Multiplication Stories

Okay, let's see if I can get to blogging again? I swear I was going to start this post much earlier, but then my dog decided to take a nap on my lap. If you don't know yet, once your dog takes over your lap, any level of productivity just goes down. 

We are started our multiplication unit two weeks ago. Started with talking about the different ways multiplication could be represented: equal groups, arrays, skip counting, and repeated addition. Last week, we talked about different types of multiplication stories.

[Sidenote: "Times as many" is no longer part of the third grade standards and is now part of the fourth grade CCSS. However, this was part of the math curriculum we're using which claims to be CCSS-aligned so I went with it until my colleague told me otherwise later.]

To make the lesson a bit more interesting (rather than read and solve multiple word problems), I had the students work with their table groups to create multiplication story posters. Each group was assigned a multiplication equation and had to come up with two different multiplication stories to go with the multiplication sentence.

The students also had to label each story and solve it by showing their work and giving a complete answer.

Once everyone was done, each group brought their poster to the front of the room and gave a quick presentation of their stories.

To wrap the lesson up, I asked students to independently write a multiplication story for the equation 3x6 as their exit ticket out to recess. Great way to assess each student's understanding of multiplication stories. 

I love how this lesson not only covered math, it also touched upon group work and speaking skills. The best part...I came up with the idea for the lesson the morning of the lesson! Don't you love when that happens??

Here's to hoping I go back to blogging more! :D

Five for Friday

I'm back for another Five for Friday post! :D

We started our Legends unit this week. The kiddos are currently "researching" legends by reading various legends and looking for certain components in the legends.

Can you see where this research is leading us to?

If you guessed, writing our own legends then you are correct!

We are going to be publishing our legends into a hardcover book, just like the Cinderella stories I did when I taught second grade! So exciting!

We've already brainstormed ideas for our legends....

...chosen our topics...

...and brainstormed characters and their traits.

 Next week will be all about the writing of the story itself! I'm excited to see what the kids come up with!

This week was my favorite week of teaching math so far...because I was teaching strategies for adding three-digit numbers!

I also absolutely LOVE interactive notebooks! If you haven't tried it out yet, you should definitely give it a go! We have Math and ELA notebooks. Interestingly enough, I use the two notebooks very differently. Maybe I should write about it some time! :)

Just FYI, I use Blair Turner's 3rd Grade Interactive Math Notebook for my class. It's great! Check it out!

Is anybody else tired of benchmark assessments yet??

This is my first year of doing DRAs (I used Fountas & Pinnell at my last school). Deadline for scores are next Wednesday. I have two English classes so I have 47 students to test. I only have 2 hours and 40 mins of instruction time with each class every day. Where do you fit in the testing?? I have no idea...

This Sunday is the Mid-Autumn Festival that's celebrated in Asia. My school is Mandarin-immersion, plus the third grade classes have been learning about the moon with their Mandarin teachers. Of course, that means we should be celebrating the festival! Got some mooncakes and other treats from a parent as a result. :)

Okay, I'm EXHAUSTED. Two more weeks until Fall Break! I cannot wait!!!

Five for Friday

Friends...I'm EXHAUSTED! Aren't short weeks supposed to be a breeze??

Guess not when there's a whole bunch of learning happening every day! Which means it's time for...

Omg...I can't tell you what a great feeling it was to know that I had extra day to sleep in! Especially since my body apparently needs a day to realize that sleeping in is okay so I typically only get to sleep in on Sundays. My body naturally wakes up around alarm time on Saturdays. Makes me so sad...

Anyways, Monday was spent having lunch with my colleagues from my first school back in Oakland. Also meant I got to go back and visit college stomping grounds. We've been getting some intense heat this week in California so that only meant I had to go get me some froyo!

Orange creamiscle, yum yum!

Speaking of my school in Oakland...look what I found in my current teaching neighbor's room. 

See that name..."Thornhill"?? That's the name of my school in Oakland!!! Of course, I had to ask my colleague where the box came from. Turns out she got the box from a coworker in her previous district whose husband worked as a music teacher in Oakland. I didn't recognize the name but still...such a small world! Also a sign that this school was meant to be.

So after hearing all these bloggers rave about Stitch Fix, I finally decided to give it a try. I am SO not a fashionista, let alone clothes shopping. I basically buy all my clothes at Old Navy so I was very interested to see what I would end up with. 

Here is the style card that I got with my package.

After trying everything on, I ended up keeping two of the clothing articles, the cropped pants and the cardigan.

