FREEBIE: Maths Scavenger Hunt (Editable)

Hi all,

Just a quick freebie that I've created for the last week of school. It's an editable maths scavenger hunt aimed at 8-9 year olds. It's on Google Slides so perfect for those doing distance learning / remote learning using Google Classroom. Students will need a device on which they can take photographs and add them to this presentation.

To download, click here and it will prompt you to make your own copy.

Here's a video preview of the resource:

Freebie: Symmetry Choice Board for Distance Learning (Editable)

In our school here in Italy, we're in week 13 of distance learning! As I've mentioned before, a lot of the resources I have been making are very specific to our POI (programme of inquiry) so I haven't been sharing them. This latest resource I made this morning is very general. It's a symmetry choice board, aimed for upper elementary students. It's on Slides so ideal to share on Google Classroom or you can convert it to a PDF by going to File --> Download. 


This free resource is completely editable. Simply click here to make your own copy and then edit as necessary for your students. 
*NOTE: This opened perfectly when using Google Chrome but the formatting was a bit off when I used the Safari browser.

Happy teaching!

Classroom reveal: Superhero-themed Grade 3 PYP classroom

Hi all, 

The children in my class started today and I finally got around to taking some photographs of how it looks. If you've seen my classroom reveal post from other years, you'll probably recognise things from other years.

This is the main display outside the classroom:

The children each coloured a superhero and wrote some details about themselves on badges. I'll add those to the board when I have some more energy!

And here are some more superhero accents around the room.

This Tiger basket that I decorated with mix and match clipart.

Of course, I couldn't resist labeling the bins superhero-themed too.

Keeping the Learner Profile in context, I added this "Are we being principled?" sign above our behaviour management clip chart.

I've kept last year's idea of displaying the transdisciplinary themes on superhero style badges on a cape. 

Here are a few snaps of the entire room. Scroll down for specifics!

The PYP attitudes posters on the line block the other displays from this angle but it's not so bad from child height.

Our essential agreements display:

I spent an embarrassing amount of hours last year, tracing, cutting and laminating to make these Lego superheroes. There was no way they weren't going to be reused this year. So we decided on our essential agreements (class promises/rules) for this year and handed them to Batman and co.

Magic maths words display:

My school is having a big focus on problem-solving in maths this year so I wanted to make a more prominent maths vocabulary board in the classroom. This is the basic board. The children will suggest words (e.g. add, total, plus, more) to put in each section as the year goes on. 
Title banner: Sparklebox
Symbols: Fun for Learning
Adhesive googly eyes and ribbon: Tiger

Editing board:

The giant pencil was free from The Teacher Wife and the "capital letters detective" display was made by me (and is available in my TPT store).

Calendar/birthday board:

Owl-themed classroom birthdays display: Halle Hird
Owl-themed calendar set:Apple Girl Amber 
Header: Sparklebox. 
All other elements were made by me. 


Reflection / reading area:

I've got 6 sheets in the reflection area - collaborative group reflection, peer assessment, 2 stars and a wish, self-assessment of understanding, PYP Learner Profile goal-setting sheets and PYP attitude goal-setting sheets. You can get these from here if you like. Each child has an A5 sized plastic envelope in the box in which they keep their reflection sheets for the year.


Wonder wall and PYP Transdisciplinary Skills

I made all parts of the wonder wall and the skills posters. If you're in an IB school and want the skills, you can get them from here.

I hope you enjoyed this tour! 

Area and Perimeter FREEBIES

Hi there,

Just a quick couple of freebies for you. The first is this area and perimeter poster. Click here to download it for free from Google Drive.

The second is a set of area and perimeter challenge cards. Give each child / group 12 squares of card and have them try to make shapes with the given area and perimeter on the cards. Click here to download the cards for free from Google Drive.

That's all folks!

STEM investigation booklet freebie

Hi all,

As I mentioned in the last post, our school is having a STEM day as part of STEM Discovery Week (22nd to 29th April).

Here is the booklet I've made to go with our challenge (to build a base for a stilt house). You can download it for free by clicking here.

Free 100th Day Resources

Hi all,

Today we celebrated our 100th day of school with some cute activities. All of the resources I used are free, so if you're planning on doing something similar, please download!

