, they look at the circles and place a sticker on each one once they’ve completed the task. For example, after editing for punctuation, add a sticker to the punctuation circle.

Then trim off the extra paper at the bottom.

When you unfold the paper, it will look like this:

Then fold it diagonally the other way so that you have two creases in your paper.

The next step is to cut on one of the creases, but only up to the center.

Now you place one flap on top of the other and glue them down to make one of the quadrants.

Then you can glue four of these quadrants together to form the quadrama. Colored paper makes for a neat effect.

Here’s a view from the top. Notice the paper wrinkled a bit; cardstock generally works better for these and will eliminate any wrinkles.

The post Integrating Social Studies into Other Subject Areas appeared first on Teaching in the Early Years.