A couple of things that I took away from my RCA visit were: 1. Set the bar HIGH 2. Incorporate more music 3. Learning from each other is key
I’ll be the first to admit that I’m no Ron Clark. He has a lot more energy than I will ever have. Watching him teach made me break out in a sweat, ha! But after watching his 5th grade math lesson I knew I had to be better. So, I started brainstorming. How can I take this and make it my own? I may not be standing on the tables and dancing, but I can be a lot more active in the classroom. I decided to go with a safari theme…well, because I love a theme and I love the intensity of the song “Be Prepared.” We started each math lesson this week with a safari math challenge. We were either purchasing tickets to go on a safari, figuring out how many animals were around, or seeing how much it would cost my family to feed the elephants. I put on our thinking music (The instrumental version of Be Prepared that I found online). Then, we strategized, discussed, and corrected our errors. Let me just tell you… this wasn’t easy for everyone. And, that’s okay! Each day we got a little better and they started looking for how I was trying to trick them.
About the picture below…When they realized that each option would cost the same amount, their little faces were priceless! It was the look of “OHHHH, I’m with you Mrs. Lemons!! I know what you are doing here!!” Some problems were harder than others, but each day we reviewed addition and subtraction with regrouping. Normally I would end with an extra challenge of “How much money would I have wasted if I went with option __ over option __” {That obviously didn’t work with this problem :)}
I used Krista Wallden’s zoo animals to make our background… it just added a slice a cuteness! And, when they saw me pull it up they knew a challenge was coming their way!
We ended with a little elephant making. We used these elephants to show how to check our work. I can’t wait to hang these up for open house!
This little sweetie started checking all of her work after we learned how. She was so proud of herself for catching mistakes in her subtraction problems because she checked it before turning it in! My little teacher heart just went pitter-patter.
I can’t forget about the subtraction rhymes. I literally have nightmares about these chants. I would jump up and down, pounce across the room, and do really large hand movements to get my kids to constantly think about these rhymes. Whatever it takes, y’all! This flapbook is always a student favorite because they only have to regroup on 6 out of the 18 problems, ha!
Spin and Subtract is another fan favorite!
We ended our week with this pocket-book. Here’s a little tip for flapbooks, sorts, and pocket-books. Have your students bring you the paper to check BEFORE they do any cutting. My students aren’t allowed to cut the problems apart until they have a check mark from me (and I use my smelly markers to add a little happiness!!). This way I don’t have to look at little pieces of paper, AND I get to reteach right away. First, I circle incorrect answers. I always give my students one try to fix errors before I get involved. Then, if they come back and it’s still wrong, we go through it together. Knowing they have to get a check mark from me really helps motivate them to concentrate more the first time.
I mean, who wants to go through and check all those little papers?? Ain’t nobody got time for that! You may see that we highlighted the minus signs. That helped draw their eye to {subtract, subtract, subtract} as we would say. When addition and subtraction problems are mixed we can easily make mistakes if we aren’t careful! The highlighting helps a TON!
Great challenges, I love it! I also love the thought of incorporating more music but I'll have to work on just how to do that. You tube is blocked in my school system, so I miss out on a lot of those cute math videos.
You spoke to my little Disney Lovin' heart with your Lion King music! 🙂 I also incorporated music and movement with some of our concepts and strategies this week after watching your subtraction video, and the kids LOVED it!
Bless you and your babies with that triple digit subtraction!! I'm glad that you had an opportunity to go visit RCA. I heard that it not only wows but inspires and rejuvenated. Good for you that your take away was to “pep it up” in several ways. I wish I could go! Thanks for sharing and all your hard work.
Thanks so much for the videos and instrumental Lion King – that's a fabulous arrangement!! Good luck with triples – I can't even imagine 😉 Jen
Thanks for the ideas and regrouping videos. All the “how to” videos I found were different enough to be confusing. I finally made my own boring video with Educreations and sent home the link. These are much more fun!
Thanks for the ideas, looks really great. Love the videos. Thanks for putting them up for us. Will really help. Summer here in NZ and we are all crazy about the Cricket World Cup, great for place value!
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Great challenges, I love it! I also love the thought of incorporating more music but I'll have to work on just how to do that. You tube is blocked in my school system, so I miss out on a lot of those cute math videos.
You spoke to my little Disney Lovin' heart with your Lion King music! 🙂 I also incorporated music and movement with some of our concepts and strategies this week after watching your subtraction video, and the kids LOVED it!
Bless you and your babies with that triple digit subtraction!! I'm glad that you had an opportunity to go visit RCA. I heard that it not only wows but inspires and rejuvenated. Good for you that your take away was to “pep it up” in several ways. I wish I could go! Thanks for sharing and all your hard work.
Thanks so much for the videos and instrumental Lion King – that's a fabulous arrangement!! Good luck with triples – I can't even imagine 😉
Jen
Thanks for the ideas and regrouping videos. All the “how to” videos I found were different enough to be confusing. I finally made my own boring video with Educreations and sent home the link. These are much more fun!
Thanks for the ideas, looks really great. Love the videos. Thanks for putting them up for us. Will really help. Summer here in NZ and we are all crazy about the Cricket World Cup, great for place value!