Coordinate Grid Battleship

After teaching coordinate grids, I decided to take my unit a step further and have my students play Battleship using their knowledge of coordinate grids. I found a great sheet for my students to use on TpT http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Coordinate-Grid-Battleship-Game-239781.
On the sheet, they set up their ships and were able to keep track of the enemy's ships while using the skills they learned with coordinate grids. My students had such a great time with the activity and even asked if they could play it the next day when they finished early.

Non-Distracting Photographer (NDP)

This year I started using Edmodo with several of my groups. I have to say that I really like the site and its features. From what I am understanding, Edmodo just recently updated so that pictures can be uploaded. With this being said, I decided to take a spin on photo taking in my classroom and assign a daily non-distracting photographer (AKA NDP). When a student is selected to be the NDP, they are only allowed to take five pictures. The students are allowed to move around the room only after their work is finished. So far every student has taken the job seriously. Plus, they get a shout out on Edmodo that night when I upload the photos.

Did You Know?

My classroom faces into the library, and with this being said every class that is brought into the library walks pass my room. This school year I decided to buy a dry erase board and place it outside my classroom to display fun facts for the students to read when they walk pass my room. I downloaded the app 'A Fact Every Day' by Wombi. The facts are kid friendly and rather interesting!

In addition, I have a plastic folder below the dry erase board holding forms for students to fill out if they know of a fun fact. On the form they are asked to share their fun fact and where they found it. If the source checks out, then I will post their fun fact on the board, along with their name.

Clip Boards

I feel like every year I have less and less space to display students' work in my classroom. This year I am trying a new way to display students' work by placing clip boards in the windows of my classroom. I bought the clip boards from the Dollar Store, along with the ribbon. I spent a total of $14 on ten clip boards and four spools of ribbon. I have two clip boards hanging on my wall with 3M Command Hooks. The 3M Command Hooks have done amazing things in my classroom! In fact, the curtains in this photo are hung with them. Plus, they keep the custodians happy because they don't take paint off the walls. :)

Sunglasses

Hooray! The 2013-2014 school year is underway!

No, for real, where did the summer go?

So my wedding was in August 2012. With this being said, the 'pin-it' button on my computer was on fire by time I got married. I learned that Pinterest can either be the most amazing thing to plan a wedding or the most stressful. :) Well, one of the ideas I found on Pinterest was to have sunglasses available for my guests to wear during our ceremony that was outside. I ordered so many sunglasses that your grandma's sister's cousin's best friend from grade school would have been able to have a pair of sunglasses from my wedding. With this being said I thought I would incorporate them into my welcome activities with my students.

 I bought little tags and placed them on the sunglasses. One side I wrote 'Welcome to Mrs. Riggs' Class' and the other side I wrote 'Math is so cool you need shades'. My students thought the sunglasses were great! I actually felt super cool when I realized how much they loved them!

I bought my sunglasses through http://www.shadesoffun.com/

Boggle Board

Last school year I made a math boggle board in my classroom. This was a GREAT activity to have for students who finished early. To my surprise, students of all ages and levels enjoyed working on the boggle board. Simply the board has 16 numbers and one target number. The goal is for the students to use the most amount of numbers to get to the target number. The students start with any number on the boggle board. They move either up, down, left, right, or diagonal to another number. Then the students can either add, subtract, multiply, or divide their first number with their second. Next they will take that answer, move to another number that is up, down, left, right, or diagonal, and either add, subtract, multiply or divide. The students will repeat this step as many times as needed until they have used the most numbers to reach the target number. At the end of the week, I gave out prizes to the student who was able to use the most numbers correctly.

I have created two 'cute' boards with different target numbers, and student record sheet in my TpT store.http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/MATH-BOGGLE-BOARDS-802904

Vocabulary Review

This year all of the 5th grade Talent and Development Program students (students who test above the 91%ile) from my district participated in the Disney Planet Challenge. This year we focused on the topic of health and created a variety of activities that ranged from research and presentations to field trips and school wide projects. One way we rolled out the vocabulary to the group was by using the idea of a headbands game. The words were brainstormed by students, then the teachers made them into cards to place on headbands. The students then needed to describe the word to the student wearing the word on their headband without giving it away. Then once the student guessed the word being described, they received another card. The student with the most correct words was named the winner!

