Fun craft for summer vacation stories.

Hi Everyone!

So this week we have been working on summer vacation stories.  To go with this theme, I read the story How I Spent My Summer Vacation by Chris Van Allsburg.  This is a great story about a kid with a wild imagination.  I then had students write about their favorite summer vacation story. Once they wrote this we practiced editing skills which no one thought they needed! WRONG, lol.

Afterwards, I was inspired by a fellow teacher, who I like to call Amazing Amy (yes, she wears a cape) to do a similar activity craft she was doing with her student’s summer vacation stories. So I created a half sheet final draft sheet for their stories. I posted this below in a PDF link - Free.

Final Draft Link

I used a sunglasses pic from the website http://www.clker.com/clipart-black-and-white-sunglass-frames.html which is a free clipart site. Students colored the glasses and put mini-scene pics in the glass part of the glasses.

After students finished writing their final drafts and cut-out their completed sunglasses, I took them to attach to a long piece of construction paper. I pasted the story at the bottom and sun glasses above for students to draw their face and neck.

I think their final story and craft turned out great!

Thanks,

Erin

Butterfly Activity

Hi Everyone!

I am back in full swing at school and just completed my first week!  It was a full week and I have a crazy new schedule that I have to get used to.  However, I have a lot of great new students and have been doing many activities to help create a nice positive learning environment.  One of the activities that I did last week was this butterfly activity. I have done this several times in the past and other teachers have been asking me about it this year.  

This butterfly activity is a getting to know you, where students are paired up and have to complete this butterfly with is actually a Venn Diagram about similarities and differences of each student.

Here is how I put it together.

1.Pair students into partners of 2. Each partner gets a wing (one gets the right, and one gets the left).

2.Together they fill out things they have in common on the body of the butterfly.

3.Then they discuss their differences. This talk may sound like, what’s your favorite movie? or How many pets do you own? They put their differences on their wing.

4.Then students each color their own wing and decide how to color the body.

5.Students cut out each wing (do NOT cut off the black tabs) and cut out the butterfly body.

6.Then (up to you) but as the teacher I taped the butterfly wings on the back of the body.

7.Then as the teacher I took one pipe cleaner and bent it in the middle to have to equal halves. I taped the middle to the back of the body and curled the ends to make it look like antennae. 

This is the end result:

So now I have a great new bulletin board for parents to see when they come next week for parent night!

 See the Butterfly Activity on TPT.

Have Fun,

Erin

Place Value Mats

I can't wait to use these this year. I have done these in the past and wanted to update them to bring them back into my math curriculum. These are Place Value Mats that can be used all year for different math activities.

There are many different types of math lessons that you can do with the place value mats. The top reasons are to help students understand what place value is, writing numbers, help students say numbers, and to help students write numbers.


Other ideas I have come up with include.

Lesson Ideas for

the Place Value Mat

1.For beginning lessons go over vocabulary with students. Give tips on how to read and say a number.

2.As a whole class, everyone has their boards out. The teacher tells the students a number out loud to the whole class (repeat several times). This is great for informal assessing because it is easy to see which students get it and which don’t. After everyone has their boards complete, the teacher writes the number on the board.

3.In partners or small groups, one student builds the number (use privacy folder) and then has to say the number aloud. The other students have to build their number.

4.To emphasize the place in place value, have students build the number by only giving bedroom name and number. Example: There is a 2 in the tens place and a 4 in the ten thousands place.

5.To show adding and subtracting by 1,000, 100, 10’s.  Example: Build a number such as 23,789. Then ask students to add a 1,000 but take away 100. The new number is 24,689.

6.Use the mat to demonstrate rounding for different number values.

7.Students can practice differing money amounts.

8.Students write the standard form and the written form for each number. 

**Click here for a word form/standard form blog only freebie.**

If you are interested in the whole set to create the place value mats, you can find them here. 

Place Value Mats

I typically laminate these mats so students can use these all throughout the year.

Erin

All About Me

Okay, well not all about me really but rather my All About Me stuff that I will be using at the beginning of the year. I created some different posters for students to do that first week back  in school. I wanted to share this blog only freebie with you. Let me know what you think.

Thanks,
Erin

Click here to download this freebie.



If you are interested in the full product, you can find it here:
https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/All-About-Me-Posters-for-Back-to-School-Activities-1976905