Math Battle Games

A resource that I shared with my school before we left out on summer break is an easy math game that can be created at home and adjusted to fit the different ages and abilities of the students.

Math Battle Games are similar to the "war" game that we used to play as kids with playing cards. Students can use cards Ace through 9, where ace = 1, or they can use paper and create their own number cards (4 of each number, 1-9).

This game can be used to practice addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division of whole numbers, fractions, and decimals if you create a decimal point as well.

Depending on the level of the students, each player can flip over a certain amount of cards to make 1-2 digit numbers, then perform the operation. Whoever has the higher answer gets to take all of the cards from that round. Continue flipping cards and playing rounds until one player has all of the cards, or the students decide they want to stop (in which case whoever has the most cards wins).

You can get your free download by checking out the resources section of the blog!

Oops... I did it again!

*Cue the Britney Spears music*

I stumbled across this blog while deciding to update my Google Site with new technology information and realized that holy moly I had completely forgotten about this place!

New goal, update the entire school year in the next 2 months. That means LOTS of new blog posts coming. I put it on my pretty new planner I just got so it is going to happen.

Now, let's reflect on this school year. This year was yet again different than my previous years. I am still teaching 5th grade, but this year we decided to do a 3-way switch. One teacher taught reading/writing, one teacher taught science/social studies/health and I taught math. It had its ups and downs. I teach elementary school, so one of my favorite things is having my class all day, or at least only two classes. Nope, instead I know taught 85 students. This part I did not really like. If I wanted to just teach one subject and 100 students I would move to middle school. 

The other issue was the schedule. I had my first block for 90 minutes, now this was probably more like 80 by the time announcements were over, all the late buses had arrived, and the breakfast line ended. This was AMAZING! 90 minutes to teach math?! The second block then came in and some days I also had them for 90 minutes! However, two days they had double specials which meant that my math time was now cut down to only 60 minutes. Still can't complain. They adjusted fairly well. My third block was split. I had them for about 20-25 minutes, then we had recess and lunch, and then we came back after lunch for the last hour of the day. Again, an amazing amount of time, but sometimes getting them to settle back in after lunch was challenging.

So on top of learning a new schedule, the county I work for also adopted a new math curriculum. We began using the math curriculum from the San Francisco Unified School District. I had mixed feelings about this. One thing I love about math is being creative, but this curriculum was scheduled down to the day. Each unit had specific lessons for each day, down to what to say, what to do, the resources to use, etc. Some teachers may love this, but I struggled at first wondering when I could veer off of this curriculum to do something I wanted to do with the students. I came to love the curriculum and feel that my students really did learn. My absolute favorite thing was the layout of the units. It spent plenty of time focusing on one topic of the math standards and allowed the students to build a good foundation before moving on to the next.

Lastly, we all know how our school year ended... Covid-19 put a big dent in the school year. March 13 I left the building not realizing that this would be the last time I would set foot in the school until my assigned day to clean up my classroom. Distance Learning will be a WHOLE set of blogs. It definitely had its ups and downs as well.

I feel like I have been on a merry-go-round that hasn't stopped for about 3 months now. But I am back! This time I don't plan to go away.

5th Grade Math Review Olympics

Our end of year state testing kind of snuck up on me this year and I wanted to come up with an easy and fun way for my students to review the math topics we had covered throughout the school year.

Enter, the Math Olympics MCAP Review! I created 10 "events" that the students needed to complete. Because all of my students work at different paces when it comes to math, I did not make this a race to see who could finish first. The goal was for ALL of my students to finish all 10 events during the two days that they had to complete the tasks. I allowed the students to work with a partner, but each student had to complete the task. As groups started to finish on the second day, I asked them to then go and help other groups that needed support with the events. Again, our goal was for ALL of the students to finish all 10 events.

Here is a description of each event:

Event #1 - Place Value
Place Value Sort

Event #2 - Expressions
This activity is from Laura Candler. Before making copies, I solved the last 3 expressions and made sure to make a mistake each time. (Order of Operations activity)

Event #3 - Multiplication
Page 12 of the PDF has the handout for this event. The students have to solve a multiplication problem using the area model.