We have been marking each day of school by placing a star sticker (Tiger's finest!) on a chart that I downloaded for free from First Grade Bloomabilities. We wrote the M, T, W, Th or F on the stars to make sure we didn't forget a day!

First, we made some 100th day crowns to wear for the day. Each child had a thick strip of white card (I cut A2 lengthways) on which they wrote "It's my 100th day of school." I measured and stapled them while they decorated 10 strips of coloured paper with 10 symbols/pictures/numbers/words. They then glued the bottom of each of these to the inside of the white band and glued them all at the top. I would recommend reminding the children to try and make sure the coloured strips are all the same length or you'll have a few wobbly crowns!

After the crown-making, we carried out some investigations based on the number 100. Another hint: Don't use a bag of microwaveable popcorn for the "unpopped popcorn" investigation. It's covered in some sort of lardy substance! I made this sheet to suit my class. You can download it for free from Google Drive by clicking here or on the image below.

While the children were making their hats, they passed around my iPad and used an app called Aging Booth to make photos of how they would look when they are 100 years old. As I don't want to upload any of my pupils' photos here, have a look at mine as an example!

I printed these (It was very quick to paste the pictures into a blank Keynote presentation and email it to myself as a PDF) and the children stuck them into this (free!) "When I am 100 Years Old" writing frame from The Teachers' Guide.

Next, we did 100 exercises. I chose 10 children to suggest an exercise and we did 10 reps of each.

 Finally, we did some 100th day challenges, some of which were from The Brown Bag teacher's free 100th Day resource pack.

Making rounding more interesting

Hi everyone!

Hope you're enjoying the weekend! 

We're doing rounding (whole numbers) in maths next week and I've been looking around for some resources that could be used to make it a little more interesting!

Then I came across these from ColoringSquared.com:

Rounding to the nearest 10:

Images from ColoringSquared.com

Rounding to the nearest 100:

Images from ColoringSquared.com

I know the children in my class will love these. It's great to see something more interesting than just numbers and arrows!

For anybody who's introducing rounding from the start, I found this video from MathCoachInteractive. I like the way it has the balance that tips to the left or right so the number slides - very visual!

Another great find that I'm going to be using is this rounding to 20 poem number line from Twinkl.
This hundred chart with arrows from Math-Aids.com could also be a handy visual aid for children:

Image from Math-Aids.com

If you have any other nice rounding activities that have worked for you, please comment below!

Christmas Symmetry

Less than a week to go to the Christmas holidays! We've just had our dress rehearsal and are looking forward to our show on Friday. Here are some pics of how we did a very Christmassy but still a "real" maths lesson. 

I showed the children how to do four symmetry activities - an angel on a grid in pairs and a Christmas tree, a snowflake and a bauble on a grid independently. They began with the paired activity and then chose the order they did the other activities. They listened to Christmas songs and drew/cut away happily.

Here are some of the children finishing a symmetrical angel in pairs and a bauble independently. I got the angel and bauble from Activity Village. 

 

Here is one of the children's Christmas tree. I showed them how to do their half-tree shape on the board and they got cracking on their own.

 And here are two of the very unique snowflakes they made. They're so simple - start with a circle template, fold in half three times and then cut out bits of it.

Elapsed Time Station Cards (Freebie)

Hi all, 
We've been working on calculating elapsed time. I created these cards, stuck them around the classroom and the children worked in pairs to move around the room, filling in the answer sheet. They had to name the start and finish times and calculate the elapsed time. I've also included an answer sheet. Click here or on the image to download this for free from Google Drive.

Multiplication by arrays

Hi there,

I just wanted to share a resource that made my life so easy today! I stood there, looking around the room at all of my children, in pairs, ON TASK for 20 minutes, walking around to different stations. 

We were using these multiplication by arrays task cards from Tucker's Mama. You can download them FOR FREE from her TPT store. Well worth it! 

There are 24 task cards. I stuck them up around the classroom and divided the children into pairs. I placed each pair at odd-numbered stations (so there is space between each pair) and they worked together to solve the multiple choice questions on the cards. The free pack includes an answer sheet for the children and a solution sheet for the teacher. Then, the children swapped sheets and corrected their peers' work (obviously this was re-checked by me afterwards!). The children loved getting up and moving about and really enjoyed this introduction to multiplication.

