Math Operation Bingo

My students are great at doing the computation once they figure out what a word problem is asking, but we were having trouble figuring out what word problems are asking us to do. There are several steps I took to try to remedy this, starting with a word problems key words sort I saw on Teachers Pay Teachers (FOR FREE!): Problem Solving Keyword Sort

Here is the finished product of one of my students:

We used this as a resource when doing word problems to help us figure out what operation to use. They got better at figuring out what operation to use, but I realized that they were also struggling because they could not remember the vocabulary that goes along with some of the operations such as sum means addition, and product means multiplication. 

SO I created this flipchart for the promethean board reviewing all of this vocabulary with a page showing the meanings of each definition and a page with problems where students have to drag the labels to the problems to practice using the vocabulary.

Just to make sure, I also made this Math Operation Bingo game with all of the vocabulary. I printed to boards, glued them on construction paper and laminated them so students could use dry erase markers to mark the vocabulary words called.

I made cards with all the definitions of the words to pick one at a time, the students will have to figure out which word I'm talking about and mark it on their board. I haven't played it with my students yet because I just finished laminating all the boards, but I will update with how it went!

Rave Review: Multiply It Out

As many teachers do, I find some amazing things on Pinterest that I add to my classroom. We are working on multiplication in the math class that I teach and with any students, they need all the practice that they can get. I saw this FREE bulletin board packet that has been a great addition to my bulletin boards. It is like math boggle and you can use it to practice any operation.

Add It Up/Multiply It Out Bulletin Board

You can also see it on her blog (which I follow!):

Live, Laugh, and Love to Learn

Here it is up in my classroom:

We use it as a warm-up activity at the beginning of each class. The author even includes a recording sheet, which we keep in a folder attached to the bulletin board as well. I change the numbers out every week or so to keep them on their toes. We started out with this one so they can do more problems with two digits multiplied by one digit and we worked our way up. It’s a good way to get the students focused for math class and come assessment time I know they’ll be able to multiply anything I throw their way!

Subject and Predicate

We use the Language! Program for some of our reading/language arts pull out services for kids who are far enough below grade level that they can’t really access the curriculum if they are in the regular education classroom during their language arts time. The program is very structured and has 6 steps in every lesson: phonemic awareness, word recognition and spelling, vocabulary and morphology, grammar and usage, listening and reading comprehension, and speaking and writing.

We are working on identifying the subject and predicate in several of my language arts groups and to supplement the program I made a bulletin board to help remind students throughout the unit. 

As you can tell, one of my kids wanted to help me so they wrote some of the parts of my board and helped me make the snowflakes.

The definition of subject and predicate comes straight from the program so the language is consistent and it really seems to work for those kids. We had just gotten a snowstorm when I had gotten the idea to update the bulletin board so I incorporated snowflakes and a snowman hoping to draw their attention to it as well. It seems to work! I catch them looking at the board when we are practicing identifying subjects and predicates, and it is one of the center activities to make sentences by matching a subject to a predicate from the board so that's one less center I have to plan! 

The Beginning of an Era

Ok, so maybe an era is a bit dramatic and over-confident, but this is the beginning of my blog about my experience as a special educator. 

I have known since high school that I wanted to be a teacher. I initially thought I wanted to teach high school Spanish (I had an amazing high school Spanish teacher with whom I really connected), but after a short practicum at a high school I quickly changed my mind. Power to all of the high school teachers out there, that is a set of challenges I am not made to take on! I have my M.ed. in Elementary Education and my first job was as a long term sub in a 4th grade classroom for the fall. I got another long term sub job immediately after (luckily!) but they asked me to be a special educator and proposed helping me become certified. I JUST submitted my alt 4 plan and documents for approval to be dually certified!

I absolutely love my job. I thought I wanted to be a general education teacher, and maybe I will get back to that one day, but I feel like I make really meaningful connections with a smaller number of kids. I am a case manager and I also deliver interventions and core replacement services for 3rd-8th graders. I have the support of some amazing coworkers who have been incredibly helpful. This year, I'm teaching a math class, several english/language arts classes, and I also go into a few classrooms to support students in the general education setting. 

I can't wait to share my thoughts and plans with the blogging world!