Event #4 - Division
This activity is from Jennifer Findley. Visit the website here to get the activity. I chose one of the problems to use for this event.

Event #5 - Rounding
This activity is from Jennifer Findley. Visit the website here to get the activity.

Event #6 - Add or Subtract
Page 13 of the PDF has the handout for this event. The students read the two word problems and determine if they need to add or subtract, then solve the problem.

Event #7 - Fractions #1
This activity is from Jennifer Findley (Are you noticing a trend? She has amazing stuff!). Visit the website here to get the activity. I chose the Fraction Review page for this event and one of the dice that has different denominators on it.

Event #8 - Fractions #2
This activity is from Jennifer Findley. Visit the website here to get the activity. I copied a few of each activity and the students got to choose which one they wanted to solve.

Event #9 - Decimals
This activity is one that I purchased from Scholastic a while back, which means I am not able to share it on here. The concept is that there is a grocery cart with different items that could be bought. The items either cost a certain amount per pound or are on sale, for example, 3 for $5. The students have to answer questions about how much it would cost to buy 3 pounds of an item or for the sale item, how much it would cost for one of those items.

Event #10 - Volume
Page 14 of the PDF has the handout for this event. The students need to follow the directions to solve the two volume problems.

Click the image above or here for the PDF version of this activity that has the directions for each event.

Has it Really Been a Year?!

I haven't logged into this blog in quite awhile so today I decided to come back and check it out. My last post was from July 2018!? The absence can be explained in one word... this year has been a CHALLENGE.

I entered year number 9 excited for new things. I had been accepted into my administration internship and was going to be teaching 5th grade again (although with a little twist, instead of being self-contained all the teachers taught their own reading and social studies, then I taught my homeroom math, then we switched and I taught my partner teacher's homeroom math). It has been the weirdest set up I've ever seen.

So while I was adjusting to that schedule, I also found out about another twist. 3 weeks before we headed back to school, our principal was promoted to another job and we had another person take over as principal. This proved to be a very big challenge because not only was this new person a completely different type of leader (which isn't necessarily a bad thing), but I was supposed to be doing my internship with my principal that was leaving. So now I had to ask this person that I didn't know, who was taking over a very large school 3 weeks before the teachers arrived back to work, if she would be my mentor. Luckily she said yes and I did learn a lot, but it was challenging at times because I was still learning about her as a person, principal, mentor, boss.

Now normally I don't complain about my classes because every class I have taught has had their own challenges, but this year has been by far the most challenging. As mentioned, this was year 9, I felt like I should know what I was doing, but this group of kids made me go back to the drawing board for almost everything. My classroom management that has worked for years, nope had to try something new. Tried the new excited ways to teach math learned last summer from the Mathematical Mindset books, didn't work. Went back to my old methods of teaching math, didn't work. I found I was having to reinvent how I taught almost every single thing. Again, this isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it was being done during a year where I was also trying to complete an internship and my mind and body were being stretched very thin.

As this school year wraps up I finally am feeling like my mind is catching up to my body. It is the end of May and I finally am no longer bringing work home to be graded from being so far behind. I am having fun teaching again and looking forward to completing year 9. I honestly have no idea what I am going to be doing next, but I do know that I am looking forward to year 10 and a whole new set of challenges because life would be boring if it was all easy!

Stay tuned for some new and exciting things I have tried in my classroom this year. I finally have the time and mind to get this blog back up and running.

My New Mathematical Mindset

I'm really sad that I came across this book, Mathematical Mindsets by Jo Boaler, after 8 years of teaching because I think of the past 8 years and how differently I could have been teaching math. However, the past is in the past and while I may not have been teaching math the best way, I did make sure my students enjoyed math even if they felt they "weren't good at math".

