Jenga to Review Math

In a normal year I use Jenga blocks to review for tests all year long. I have 8 sets of blocks, enough for each group to have one as we review. 

It’s a pretty basic set up. I print off task cards, or some activity. The kids work independently to solve the problem, then have a discussion about their answers. 

Did they get the same answer? Then they discuss the different strategies they used. 

Did they get different answers? Then they work together to figure out where the error was and discuss strategies. 

By their discussions they are showing their understanding.

After they have a discussion they all take a turn to play a block in Jenga. 

Then they move onto the next problem. 

Solve

Discuss

Learn

Play 

It’s the same kind of thing with a lot of games. 

With distance learning the kids have missed out on that kind of fun, so now that kids are back in the classroom I figured that we could do the same kind of thing in breakout sessions. We tackled this today for our math review and tomorrow we will do it again with the other set of kids.... a different review with the other half of the blocks.  I split each set of blocks so that the stacks were shorter and stacking didn't take as long.

The kids in the classroom are once again the leaders. They have the jenga sets. I stuck the problems in their team channel. The teammates at home cheer on their in class group member, but they also have to help solve the problems.  

I wanted to make sure that only one in class kid is in a group, so I hand picked groups and started the meetings myself, instead of the random assortment we usually do. Each group has one person from group A, one from B, and one from our DL kids. Thankfully my class is split pretty equally.

Hope you had a great day! 

Smarter than a 5th Grader - Math Review

For a while when my own boys were younger we would watch the Are you Smarter than a 5th Grader show as a family. We like those kinds of knowledge shows. Then when I moved to 5th grade, it was a perfect fit to review everything for math. I even found the actual board game in a thrift store and was able to grab the logo to give some official decoration to my classroom. Sometimes that’s all it takes to make it feel magical. Grabbing a logo from a Google search, and projecting it on the white board, and the kids feel extra excitement. 

In a normal year the kids work in teams to create the project. It’s a whole thing, they have to brainstorm a game board - using large poster board. The game boards, game pieces, and corresponding question cards/answer key then are displayed during Open House. Kids quiz their parents, they drag their friends in to play their games, it’s a big deal. They love it!! 

This year I still want kids to have that experience, but I’m giving them the option to go digital, or keep it as a hard copy. All independent. Either way, I get to see their finished product. Of course I want to see their game board, but I’m really looking at their questions and answer key. :)

Here’s how they start. Before any game board is created they have to create questions in specific categories. (Just like the real game show.) Since it’s all math related, they have to come up with 5 problems in each category. 

#1-5 Place Value

#6-10 Order of Operations

#11-15 Multiplication

#16-20 Division

#21-25 Decimals

#26-30 Fractions

#31-35 Graphing

#36-40 Volume

Now they are welcome to use their math book as inspiration, but we always have the deal that they have to come up with their own problems. Word problems being at least 1 of the questions in each category since they are tricky. Usually I give them 40 index cards, and they label the cards with the specific question number and category. This year I’m thinking of just having them stick it all in a PowerPoint.

But what good are questions if they don’t have an answer key for our guests to check their answers? So an answer key must be tucked into a file folder near the board game when the games are played. The file folder also helps to contain all the little pieces once everything is complete.

So creating 40 questions, creating an answer key (and checking their answers to make sure they are correct), and then finally the teams can work together to make a game board. 

I give them a lot of choices. They can do something like Chutes and Ladders, they can do something like Monopoly, they can create something totally new. They need game pieces, they can borrow dice, a sand timer, play money, or even a bell, etc. It’s a way to have fun and review. They must test out the game to make sure it makes sense. They must have directions clearly on the game. 

When everyone is done, we then move into the playing phase. One member of the team stays at their game to explain the rules, while the other members switch around to play the other games. We play the games the following weeks until the last week of school. 

This year, the kids will be creating their games over the 2 weeks before the state math test. They have to turn the different parts in for their daily math independent work. We will also be doing more review in those final few days together, but this game is the bulk of their review.  

Hope this helps,

ELA Review - Shout Outs for Great Resources

In one week the kids will be taking the ELA state tests. You know, the tests that I didn't think would actually happen, but it's now back on... hmmm... I think I have figured out a game plan for testing... But first it’s last minute review time. We have been spiral reviewing all year, and with ELA they either know it or they don't.  But usually they do... I finally settled on a last minute cram plan over spring break - in class vs homework, whole group vs breakout groups. All with the knowledge that in just 5 days my class will not be altogether much anymore. It will be 3 separate groups, moving at their own paces, as I am with the kids testing for hours upon hours...

Back to ELA...