OREO: Mean, Median, Mode, Range

As I was cruising around Pinterest, I found a great activity that used Oreos for a mean lesson. I decided to take it a step further and incorporate mode, median, and range too. Simply, I divided my students into groups and gave each group a pack of Oreos. The students then needed to see how many Oreos they could stack on top of one another before the tower of Oreos collapsed. Once the tower collapsed, they need to determine the mean, median, mode, and range of the number of Oreos in the tower. I have a FREE download to use with this lesson in my TpT store. http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Store/2-The-Square-Root-Of-It

Vocabulary Review Fortune Tellers

Geometry always seems to be a challenging chapter as there is an abundant amount of vocabulary on state standardized testing and many students get overwhelmed with the large amount of vocabulary they need to learn. I was looking on Pinterest for ideas to help with learning vocabulary and came up with an idea after seeing this pin; http://pinterest.com/pin/37858453089758677/. I had my students make fortune tellers to use with their vocabulary words and play the 'fortune teller game' with their classmates. On the outside flaps of the fortune teller the students wrote geometry words. Student A would play the game by selecting a word on the outside flap and then student B would hold the fortune teller and spell out the word at the same time as they would be opening and closing the teller. Once the word was spelled, student B would open the teller to the flap where the fortune teller stopped. The flap would have another vocabulary word on it. Student A would then have to tell the meaning of that word. Once student A told the meaning, student B flipped over the inside flap and revealed the meaning they wrote. The students were able to learn vocab while having fun!!

Design an iPad

I had my students design 'iPads and apps' for a character in a novel we were reading. The apps needed to be design to help or entertain a selected character in a book. The students also needed to construct their own iPad and headphones, display the apps, and their descriptions. I have to say that each student used a lot a creativity when doing this project! I was so impressed that although each of them were given the same requirements, all of their iPads turned out different. Plus, considering the students had to design their iPads to help or entertain a character, they had to use details from the story to support their apps.

What Stuck With You

Instead of using exit strips this year, I decided to use post it notes. I had the students write down one thing they learned from that day's lesson on a Post-It note. Then as they left the room, they stuck it on the wall outside my room. I often saw students pass my room and stop and read the blog. It was also great because the students knew that their response were going to be displayed, so they put more effort into them compared to if I was the only person reading their exit slips. (Yes, I took a photo of myself with my a Post-It on my head reading 'Math Rules' and made it the center of wall of exit notes)

Bubbles

After completing a circles unit, I found this great circle activity on http://www.3rdgradegridiron.com/2012/05/want-to-have-blast.html. I made a bubble mixture using the following recipe: http://chemistry.about.com/od/bubbles/a/Bubbles-That-Dont-Pop.htm. I poured the mixture into a plastic plate for each student and then the students blew bubbles by blowing into straws. After they formed a bubble, they found the center, measured the diameter, and calculated the circumference of each bubble. I loved this lesson because they not only had fun, but they also were able to apply what they learned! Here's a link to the free data recording page-- http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Bubbles-Activity-Data-Sheet-742573

http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Bubbles-Activity-Data-Sheet-742573

Mrs. Riggs' Summer Break Olympics

During the last week of school, I was searching through Pinterest for some creative ideas to use with my students. I found some really cute, simple ideas from http://tunstalltimes.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/our-last-day-in-pictures.html. I took those ideas and rolled them into Mrs. Riggs' Summer Break Olympics. The three activities I selected were Cup Races, Cotton Ball Pile Up, and Traveling Wafer.


Cup Races:
You need two solo cups, enough straws for each of your students, and a long table surface.
Two students compete against each other by blowing a solo cup to the other side of the table with a straw. The first person to have their cup fall off the the edge is the winner. I had a stop watch and had the students listen for their time when their cup fell. They then wrote their time down on their time sheet (attached to this blog). Once everyone had competed, we compared times and 'crowned' a winner!

Cotton Ball Pile Up:
You need cotton balls, paper plates, and Vaseline
Simply at one end of a line of desks I had a plate full of cotton balls and at the other end I had an empty plate for the students to transfer the cotton balls. I put Vaseline on each student's nose, then I timed them for a minute to see how many cotton balls they could transfer without using their hands. When the minute was up, the students counted the number of cotton balls they were able to transfer and wrote the number down on their score sheet. Once all of scores were in, we crowned a winner.

Traveling Wafer: 
You need about 7-9 wafers for each student

The students placed a wafer on top of their foreheads and move it down to their mouths by just using their face muscles. I gave them two minutes to see how many successful attempts they could make. This was hilarious to watch and the students had so much fun! There was also a winner crowned for highest number of successful attempts.

For the FREE download of the score sheet
http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Summer-Break-Olympics-736667

About Me

Hello! My name is Christy and I am a resource teacher in the northwest Chicago suburbs.
I have a very unique position that consists of two parts; math resource and the Talent and Development Program. Simply for my math resource position, I pull students who typically are tier 2 math students into my room for small group instruction. The math concept that is being taught in the students' classrooms during that time, I teach in my small group, but at a level that fits the group's ability. However, the other part of my position is the Talent and Development Program. Students who are in 3rd through 5th grade and test above the 91%ile come to me for three hours a six day cycle.
(Simply, my school does not have scheduling by days, but by day numbers. Considering the number of Mondays and Fridays schools tend to have off, a numbered cycle eliminates missing the same groups on days there is no school.) These students come to me for reading and math. By time a student finishes 5th grade TDP, they will be able to set algebraic equations to solve challenging story problems.

My 5th grade students had to pass out bananas on field day as part of a project. I attached a photo of myself so you can put a face with the name. :)