Tutoring Session Success!

Yesterday was a better day with my tutoring kids at the Boys and Girls Club! I found this game online through Teachers Pay Teachers called "Snowball!" and I decided to play it with them. They had a blast and it gave me a chance to see what they knew and did not as far as their computations skills.

A brief summary of the game: You have three dice and you can choose the level of difficulty to challenge your students. There are 3 different levels:

 Snowball 100 requires students to roll 2 dice and add the totals until they reach 100. The “twist”? If they roll doubles, they need to SUBTRACT that amount.

Snowball 200 requires students to roll 3 dice and add the totals until they reach 200. The “twist”? If they roll “3 in a row”, they have to dthe total
(ex. 3,4,5 or 1,2,3)

Snowball 300 requires students to roll 3 dice, add two, and multiply by the third until they reach 300. The “twist”? If they roll “3 in a row”, they have to subtract the total
(ex. 3,4,5 or 1,2,3)

I chose to do the Snowball 300 and the students had a blast! Throughout the game, I got a chance to test their multiply skills, their addition and subtraction skills and their understanding of positive and negative integers. I will definitely be playing this game again!

The Constitution

Short post today. I was in a middle school classroom on Monday and the class had to answer some simple questions about a few charts and tables about religions in North America. The final question was: "How does the diversity of religious groups in North America reflect the values of the American People and the principles of the U.S. Constitution?"

Out of 6 classes, only 1 student was able to answer the question without any prompting from me. It was amazing! Most of the students had no clue what the constitution was or what it said. Not sure what to make of this but what do you say?

When should we teach our children about the Constitution? Do you what the constitution says?  Post your idea in the comments.

I am a visual learner..your students could be too!

      

     I am a visual learner and I know that a good number of people out there are as well. It has been stated that VISUAL learners make up approximately 65 percent of the population. We need to be able to give students a visual to connect with as they learn concepts that are very abstract. I have created 4 MS Publisher files that are visuals for different Math Concepts (Order of Operations, Addition and Subtraction, Multiplication and Division, and Long Division) that can be very abstract for children to understand. Each visual explains the procedures to solves these types of problems. Check these resources out in my Teachers Pay Teachers Store!

Making a List and Checking it Twice

             

 (4th Grade)

      Today’s product spotlight is actually two products. Here are a couple checklists for introducing Common Core Standards. 

 We have a 3^rd and 4^th grade list available for download for a dollar each! 

          

    These easy-to-use checklists allow you to enter a date and see at a glance when you introduced or covered a standard in an easy-to-read format. 

    It is always a good idea to make sure that you are always ready to give an account for when you covered a particular standard in your classroom to your principal or Director of Educational Services. Check them out today!

(3rd Grade)

Return of the Homework Machine Book Study

            Kids think that having a machine to do their homework for them would be an awesome idea! Well the students in the book Return of the Homework Machine thought so too. In the book The Homework Machine a student named Brenton, who has a genius level intellect, has created such a device and at first things go well, then strange things begin to happen to he and three of his classmates as they use the machine. . The events of the sequel take place shortly after the events in the original. This book study has 20 pages of comprehension questions, extension activities, and even an End-of-book Exam to see if the students were truly paying attention. I have also included a copy of the Simple 6 rubric to guide you in the grading of the writing portion. Check it out!

 

No Talking...Just Kidding

          Today’s product spotlight is about my “No Talking Book Study”. 

It is based on Andrew Clements book, No Talking, which centers on a group of fifth grade students at Laketon Elementary School who decide to have a contest to see who can talk less, boys or girls. They develop rules and the contest begins but as they will find, it comes at a price in some cases.

            This book study includes 16 pages of comprehension questions, vocabulary and extension activities to make sure that you and your students are getting the most out of the book. You could use this for small intervention groups, guided reading or even whole class read-aloud.

            You could also challenge your class to try the “no talking” experiment that the students of Laketon Elementary went through. It could lead to a better appreciation of all the words we waste in order to get our point across. Have fun!

Keeping First Things First!

Today is the launch day of my Blog, the “Lesson Clearinghouse” and I wanted to talk a little about keeping first things first and this lesson I created does just that and more.

This particular item is called, “Sentence Scavenger Hunt” and it is meant to serve as an assessment of sorts. 

This item, tells students to find the first word in the sentence and also to identify the end mark of the sentence. 

This correlates to the Common Core Standard RF 1.1a “Recognize the distinguishing features of a sentence (e.g., first word, capitalization, ending punctuation)”

This mini-assessment will give you a quick glimpse to see if your students are grasping this important concept or if you need to revisit it.

Over the weeks to come, I will highlight another lesson or unit available through my Teachers Pay Teachers Store. I hope that you are able to find something that will be of use to you. 

Serving You One Teacher to Another,

Adrian Selmon