A Sleigh Full of Goodies- Day 1

We are off and away on our sleigh ride of freebies and crafts. I hope you find something, many things, to enjoy and can link up for  all the fun as well. 

Head on over to Extra Special Teaching for today's goodie. 

I am also offering up a freebie today! My class has been working hard for a few weeks now on sorting and data management. I thought a great treat for all their hard work would be some time to sort through yummy holiday candy, elves and of course...presents!! Enjoy!
Click on the image below to get your own copy.

Grab the code and post the linky on your blog too! The more the merrier. get the InLinkz code

Christmas Is Coming....and So Are the Freebies!

That's right! This is your chance to get 12 days worth of fabulous freebies in time to celebrate the holidays with your kiddos. 

Thanks to Ashley from MeAndMarie for the fabulous blog hop button!

Each day there will be a different freebie or craft highlighted on a blog for you to visit and enjoy. I will also be hosting a linky party for the entire 12 days so you can link up with your own Christmas freebies and crafts.

The fun starts on December 1st so make sure you check back in...and be on the look out for more fun holiday blog hops I will be promoting!

Christmas Blog Hop Bloggers Wanted

I am working on putting together a Christmas blog hop of freebies/ideas/crafts etc and am looking for bloggers who want to join in the fun.

Please email me at thinkingofteaching@gmail.com if you want in on this collaborative project!

If you were listening at my classroom door today...

...you would have heard this lovely exchange.


The conversation in my class today-
Me: "Anyone know which holidays are coming up soon?"
Student: "Christmas?"
Me: "Yep"
Student: "Christmas Eve?" (Thought Christmas kinda covered that one?)
Me: "Okay, what else?"
Student: "April Fool's Day?"
Me: ".....umm, no. That's in April."
Student: "St Patrick's Day?"
Me: "How about I just tell you?"


How many weeks till the holidays?

Jelly Bean Data Management (Freebie)

My students and I are still working our way through our Number Sense and Numeration concepts...and it's not taking forever, but I thought it would be good to spice things up a little with another math strand (also, because I need to get the other 4 strands done too!!). Data Management is always a fun and interesting unit, no matter what grade you teach. 

On a separate note, I decided my shelves were looking a little messy so last week after a full evening and morning of parent-teacher interviews I decided to fix them up.

Then I decided I wanted more "wall space" to hang anchor charts in my class, so I put up some sticky hooks on my shelves and ...presto!! More space to hang chart paper. 

Keep reading below to see the charts I hung here. 

I've decided that graphing and sorting will become the main focus of our math stretches, math tubs and hands on activities but that I will continue to teach the needed number sense concepts during my guided math lessons. 

We have been doing a variety of different data collection math stretches since the school year started and have created a few graphs together. We discussed the parts of a bar graph, and created an anchor chart for a frequency table, pictograph and bar graph using the same data. We also wrote some statements about our graphs to analyze the data.

Ta da!!! Data management charts hung on my shelving. 

And finally....the freebie!! Enjoy.

I plan to create a second activity to go along with this one so check back soon. 

Teachers Helping Teachers

Are you interested in helping the teachers affected by Hurricane Sandy?

Click on the image above to be directed to The ESOL Odyssey and learn how you can help!

Regrouping with Base Ten (Freebie)

My students and I have moved on to addition in our math studies. In my province Grade 3's are expected to do 2-digit addition using mental math and 3-digit addition using student created and standard algorithms. 

Here's a quick little freebie for you. I've created 2 versions depending on the needs of your students.

Large 2-digit numbers

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Small 2-digit numbers

Nothing At All To Do With Teaching What So Ever

I've been working on all sorts of posts.

Math workshop posts.

Freebie posts.

Follow up prediction posts.

(Finally getting back to) Follower Feature posts.

But...I've also been battling the flu/food poisoning. My daughter had surgery. It's report cards. The rain hasn't stopped for 5 days now.

Do you ever have these weeks? Separately none of these things would probably faze me all that much. Combine them all into a 5 day period....wow.

The biggest one has been my daughter's surgery. She had a small cyst in her right eyebrow since birth and the doctor thought it best to take it out and check it...just in case. I've known all along that it wasn't a big deal. It's barely even a surgery, but watching them- strangers basically- take away my daughter while she cried and reached out for me was too much. As soon as she was out of sight I collapsed into my husband's arms. For the first time in her little life she was with people I didn't know very well, hadn't researched or spent considerable time with and she was in a room I probably couldn't even find if I wanted to. I mean, I couldn't even find my way back to the waiting room. Some doctor took pity on a crying mother clutching a baby blanket and directed my husband and I to where we wanted to go.

In all actuality she was probably only away from us for 60 minutes tops. She was wide awake when I arrived in the recovery room. They barely even put her under, just enough to give local anesthetic and complete the necessary steps to remove the cyst. But it was long enough. It was too long.

It occurred to me last night that I never once asked to see anyone's ID badge. I didn't even really hear their names when they told me. I trusted the system and allowed strangers to take my daughter, perform surgery on her and trusted I would get her back. 

I did.

And she's fine. She's got a little black eye, a bunch of new toys and an appointment to go back and get her stitches out. She got to eat as many popsicles as she wanted on the peds floor. She had a long nap the afternoon after the surgery and never looked back. 

I, on the other hand, am still exhausted and traumatized days later.

I promise to get some real posts out soon especially now that I have reached the end of my babbling. If you are still here, thanks for listening. 

I needed that. 

Frayer Model Freebie

I have a quick freebie for you tonight. I have been using the Frayer Model for many years in my classroom, mostly when I taught the upper grades. Now that we are a few weeks into the school year I decided to see if my Grade 3's were ready to use them as well!

This is the small one that I use for my student's math journals.

Small Frayer Model- blank

This is a larger one that I use for notes in classes like Social Studies and Science.

Large Frayer Model- blank

This is a subject specific one that my students and I used in our Social Studies unit on Urban and Rural Communities.

Urban and Rural Frayer Model

I think Frayer models make for great notes as it gives students a written definition, examples and a visual reminder of the concept. 

Hope you find it useful!

Font: Rowdy Spunky from Rowdy in Room 300

Math Class Routines- Whole Class Lesson

We are still working on getting Math Workshop up and running....slowly, slowly...sooooooo slowly!

In the meantime we are working on in Math. Here are some highlights of what I've been doing. 

Place Value lesson board- big ideas and sample problem

Number line math stretch

Skip counting beans!

So many different ways to count!

This is my math lesson board. We start with a minds on or simple problem that we complete together and discuss. 

Here's what we came up with for our skip counting lesson. 

Then we look at the lesson problem and break it down. What is it asking us? What are the key words and what tools can we use to solve this problem. 

And then they work!! Once the class has completed the problem all of the solutions are posted and debriefed as a class. This was our first time posting the student work so I modelled the type of math talk I expect and wrote anecdotes one the board to show patterns in our counting. 

Close-up of student work.

UPDATE!!! Here is the picture of the Big Ideas/Highlights we brainstormed as a class.

And then the sample lesson is posted. For this lesson the student completed a question independently in their Math Journals. It was:

How many ways can you count to 200? 363? 

It was interesting to see what they came up with- counting by 2s, 5s, 10s, 20s, 40s, 25s etc. And what they didn't... three students told me it was impossible to count to 363...hmmm?

I guess more practice is still needed!!

How do you organize your whole class math lessons?