Metrics Chart

This gives a couple basic measurement questions for kids ( involving length and perimeter) and a chart of the Metric System. It would be a good whole class activity to create a chart like this (in math journals, on an anchor chart, etc.).

Click on picture to enlarge.

Teaching Roman Numerals

P1030589

Roman numerals are hard for most Americans… mostly because we don’t use them very often. So here’s one way to help get your kids used to Roman numerals, and hopefully teach them a few: Refer to your tables using Roman numerals! If you were really excited about it, you could have each student learn their number in Roman numerals and have them write it as part of their heading on papers. In case you forgot Roman numerals yourself, here’s a nice chart to help you keep Roman numerals straight.

Base 10 (Review Video)

Here’s a quick review video about base 10 number systems…

Grammatical Poetry

I fell in love with this idea instantly. It teaches kids the different parts of speech and lets them write poetry while they’re doing it! I made my own worksheet for you to download. Click here for the PDF: Grammatical PoetryP1030598

Make Your Own Visual Creative Writing Prompts

I was helping a fellow teacher go through her classroom and we found tons of interesting posters and pictures she’d collected over the years. It had been hard for her to incorporate everything into lessons, but she didn’t want to part with them. Here was our solution: use them as writing prompts! It took about 10 seconds per poster and we paper clipped each prompt to the poster so she could slap them on the board really quickly. We wrote each prompt by hand, but we could have easily just typed them. We wrote potentially new vocabulary words in a different color, so she could point it out to students if they needed help spelling, etc. These were a few of the many prompts we made:P1050833 P1050835 P1050837 P1050838

This same idea could be easily applied to a variety of ways. Use pictures of historical people, events and places to review social studies. Give a strange picture from a magazine to your child when they begin a car ride, and have them write down a certain number of nouns, verbs, or adjectives before the ride is over in order to earn a special something. But whatever you do, have fun with it!

Recycling Craft

Kids love to create things. Especially when they have a lot of random stuff to work with. One teacher brought in a bunch of recyclables (some parents had been collecting stuff for a week) and let the kids create whatever they wanted using things to be recycled. She also let the kids use googly eyes, markers, glue, etc. and limited each kid to making something that would fit in their backpack (so students could take it home). This art project was preceded by a discussion of what recycling was and how it benefited the environment. Fun fun fun!

P1050370

 

Click here for printable word strips to help in your discussion of recycling.

Partitive/Measurement Division (Review Video)

Confused about partitive and measurement division? Not anymore! Here’s a quick video explaining the difference…

Teacher Memes/Cartoons

1 Have Problems VS 2 Hip Hop VS 9 Wik VS 14 Sardines VS 18 Certificate
These cartoons are by Jonny Hawkins. His cartoons have been in Phi Delta Kappan, American Educator, Education Digest, Reader’s Digest and in over 600 other publications. He create the annual bestselling Teachers Cartoon a Day calendar (Andrews McMeel), which can be seen at bn.com and Amazon.