Another lovely thing to use when teaching arrays is Lego bricks. 

image source

I also like to get the children to roll a dice and then show an array of those two numbers. They can draw it in any way - footballs, hearts, smilies or create it using toys, counters, pasta.

Rugby World Cup Freebie

 Hi all, 

I can't believe the Rugby World Cup is starting in just two weeks! To celebrate, I've decided to share this freebie with you. It will be available to download for this weekend only. As it's the start of term, let's pretend the weekend starts tonight! Just click here or on the preview image to download.

It's a maths game - a target board. The idea is to change the number in the centre each day (just laminate it and you can use a whiteboard marker and rub it off). The children need to make up the target number in different combinations of tries, conversions, drop goals or penalties (remembering that you can't have more conversions than tries!). It could be a handy early finisher activity or it could be used as a morning maths warm-up activity in the older classes.

The freebie is part of a bigger resource set. The full set is available in English and in Irish on my TPT store. It costs $3 (less than €3). If you want to download either, click on one of the images below.

         

Prepare Your Classroom for the Price of a Pint: MATHS EDITION

Welcome to the maths edition of "Prepare Your Classroom for the Price of a Pint" where I'm going to give you suggestions on how to spend a little and have your maths area bright and ready for the start of the school year. As always, I have included lots of freebies at the bottom of this post. If you're not looking to spend any money on maths posters, just hop down to that part and grab the freebies! Don't forget to check out A Crucial Week again next Tuesday for the final part of this series - the English edition.

This post totals to $4.50 (about €4.15)  for the older classes and $5.75 (about €5.30) for the younger classes.

FOR OLDER PRIMARY SCHOOL CLASSES:

The first one is a unique poster set that I came across a while back. It's an alphabet poster set with maths vocabulary made by Little Lovely Leaders for $2.50. It would be absolutely perfect for a maths-only classroom. However, I think this would look great in a maths corner of a mainstream or learning support classroom (maybe printed at 50% or 25% to fit them in if you are stuck for space!). 

"A mathematician is someone who..." posters from Kaitlynn Albani.  - €1 There are two versions of this poster - a male and a female.

3-D shape posters from Laura Duinkerken - Luv My Kinders - $1

FOR YOUNGER PRIMARY SCHOOL CLASSES:

Number Posters from A Teachable Teacher - $3.50

This one is a must-have for the younger end of primary school. These posters have touch spot numbers, tally marks, ten frames, base ten blocks and words. So many ways of representing a number on one poster.

These maths strategy posters by Amanda Richardson - $2.25

..................................................................

And now that you've seen what you can buy for the price of a pint, here are some things you don't need to spend anything on to acquire. Get downloading!

This one is free to make and you can just type it up or stencil it. TIP: Search for "display lettering" on Twinkl and you will find a myriad of patterned and themed lettering for creating headings or parts of displays.

Image source: Angela Silverwood via Clasdisplays.co.uk

If you don't have space for that one, you can download a printable version from Teacher's Pet. It's A4 but you could enlarge it to A3 on a photocopier and display it somewhere central for handy reference.

There's also this version of the same idea from Barnard Island. I think I may be printing this one in September! Apologies for the teeny tiny previews. Click on bigger image to see the previews better.

If you'd like to display word problem strategies, check out these posters from Réalta Ranga. There's an English version and a set as Gaeilge.

It's a good idea to display number resources in a variety of forms to suit different types of learners. In my school we use Numicon which I have found to be fantastic for my visual learners. They offer lots of free resources on their site including these number lines.

Image source: Numicon.co.nz

Here is another bright number line. This free to download set by Keri Brown contains a number line with ten frames and very cute alphabet posters. 

Again for the little ones, why not create a classroom calendar board? I used this owl-themed classroom birthdays display from Halle Hird in Across the Hall in 2nd Grade and this lovely owl-themed calendar set from Apple Girl Amber. 

Here's how they looked on the display board in my classroom (with a heading from Sparklebox).

Check out these "greater than" and "less than" posters are great visual aids from Ms. Forde's Classroom. Pick them up for free here.

I've had these odd and even posters from Step Into Second Grade in my classroom for the past few years. Click here to download them from her blog.