Goals and Guess My Number Giveaway

Last year my goal was to focus on improving the way I teach writing, science, and history. I did a lot more writing, which was fabulous. For science we started science journals, although we didn't use them that consistently. In history, I slowed down the pace and used a lot more visual aids and charts. 

This year my focus is on improving math and writing, while continuing the improvements that I started this past school year. This is why I'm so excited about the math book study that I'm doing (more on that tomorrow!). It has even inspired me to do some more TpT creating. 

My plan is to go chapter by chapter and create fun and exciting ways to reinforce our math lessons. Our first chapter is on place value. It seems that many students come to me with weak number sense, so this Guess My Number activity will get them reasoning about numbers. 

Students will read through the clues and reason about what digits are in each place. 

Then they record their number on the recording sheet. The pack includes an alternate recording sheet that does not have the lines, but the lines are a great scaffold for students that need it.

I hope to have more place value activities coming soon. For now, I'll be giving away a copy of this to the first person to Guess My Number. It just happens to be my favorite one!

The details: 
-Only make one guess (the clues are open ended enough that it could be a few different answers)  
-You must be a follower of my blog
-You must agree that if you win, you will host your own Guess My Number giveaway on your blog (if you have one). I'll send this to the winner of your giveaway as long as they are following both of our blogs. 

Here are your clues:

My number has 2 digits.
The digit in the tens place is one more than the number in the ones place.
It is an odd number.


Good luck!! *UPDATE* Guessing is closed. The winner is Lori :)

Book Study: Building Mathematical Comprehension

Last summer when I was a baby blogger (well, I guess technically I still am), Brenda from Primary Inspired was hosting a book study on the book Guided Math by Laney Sammons. I was super late in joining and probably didn't join in the discussions all that much, but I loved the book. 

I had an overwhelming start to the year and didn't get to implement much of the amazing things I learned in the book, but I plan on it this year. 

I was doing back flips when I saw that she is hosting another book study this summer with her pal Beth from Thinking of Teaching.

I am so excited to read the book and actually be a part of the study from the beginning. This study's topic....drum-roll please....... 

 

They're giving away two copies too, so head over right away and enter their giveaway! The fun starts on June 8th so be ready! 

More and Less- A Math Activity

Every year the unit on place value, number sense, regrouping (for number sense, not computation) and rounding gives my kiddos such trouble. I need a lot of resources in my aresenal to allow them to work with place value concepts. 

This more and less activity where students draw out a card, write the number in the middle column of their recording sheet, and then fill in the more and less column was a great way to accomplish this. It helps students think about how place values change and what happens to numbers when this occurs. 

And with adorable ladybugs, perfect little polka dots, and the beautiful bright red color, you can't help but feel cheery while you're doing math!

 

I like the idea of having those little blanks before more and less so I can decide if I want everyone doing 100 more and 100 less, 10 more and 100 less, or if I want to individualize for each student. If I don't want to use the cards I'll just fill in the center column before running my copies.

The cards can be kept in a plastic baggie or container and set in your math center.

I started creating this resource way back in the beginning of the year and for whatever reason it never got finished. Probably because life and school happened! Earlier this month I was able to put the finishing touches on it. I'll definitely be using it when we get to review math center activities.

You can check it out here.