Fun experience overall, but way out of my budget to continue on a monthly basis. But I am definitely up to get another fix maybe like six months later! Haha.

Okay, I suppose I should talk some school now. We had our first "Art in Action" session this week. This whole program is new to me, but it looks like a great program, especially because the parents do the teaching! 

Our first lesson was on Van Gogh's "Starry Night". The students look at the brush strokes, talked about depth and perspective, and then recreated their own version of the masterpiece.

 Pretty cool! Looking forward to all other future art sessions!

Math this week has been all about mental math strategies. Practicing mental math means I get to do my favorite math activity...number talks!

I absolutely LOVE number talks because I love to see the different ways students visual the problem. I learn so much from them this way! I told my students that I was not taught to think out of the box when I was learning math in elementary school. That just wasn't the focus then. They are so lucky that the focus has changed now and that they are given more freedom to look at numbers in different ways without being told to stick to one specific method. It's not about the answer, my friends. What's important is the journey to the answer!

After looking over homework writing from the last two weeks, I quickly realized that we need a refresher on paragraph writing. Never was quite sure how to approach it but thank goodness I stumbled upon Mrs. Prince and Co's entry on stoplight paragraphs!

First we talked about the different features of a paragraph and relating each part to a light on the stoplight.

We recently compared two different articles on creating acorn food products in our Ohlone unit. It only made sense in my head for us to write a class paragraph about it. What a difficult task to complete but the students all felt SO accomplished when we were done!

Since I teacher ELA to two classes, I decided that one class would come up with a comparing paragraph while the other class came up with a contrasting paragraph!

After creating our paragraphs I rewrote the sentences on color coordinated sentence strips (didn't have red so substituted with pink). Then we pieced all the sentence strips together, making sure all the words fit on our "paper".

Next week, the kids are going to write their own paragraphs using the colored strips. Can't wait to see their stoplight paragraph puzzles! 

So way more happened in the classroom than what was mentioned, but I forgot to take pictures! I have even remembered to bring my camera to school, but never actually take it out! I need to remind myself to start taking more pics so I also make myself blog more often!

But for now, I will end with a picture of my new staff id. Officially a staff member of College Park Elementary! But, oh, my hair! @@

Five for Funday?

So I had created the post and started uploading pictures Friday night...but am only just getting to the writing now...-_-||

I'm allowed to give myself a break because I've been sick for most of the week, right? :D

As I mentioned, I was sick from Tuesday and on. Had a fever Tuesday night and went home early on Wednesday to just rest. We had a field trip on Thursday so I had to be there, but basically went straight home and into bed after school. I was feeling better by Friday, but still have a persistent cough that still hasn't gone away. Great time to be sick, right? We still managed to get some stuff done though...

Our caterpillars have all now turned into chrysalises! The cool thing was that on Tuesday morning, all but one had already turned. The last one was hanging in the J-shape getting ready to turn. It was perfect timing because the kids got a chance to write about it in their observation books. By the time the day was over, that last caterpillar had turned into a chrysalis!

Our math topic was on measuring. First grade only talks about non-standard units of measuring so we used connecting cubes to measure the length and height of different objects in the classroom.

We made our Mother's Day gift too! (Happy Mother's Day, by the way!) 

Normally the kids would have drawn something to temporarily place in the middle, but with me being sick and all, we just never got to it.

Presents all nicely wrapped!

Open House is next (or this) Wed! Since our classroom theme this year is the Magnificent Monsters, I thought it would be cool to have monster boxes on our desks for Open House. My idea is to make them compliment boxes. As part of my scavenger hunt, students will be asked to write compliments to their classmates and drop it into their monster box. This is just an idea though, we'll see how far I get with it! Either way, we will have some nice monster boxes on our desks!

Boxes are all painted! We will be adding the eyes and teeth this week. Stay tuned to see how they turn out!

Last week was also Teacher Appreciation Week! I hope all of you felt extremely appreciated by everyone. Being sick was no fun, but I still felt the appreciation when I was at school!

Our parent association catered Thai food for lunch!

Just a glimpse of some of the gifts I got from students.

My grade level team and aide deserved some appreciation from me too!

Okay, I made it through. And Sunday isn't over yet! This week is going to be a busy one with my birthday and Open House happening on the same week! Spent some time during the weekend getting some Open House decorating started in the classroom. Hopefully this yucky cough and sore throat will go away soon. Guess I should rest up! See you again soon! :)