Favorite TpT Products

Hey everyone! It is time for Too Much To Talk About Tuesday! I have been wanting to talk about TpT products! I have fell in love with TpT and making products for our store. I would love to hear about some of your favorite products. I want everyone to share their links to their favorite products. Tell us why its your favorite? Has it been a big seller? Let us know about it! :)

Our current favorite product is our Time Review Foldable. This product is new to our store. Steph used it with some third grade students that were struggling with telling time. It is a great review for telling time and even includes an assessment. I have provided a link to this product (Please do this when posting about your favorite product).

Thanks everyone in advance for telling us about your favorite products! :)

~Manda

Review, review, review!

It's Monday again..we're getting ready to wind down the school year. My 1st and 2nd grade kiddos are getting ready to take the district's version of the CRCT (a really heavy, thick benchmark that encompasses the whole year basically) so I'm working with them to piece together any missing strings before then. My 3rd and 4th graders on the other hand are done with testing. We are working on reviewing the weakest areas for the group to help prepare them for next year. I wish we could get stuff together for the summer to bridge the gap, but the truth is it wouldn't do any good. I wish it weren't the case, but the students I work with don't have the support they need at home. They wouldn't be held accountable for doing it during the summer. The school is offering a paid summer camp for $15 per day which will include some summer school/tutoring sessions, but unfortunately none of my students will be attending this either.

On the math topic, my poor third grade babies are struggling with memorizing multiplication facts. They do timed drills daily, but this week we're going to work on delving into number sense and different strategies.

My second grade loves focused on reviewing money today. We will be hitting the different standards to refresh their memories.

I'm only with these kiddos three more weeks. I'll definitely be visiting the last week of school to participate in field day and end of the year programs. It's definitely bittersweet right now. Here's to hoping something comes along for next year!

~Steph

Writing Test

Yay it is finally Friday!! I am so glad it is time for the weekend. I hope everyone has a wonderful weekend! Although since it is Friday it is time for Friend or Foe Friday! I wanted to focus on writing test and wanted to find out if these test are your friend or foe?
We have discussed writing prompts in past blogs and about how many papers our students write. All those paper are mainly preparing them for these big writing test. I mean don't get me wrong it is important that our students learn how to write a paper. They will use this skill throughout their life but preparing them for the test is definitely the short term goal for teachers. We need to prepare them for all types of paper and help them understand all types of prompts. We are teaching them how to write a successful paper but we are thinking about what they will need to know to write a successful paper on the test.
What do you think about these test? Are they your friend of foe? Do you think they help you by showing how your students did on the test? Does it help you strive to teach them better or worry you that you aren't teaching them enough?
~Manda

Great Depression

Hey everyone! I hope everyone is enjoying their week. Its time for another Through Time and Space Thursday. This week I have been thinking about students and social studies. There are so many students that only remember what we tell them about history long enough to take the test (if that long). Teaching history to young students is so hard because it is so many people, places, and dates that they just all run together.
As I have discussed before, I love social studies and history. I love teaching it in a way that students will not just remember history but enjoy learning about it. If students really get to experience the lessons then they are more likely to remember the information than if they just read about it.
One example for letting students experience a lesson is something I did during student teaching last year. While teaching about the great depression I did a lesson about life during the depression. I researched online and found that some students built their own Hoovervilles. So during my lesson my students split into families and we played a survival game type lesson. My student's "families" lost their homes and had to build a Hooverville to live in. We used actual cardboard boxes and newspaper. My students had a blast and it just helped all the information about that time in history for Americans make so much more sense.
What lessons like this have you done with your students? How do you feel about teaching social studies?

~Manda

How to Make a Glogster

Since we have finished up our series on podcast we figured we would talk a little more about one of our topics from the series, Glogster. Like we talked about, this is a great alternative to the usual poster board. This week I thought I would share a video I made in school that explains how to make a Glogster and shows some of the key features.

Hope you enjoy and learn something new! :)

~Steph

 

Homework Debate

 

So here goes...we'd love to hear your opinion on the topic of homework. That's what we've decided to to discuss this week. Let's look at both sides...

All of these points are arguments we've heard, but not necessarily do we agree with them all. 

Giving Homework

-Students need to practice what they've learned at school.

-Meaningful practice will make a stronger student. 

-Spelling/vocabulary practice has to be done at home.

-Unfinished classwork needs to be completed at home. 

-Projects and papers cannot always be completed during class. 

-Middle & High school students will always have homework so they need to learn the habit in elementary school. 

No Homework

-If they can't do it at school what's the point in sending it home.

-Most parents don't help complete homework, don't know how, or won't because they're too busy.

-Teachers shouldn't be given the right to dictate how a family/student spends their evening at home.

-How do you know if the student did the work instead of someone else at home?

-They spend 7-8 hours at school; kids should be able to have play/free/family time at home. 

~Steph

Place Value

Happy Monday friends! As you know, I work with struggling students. My second and third graders struggle with place value. What's so funny, I don't feel like struggle with the "place" part as much as they do the "value" part. There can tell me where the digit goes in the number, but struggle to understand that a 2 in the tens place has a value of 20. We've worked on reviewing it for the last two weeks with different activities. I decided they needed a bit more practice with the different forms of numbers and place value (standard form, written form, expanded form, and base 10). I searched and searched for what I wanted. I decided to make some task cards to use with them. I paired them up and had them work together to do the task card practice, but each student had a recording sheet to complete. Their partner was more so there to help if they were completely stuck. This way I could move around the room to help, but they could ask their partner too. They did a great job, and I feel like it really helped to put it all together.

Here's the packet you can check it out in our TpT store (click image below):

It has 4 task cards; each of the cards has one form of the number. The students have to complete the recording sheet by filling in the corresponding card number and all four forms of the given number.

Hope everyone has a wonderful week! We're back to state testing tomorrow...two more to go!

~Steph