Have you ever taught a lesson and just realized that it felt good?  Like good, honest, real teaching?  That is what this set of lessons on perimeter, area, and measurement felt like for me. We started off by reviewing how to measure using a ruler.  They all seemed to want to start measuring at the 1 instead of the 0!  So we used a few task cards to practice measuring, as well as some worksheets.  These little worksheets provided a great jumping off point for the kids.  They also just love task cards.  Not sure why they like them so much, but they do :) Once I was sure that the students knew how to measure, we got to the creative part of this project.  I asked students to draw a village that they might find in a snow globe.  This could be any village they would like to draw, but there should be at least three rectangular structures.  (Most students drew a Christmas village, since it was near winter break when we did this.)   After t......

There never seems to be enough time to get everything that I want to get done completed during the day.  Because of this, I have been forced to think creatively and combine different things I am doing.   Now this post here has been sitting in my drafts for 2 years.  I began writing it pre-pandemic and then....well, you know what happened next.  Things got away from me.  So here it is, 2 years after I first blogged about it.  Don't worry though, it aged well ;) Third grade has a heavy focus on community in social studies.  So we began by talking about three types of communities -- urban, suburban, and rural.  We watched some BrainPop and then read the text in our social studies book to gather information on the three types of communities.  Putting it all together, we created this class chart.  Using the chart, the kids then wrote an opinion paragraph on which type of community they would like to live in themselves. Then, to connect it to......

At present in third grade, we are learning our basic multiplication facts.   Rote kill and drill type activities, though having their place at times, can be become a bit monotonous for the kids.  So I thought I would spice it up with a little get-up-and-move-around activity! Now, I first saw a completely different version of this from Kevin Butler.  He teaches 5th grade and was having his students round by finding balloon pigs around his classroom.  I was inspired to change this up, AND match the apple theme we had going with Johnny Appleseed Day , and created this Apple Orchard Math! The basic premise was that the kids were apple farmers.   The apples (in this case, balloons) had fallen off of the trees and needed to be replaced.    To move this story along, and prepare for the activity, around the classroom, I taped 7 different empty trees to the walls.  The trees each had a number on them, 2 though 5.   For each tree, I blew up 10 balloon......

We have still been living in the land of polygons in math.  (if you want to see the other things we have done so far, you can click here )  In third grade, they basically need to know the attributes of quadrilaterals, identifying them.  But, in order to get them to recognize quadrilaterals, they need to see what ALL of the basic polygons are.  So today, I did something quick and fun, that got the kids thinking about the different attributes of the polygons we were learning.  We did a Polygon Scavenger Hunt! It was super easy to do.  While we were together on Zoom, I told them we were going to get up and move.  I was going to tell them an object to find, they would find it, and bring it back to show me on the screen.  The cheers, gasps, and surprised faces were amazing to see on that Zoom screen! Using this sheet here , I told them the first object I wanted them to find....a quadrilateral.  Now, I KNOW that quadrilaterals are 2D sha......

Before we officially closed, one of the math standards we had yet to cover was shape attributes.  Now, I am in no way trying to make my life harder by attempting to cover a concept the kids have no idea about so, instead, I am trying to make things easier for everyone by assigning work incrementally so that the kids are using skills they know while still applying it to new knowledge.   I started by introducing the concept of angles to the kids.  Over Zoom, I showed them how to form the different angles (right, acute, and obtuse) with their bodies, what they were called, etc.  I showed them examples using the objects around me.  For example, I showed them how the corner of their math book formed a right angle.  We went over the math book pages that showed examples of the different type of angles.  It was a quick lesson on basically identifying the three different types of angles we are learning in third grade.  There was nothing about it, other ......

I don't know why it is, but teaching elapsed time is just so hard!  The concept seems so foreign to the kids, though they deal with it on a daily basis.  I am really stumped as to what makes this so difficult for them to grasp and figure out.  So, to help make the idea more concrete, I whipped out some good old sentence strips and had the kids practice with concept with their own life as an example. I asked them to think about a typical weekday afternoon.  From 2pm until 6pm (so when they get out of school until dinner-ish), what did they normally do?  They needed to think of 4 events that would happen during that time.  Could be doing homework, baseball practice, riding in the car home....anything that they do within that four hour window.   The kids then needed to guesstimate what time they start the activity and what time they end the activity.  Those times were written on the recording sheet.  The kids then calculated how long that......

When I moved to third grade this year, I had to find a way to repurpose the lessons I used in fifth grade for my new third grade audience.  I knew my kids would love the things I was doing in fifth, but the skills were just above the heads of these 8 year olds.  So for each lesson I do, that I once did in fifth, I sit down and think about how I can best adapt it to meet the needs of my new, younger learners. In the past, I used the old Scholastic Book Order forms to help the students practice adding, subtracting, rounding, ordering, and multiplying decimals.  (you can see that lesson here and here ) That wasn't quite the skill set my new third graders have.  So I decided we would bring the idea to a more manageable set of standards -- multiplication facts and adding. Adapting Book Order Math was actually rather easy to do.   It is just such a versatile project!  The basic idea is simple:  the kids go "shopping" for 6 books in the book order m......

I don't know if you spend a lot of time over on Instagram , but I have to say, the teacher community there is full of amazing ideas.  I am always being inspired to get out of my comfort zone and try something new.  This little review game (though I use that term loosely) was one of those things I saw on IG, tweaked, and used in my room...with much success!  So I thought I would share here on my blog with you so that you could replicate as well. My friend Katie at Adventures of Ms Smith posted about how she had her kids create a tower of index cards using math problems to earn those cards.  I thought that was genius!  I mean, I had heard of creating tall towers using index cards only, but to have the students EARN each card they used was the perfect twist.  So I got to work to see how I could use that idea in my room. We have been working on the various fraction operations, with subtraction specifically our focus for the week.  So, using a sim......

Introducing the concept of volume to my students is never as easy as I always think it is going to be.  I mean, I usually just assume that when I explain that volume is basically length x width x height, the kids will think, "Oh, yeah!  That's like area with one more thing to multiply!"  It never goes that way.  I mean, never.  Ever. So this year, when I set out to introduce the concept of volume to my students, I knew I needed to do something memorable that would help the concepts sink in.  So what did I do?  I broke out the trusty marshmallows.  Yes.  You heard me right.   Marshmallows . You see, mini-marshmallows are basically a cube shape.  They aren't perfect, but they are close enough that using them to help my students understand the concept that volume is the amount of space something takes up in cubic units was just what my students needed.  I gave each student a quart-sized baggie that was pre-filled with about......

I am always looking for ways to integrate tech into my math lessons.  For some reason, I find that particular subject so just hard to use tech in a way that the kids are producing versus consuming.  So this unit, as we embarked on composite volume, I found a way to have the students use Google Drawings and Google Slides to create their own composite volume figures and, ultimately, create an interactive bulletin board that will give all the students practice finding the volume of composite figures. My students had been practicing finding the volume of composite figures for about two days.  They basically just were using worksheets from the math book and I felt that they were ready for a bit of a challenge.  In the past, we have used Lego bricks to practice with additive composite volume (see that post here )  But this time, I thought we could change it up with tech. We broke out the chrome books and the students opened to Google Drawings.   Drawings is ......