After reading this book I have come up with my list of things I will do moving forward in my math instruction:

• I will tell my students on the very first day of school that they are all mathematicians and everyone of them will enjoy math at some point this school year. I will no longer allow them to say "I'm not good at math" or "I'm not a math person".
• I will establish the seven math norms created by Jo Boaler in my classroom to help set my expectations of them as math students in my classroom. (see my posters here)
• I will no longer use programs that encourage fast recall of math facts.
• I will use low floor, high ceiling tasks that will push all students to work at the highest level.
• I will no longer assign meaningless homework, but rather have students reflect on what they learned that day.
• I will push my students to create a visual representation of problems.
• I will allow my students to explore first rather than teach methods/procedures.
• I will ask my students to reason and critique others by convincing themselves, convincing a friend, and convincing a skeptic.
• I will teach students to work together by establishing group norms and roles.
• I will make sure my students know I am not necessarily looking for an answer, but rather how they get there (and that there are often multiple ways to get there).
• I will provide constructive feedback and take the focus off of the grade.
• I will give assessments for learning that will allow my students to see where they are now, where they need to be, and provide feedback for ways to close the gap.
• I will slow down and go deep into math topics rather than rush through them to keep on pace with the curriculum guide.
• I will provide real-world context for math problems when appropriate.

While this list seems long, many of the things I am already doing some form of it in my classroom, this list is more to hold me accountable as I begin looking at my lessons in the beginning of the year.

Next up on my reading list is the Mindset Mathematics, Grade 5 by Jo Boaler, Jen Munson, and Cathy Williams!

Book Review: Leadership and Self-Deception

I was given the book, Leadership and Self-Deception, by the Arbinger Institute last summer. However, having just come back from maternity leave, I set it on my shelf and left it. While cleaning up my room at the end of the school year I decided to bring it home and it happened to be the first book I picked up this summer.

It was a surprisingly easy book to get through (done in 2 days), but it definitely opened my eyes to the types of people that I will encounter as a teacher leader and hopefully as an assistant principal one day. I should hopefully be completing my administration internship this year and am beginning to open my eyes to look at things from not only a teacher perspective, but also an administration perspective.

This book was all about being "in the box" and being "out of the box". I created a sketchnote about my takeaways from the book:

My biggest ah-ha moment came at the end of the book, where there was a list of things that you should and should not do in order to stay out of the box. On my sketchnote are the two quotes that resonated with me the most as a leader.

• "Don't focus on what others are doing wrong. Do focus on what you can do right to help."

As a leader, it is easy to want to focus on what teachers are doing wrong, however, in order to stay out of the box (and keep that teacher out of the box) we need to focus on what can I do as a leader in order to help that teacher.

• "Don't worry whether others are helping you. Do worry whether you are helping others."

I often hear this type of situation at the teacher level. There are teachers who enjoy sharing their lessons, activities, ideas, etc. and there are teachers who don't. We have to stop worrying about whether everyone is sharing or helping us and instead focus on am I helping others.

I would like to say that I am "out of the box" most of the time in my life and career, but as I was reading it definitely made me think of times that I was "in the box" and made me think about why I may have felt that way.  This is a great book, not just for the education world, but for any business/company.

Technology Spotlight: Flippity

While attending the EdTechTeam Maryland Summit I was able to attend a session by Abbey Futrell (www.abbeyfutrell.com, she's hilarious and if you ever get the chance to see her speak I would highly recommend it!).

In her session I was introduce to the tool called Flippity. You can access this tool two different ways. You can use it as an Add-on through Google Sheets, or you can go to www.flippity.net and make a copy of the templates that can be used with Google Sheets. (I recommend just getting the add-on since you only have to do this once, then all of the templates are easy to access anytime you open Sheets) The website is awesome though because it gives you a demo of each template, instructions for how to use the template, and a link to make a copy of the template.

While I don't know that I would use all of these templates in my classroom, there are a few that I think would be beneficial for my students this upcoming year.  I really like that for many of the templates you can add images, which would greatly benefit ELL students who need help with content-specific vocabulary. I also think many of these templates would benefit the primary grades where you have students working on sight words (ie. matching, bingo, flashcards). Lastly, my focus for this upcoming year is to incorporate more creative writing with my students and I feel that the MadLibs and Mix & Match templates would lead to some fun creative writing.

Check out my presentation here for how to get Flippity as an add-on and a preview of the different template types that can be found on their website or under the add-ons menu for Google Sheets.