When I moved from 4th to 5th grade I didn’t really know what to expect for state testing, I mean I knew it would be similar, but there's the additional pressure of learning something new.  Jennifer Findley made it easy with her blog posts and her resources.  I met her in real life years ago at a conference, she was so friendly and personable.  I felt like I could trust her advice, so with the move to 5th grade, it was easy to trust her blog.  Today I wanted to share some links that I have found helpful.

Her blog posts about testing... she even has a some free resources. I'm all about not recreating the wheel... I use her post about Test Taking Strategies throughout the year.  I use her free Reading Test Prep Helpers as reference in their notebooks.  I also use her 10 Days of Test Prep Freebies and then have modified to fit my own classroom.  I also use her Test Prep Coloring Pages to help relieve some stress...

This week I am using her Reading Test Prep Task Cards whole class, a handful of questions per day. The last couple of years they have helped to hit all of those standards one more time. I have them printed and will snap a picture to add to our morning conversation. That way the kids at home can click the picture and enlarge it on their own screens. I will then put my copy under the ladybug so kids in class can also follow along.

I also purchased her ELA task cards Rock the Test task cards. I have those prepped for one day to slide into our color channels. It’s a couple pages of task cards per skill. One center per color channel. The kids will get into breakout groups to have a race, and will slide through the rainbow together, answering questions. My in class kids will use their pouch of Brain Flakes to show off what color (aka center) their team is currently working on. 

Rock and Roll theme - I bumped it up a notch and brought in my son’s musical decorations from his bday celebration, and even bought a banner to keep at school. The kids went nuts yesterday when they walked in and saw it. 

Another day we will be working through Jennifer's Survival themed Reading Review.  It's all about survival this year... This is both informational and fiction.  There's also a cute bulletin board prompt to put up.  

For Homework, the kids will be doing another set of review task cards by forkin4th. I'm uploading the task cards to their TEAMs assignment, and the kids will fill in their answers on a separate page before uploading.  

I also like to put these little testing notes by Math Mojo on their desks for testing days.  Just a little something to let them know that I know it's not fun, but that I'm proud of them for their perseverance.

All these resources have helped me keep my sanity in the jump to 5th grade.  I use other things for all year long, most that I've found and bought, some that I've created. I'm the type of person that needs to know that something works before I will buy it, so that was my hope today. Just in case you didn't already know these existed.  These are great review and they are awesome.  I hope this helps you!

Spring Break 2021

It’s spring break. It’s been a beautiful week, full of family time, both inside and outside.

Guess what we’ve done this week?

Easter was a lot of fun. A lot of those traditions that I thought my boys have outgrown, but they haven’t. Kids are still kids.  It’s just changed so the boys were running things. Our egg hunt this year was gigantic. One kid hid eggs for his brothers in the front yard, another kid hid eggs in the backyard, and one hid downstairs in the house. Then we moved from location to location as the other two went racing all over finding the eggs. Some eggs were filled, some were empty. So still the challenge of finding all the eggs, but they didn’t know how much candy they got until it was all over. They had a lot of funwatching their brothers. So much joy. 

We also decorated eggs... This year I used the air fryer to hard boil them. 250 for 16 minutes, then an ice bath for 5 minutes. It worked great and it was nice I didn’t have to boil water, wait for my instant pot to come to pressure, or wait for the oven to preheat. It was definitely the easiest and fastest way to get a lot of eggs done.

Our church had a Good Friday walk through in the parking lot, and Easter services were also outside, chairs in the parking lot, and then we had Easter lunch with my dad and sister. It was really nice. 

The rest of the week has been doing random projects , organizing, and relaxing. 

My oldest is a junior in high school. So this week has also been about visiting college campuses. We’ve visited 5 schools around here. 4 on a single day. With all 5 of us in the car for 6 hours. That’s a lot of numbers. Going back and forth with benefits of junior colleges vs university. Private school vs. public. Small college vs larger. Money stuff... lots of money stuff... Thinking of majors... timelines... Along with all of that I’ve been wrestling that he’s old enough to do all of this. What happened to my baby boy? 

I’ve also spent a lot of time in the passenger seat as my kid practices with his drivers permit. The goal was to tackle 8 hours during spring break. Learning night driving skills and working his way to get ready for the freeway. He’s driven me all over this town and the back roads. Then he’s done the same with his dad. I’m not ready for the freeway. I think he’s ready though.

Have I mentioned lately how much of a control freak I am? 

Yesterday would have been my mom’s birthday. I spent some time with my dad, had her favorite meal for lunch, and we went through their wedding album. Most days don’t hurt anymore, but yesterday was hard. I miss her a lot. She was a great lady, and memories are sweet.

