Well I have survived the first three weeks of school! I have spent about 6 days reviewing fourth grade multiplication and then teaching fifth grade 3 by 2 multiplication using standard algorithm. I always provide students with a multiplication chart, usually taped to their desks, because I do not want students to lose their standard algorithm process if they get mixed up on a multiplication fact. As time goes by, student after student moves away from the chart and becomes fluent with their multiplication facts. This chart also helps with learning the steps of long division, which is what we started this week. Both processes require many steps and focus, so it is good when a student doesn’t have to worry about a fact and can just focus on learning the process. Last year, when I had to remove the multiplication charts for testing, it was a MESS! I had to break out a razor blade and alcohol to scrape the sticky residue off the desks. So this year, I used velcro! I laminated the little charts and bought velcro from Amazon and put the charts on each desk. The velcro charts are awesome! The kids can remove them and take them to small group or just pull it closer to their journals. Warning- You have to tell the students not to play with the velcro and not to rip it off and on to make noise. What kid doesn’t want to hear that noise? 🙂
Multi-Digit Multiplication! and My New Love, EdPuzzle!
This week I also used an activity featured in an earlier blog post. Here is the previous post: Multiplication Detectives!
I revamped this acitvity and have posted it on my Teachers Pay Teachers store! Here is the listing on my TpT store!
During one of my classes, we had a fire drill, so that really limited the time spent on this activity. As an alternative, I displayed the problems on the board, and then students worked with shoulder partners to solve and decide on the mistake made. I used a timer and then we went over the problem as a class. We actually got quite a few problems done using this method, so this might be a great alternative for classes that have a shorter amount of time in their class periods.
I discovered Edpuzzle while reading my twitter feed! I decided to see what it was all about and I am in love! It is an amazing resource! I love to assign videos to my students to watch but I am never quite sure if they are really paying attention to the video or not. Here is where EdPuzzle comes in! EdPuzzle has videos and allows you to build comprehension questions into the video. So while the student watches the video, it will stop and ask a question. You can make the questions multiple choice for easy grading or open ended. You can also stop a video to include a note that you want students to write in their journals or just pay special attention to, this can also be done with a voice note, which will record your voice.
Edpuzzle is free! You sign up as a teacher and then you are given a class code. Students sign up using the class code. You can use the search tool to find already made products that you can copy and edit all for FREE!
Once you find a video to use, you can then assign it to your class. You can assign due dates and you can also prevent skipping through the video! Which I love! After the students complete the video you can click on progress and see how they did with the questions you provided!
EdPuzzle is a great resource to use for blended classrooms!
I hope you all have a great week, and I would love to hear your ideas!
Peace, Love and Math- Jennifer
Thank you for stopping by today! I hope you were inspired and you were able to find something new to try in your own classroom! If you didn’t find what you were looking for- please email me! I am happy to help!