Understanding Multiplication

Well, Hello! This year has been moving quickly, I can hardly believe we are in the middle of October!  This week we began our first of three chapters on multiplication in third grade.  I absolutely love, love, love Go Math's Understanding Multiplication chapter and how their self confidence grows as they learn each new strategy. 

On Day 1 we glued this fabulous foldable from The Busy Class on TPT, throughout the week, we filled out each strategy portion.  

Our first strategy was Drawing Groups...or pizzas with pepperoni...or cookies with chocolate chips, you'd think those little darlings never ate. Good grief.  So, after our debate about drawing groups/pizzas/cookies we continued on to move around the classroom with dry erase boards and recreated multiplication word problems using ordinary school supplies like the example above.  

This is my second year in a row starting off my unit with this lesson and I've been happy with my results both times.  Kids end the lesson feeling excited and confident about multiplication. Win! 

I always have fun working with arrays! I'm pretty sure my students love them just about as much as I do.  This year we created simple arrays during Computer Lab using Pixi and virtual stickers.  I love this dog sled racing team!

Since my kiddos grasped onto arrays quickly I decided to do a mini lesson on area.  This game was a ton of fun way to work on that skill and absolutely no prep work for me.  Again....WIN! Students needed graphing paper for each pair/trio, a separate color crayon, and two dice.  Players rolled the dice and created an array to match the multiplication equation.  The student who filled up the most boxes with their color wins.  

However, the showstopper for these little thirdsters was taking snapshots of arrays around the classroom and hallway.  I loved seeing my students find math within our real world! It's so exciting to see them so enthusiastic! 

The activity really was not anything Earth shattering...we used Show Me to import our pictures and write the appropriate multiplication sentence.  

Wish us luck as we attempt to tackle on the serious stuff next week....interpreting multi-operational word problems. Yikes! 

Tune into Technology: QR Code Scavenger Hunts

I can't believe this is the last week of iTeach1:1 and Learning to the Core's Tune into Technology link party! I really have been enjoying all of the amazing ideas out there this summer.

 (Speaking of summer....is it really August already?!?)

This week's theme is: QR Codes in the classroom.  I LOVE using QR codes! First of all, they are extremely easy to create for your classroom, they're free if you use a site like www.qrstuff.com, and they make you look super 'techie' with minimal effort. Yeah, buddy! Sign me up! 

I've used QR codes on my newsletter and on the cover of my parent handbook to link to our classroom website, as well as on my Scholastic book order letter, which linked to our Scholastic page for on-line orders.  However, my students' favorite way to use QR codes was during a scavenger hunt.  

Scavenger hunts were a favorite activity in my room to either introduce a new topic or review before a test.  I upped the fun factor by making our last one into a QR code scavenger hunt.  Students worked in partners.  One student was the 'photographer' who scanned the QR codes on the iPad using a free QR scanner app.  The second student was the 'secretary' who wrote the information discovered from the code onto a recording sheet on a clipboard.  Students switched jobs half way through the hunt, it ensure no whining about unfairness. ;)

This year I plan on incorporating more scavenger hunts into my school day and I thought I'd share them with you too! 

I've created three QR Code Scavenger Hunts so far.  Each of these products include a recording sheet, QR codes to be arrange around the room, and an answer key for the teacher.  

The scavenger hunt topics include Reading Genres, Figurative Language, and The Seven Continents (this happens to be my first S.S. unit this fall) 

You can check out these products at my TPT store by clicking on any of the images above.  Thanks again for reading and a HUGE thank you to the girls at iTeach1:1 and Learning to the Core for hosting this amazing party this summer!

Integrating Technology into Math

 

I'm happy to link up again with Kristin at iTeach 1:1 and Aylin & Amanda at Learning to the Core for another week of Tune into Technology! For those of you that don't know, I'm thrilled to be able to have a 1:1 classroom this year with my district's iPads!  At the end of this past school year I had the opportunity to experiment with the iPads in my classroom and I'm really looking forward to all of the posts that link up to this PARTAY!

 

One of my favorite apps to use was ShowMe.  ShowMe became my best friend! I used this app throughout the day and with many different subjects, however it was used almost daily during math.  This app served as an interactive whiteboard for my students during my math lessons.   Students also created recordings of themselves solving math problems independently and then posted them for me to view at a later time.  I LOVE that the videos were there in my inbox waiting for me to grade at my convenience!

 

I also created videos with ShowMe on some sample problems from math.  My students were able to view them on their iPads while at school.  This gave my students another resource to use while waiting for me to get to their desk during independent work.  Independent problem solving!? I'll take it!! Here is a sample video of one I created on finding elapsed time on a number line:

 

These same videos I was able to upload onto my classroom website for viewing at home.  I call this section Homework Helper.  With the new Common Core standards I found that some of my parents were confused by some of the new vocabulary and strategies being used.  By watching the video it provided a review for students and a quick tutorial for those panicked parents! ;)

 

I could go on and on about ShowMe, it really was a great asset to my classroom and I think I was only just scratching at the surface of what it can really do!

 

Be sure to check out all of the other great ideas at the Tune into Technology party! 

 

Happy Birthday America!