Today I get to have a date day with my husband. Again. After the last year of our dates being the extent of runnings errands together, not being able to leave the boys at home alone for too long, a few Saturdays ago we went to Half Moon Bay for a day. Dropped the kids off with my dad and headed to the beach. It was to celebrate our anniversary. 19 years. :) Today we are doing the same thing but heading to Monterey. I feel blessed. It’s a beautiful day. I hope places are open. That’s the hard part. Not knowing what is open or not. That’s why the kids aren’t coming with us. Well that's one reason...

It’s nice to spend time as a couple. Walking around, not on a schedule, holding hands, sitting and chatting, relaxing in a beautiful setting. I’m so excited. When we are in parent mode there's always a schedule, and we have to keep going and going... we are just like that Energizer Bunny. Today I get to just be with my hubby and I am grateful.  

But come tomorrow real life will descend again, and I have to open up my plan book and make sure everything is ready to go for next week. I have my list with all the review. We have 1 week before state testing starts and it’s time to kick it into full gear. There is so much more to prep with hybrid. 

I wish spring break didn’t have to end. I hope you have had a wonderful break too. 

April Fools and Spring Celebration

I really don't like April Fools in the classroom.  I'm not a prankster.  I have no poker face. But I thought maybe this year with a mask, I don't have to work too hard to hide it.  

Today was fun.  

First up, did you know that today was really March 32nd? It really is... honest.  :)  It took until the end of our morning for someone to notice the board.  Maybe they were just being polite.  

I also pulled out the Egged On game.  I do it every year on the day before break.  I filled most of them with a little water, some were empty.  Then I let the kids at home choose which in class kids had to come to the web cam and splat themselves.  We did one person and one egg between each of the subject transitions today.  ;) The in class got to choose which egg they wanted from the container. A lot of kids got wet.  Ha!

This turned on me though, when the kids at home... then the kids in class decided for me to do the final 2 eggs.  The first one I was safe - it was empty. The second one had a lot of water and I got wet. All for the name of fun.  

Another prank that I pulled was the State and Capitals Word Search by Fitted to 4th.  5th graders LOVE word searches.  I love word searches.  With studying our states, this ties in perfectly.  I uploaded it to our TEAM files so the kids at home had access, but I also had printed off a set for myself.  I then took a picture of my papers and added it to our meeting conversation.  My printed pages I put under the document camera for the kids in class.  

We started with the States word search. Calling on kids both in person and online as they found the different locations. They were having a blast.  Then in the 5 minutes before recess we started the Capitals one. I kept encouraging them, said it was a little trickier, that we had to remember our capitals that we'd been studying.  The kids kept saying they were finding them, but it's filled with tons of false starts.  Then they started finding other words... They were getting frustrated since the States one had been so easy.  Finally told them April Fools and we all got a good laugh.  

Other random fun things from today...

*After recess I "made" them get out their playdough to create a 2 minute bunny to show off in front of the camera.  They nicknamed their bunnies either cute or creepy.  Kids at home also had their play dough that they had picked up from the office.

*I gave them a sappy speech about the Glow Eggs.  

*We took time for that Bunny Art project.  I showed off Zentangle Patterns and they decorated their bunnies.  A lot of bunnies ended up with mustaches. :)  

*We did our normal end of week things as well.

It was a lot of fun and now it's really Spring Break!!!  

Is it Spring Break Yet? Egg-citing Fun for Next Week

This year vacations have been much appreciated.  A chance to put down that extra load of crazy and just relax.  But we still have a week to go until blessed Spring Break.

Don't get me wrong, I absolutely love my kiddos.  They make my day, every single day.  I feel like I need that disclaimer in this post.

Next week I'm making it a review week, and a week to have some fun.  I need fun.  They need fun. I'm taking a week off of major grading and giving them Kindness Homework instead.  It's a win - win. Especially since it's also progress report time... Kindness to their families, kindness to friends, and our classmates.  We will brainstorm things each day they can do.  

I am going to tackle an egg hunt for in person next week.  Not a huge deal since they will each grab only one egg outside on the grass near our line. Inside each egg is a review ELA task card.  Just printed it a little small and tucked it inside the eggs.

During class, they will take turns opening up their one egg, going up to the webcam, and presenting it to the kids at home.  Then I'll jump on my camera to give instructions as to how to review with each question.  In class and at home kids will respond over in our group channels so they can show off their work to their classmates.  Group A (Monday's questions) are all about fiction strategies - so we will use our novel to respond to questions about plot, character development, setting, viewpoint, theme, context clues, inferences, etc.., and Group B (Tuesday's questions) are all about non-fiction, so we will use our SS  textbooks as resources to review cause and effect, compare and contrast, problem and solution, etc.  

Keep it simple... but also have fun.

Now Thursday I want to have a fun day... well, mainly fun.  

As for a craft - I LOVE this Bunny Craft from Teach Starter.  The kids use Zentangle designs to personalize it.  We haven't done much art this year since the kids haven't had access to many printers or coming to school for pick up, but now that 2/3 of them are able to get it from their desk to bring home... well we are tackling it. 

It's super easy to just print and go.  I need easy.  You can also google Teach Starter Funky Easter Bunny Craft and a lot of designs pop up to give ideas to the kids.  Usually I have them do their own thing, and then if they get super stuck they can take a peek.  

I'm also focusing on ways that the kids can GLOW this week.  I always give out an egg to the kids, have for years, and this year decided to choose Glow in the Dark eggs as the treat.

I found Glow Eggs over on Amazon.  They just need to be put in strong light for 3-5 minutes and then they will glow for up to an hour. Focusing on showing kindness to others, preserving when things get hard (aka review), and their own unique characteristics.  

Here's what I wrote on my note...

Hope you had a great day!  

Remembering our Easter Party

Well Spring Break is almost over... so I've been remember what we 

did that Thursday before Easter. 

It was a magical day in the classroom.  

It was also exhausting, but oh so fun!  

My shopping list for the day included:

*40 Easter Eggs

*3 bags of Jelly Beans

*Toothpicks and Paper Plates

*Peeps

*Paper Bags (Lunch size)

*Skittles

 One of our first activities was making our Easter baskets.  Yes, they are 4th graders but they still love art projects.  It's a matter of taking a bag, cutting 2 slits for the handles, and stuffing the rest of the bag inside.  I filled them with little treats later on in the day... 

 Let me show you a picture from years ago:

We also had an Easter Egg Hunt outside.  

To make it educational, I tucked ten Reading Strategies inside the eggs using my Reading Exit Slips.  I shrunk them down to 4 sheets per page (16 little task cards), and then we folded them to easily fit inside the eggs.  

The kids had a scavenger hunt outside and had to find the 10 different strategies and then relate them to our classroom read aloud.  :)  I'm so sneaky...  

Candy, candy, candy... So much candy!  

In Math, we used Skittles to review operations and fractions using Teaching with a Mountain View's Skittle Math.

We met with our 1st grade Reading Buddies and made Stem Towers using Jelly Beans and toothpicks.  Their creations were pretty impressive.   

Then we used Peeps to go through a little science experiment observing what happens in 4 types of liquids.  Here's the PDF with what my students filled out for both of these activities:  

All in all it was a fun day!  

Jelly Bean Towers

Jelly Bean Towers?  What a cool idea!  I saw Ari's towers the other week, and I decided it was the perfect way to wrap up the last day before Spring Break.  We work with our 1st grade Reading Buddies on a weekly basis, and they love doing engineering projects together.  

Here is some of what our kids created:

The kids had the challenge of using 10 jelly beans and 10 toothpicks to create the tallest tower.  

When done, the kids practiced measuring to the nearest inch and centimeter.  

I was so proud of them!  Our tallest tower turned out to be 14 inches.  Wow!

Spring Break Five for Friday

I have loved spring break- a chance to get away and relax.

This year we took the boys to Pismo again, it's a favorite place. 

We had so much fun.  Played at the dinosaur park, went to the children's discovery museum, had old fashion ice cream sandwiches at a little place called Batch, played on the beach, went shopping, had the traditional breakfast of cinnamon rolls, and I finished a book.  Now we're home and have a couple of days to tackle the projects around the house . 

I am so blessed to be their mama.  

Hubby is steam cleaning our downstairs carpets, and I'm washing all the curtains. We all worked on clearing the clutter from the surfaces so we can see the actual wood of the tables.  The boys will be planting our garden tomorrow, and we're meeting up with my sister in law (and baby niece) at the zoo.  Only 5 more school weeks until this relaxation is the norm. 

I did "work" a little this break- I started some math puzzles for my class.  They aren't uploaded yet, but I have place value, rounding, and adding/subtracting larger numbers covered.  Math is forefront on my brain since I had to also go and pick up my brand new teacher editions at the IMC.  

I also got a few packages delivered this week for next year - a class set of 5 gallon tubs (new textbook tubs for under their desks), and 60 sparkly student size whiteboards.  Now I just have to find a place to store them at school since there is NO ROOM in our garage.  

Sorry for so much rambling - my brain is going a million miles a minute...

  

Make sure you check back tomorrow, my BBB's have joined forces with tips, freebies, and a giveaway. 

Linking this all up with Doodlebugs and her famous Five for Friday linky party!  

Hope you had a great day!