Fling the Teacher!

If someone would ask me the most important job of a teacher, I would likely respond "to build students' self confidence and foster mutual respect between the teacher and students." So, why would I title my blog post "Fling the Teacher?"

Well...apparently, games with these types of titles can be quite engaging and funny for 3rd graders. I mean, who wouldn't want to explore a game that had "Fling the Teacher" as its title? It certainly caught my eye! Students can "design" their teacher and then, when given multiple choice questions (dealing with various forms of figurative language), if they get 15 correct, they get to "fling the teacher." Seems silly, right? Just try it. I bet your kids will love it. They will love to fling the teacher. And when your students start talking about the examples they came across while playing, you will know that flinging the teacher was well worth it!

On a different note... the snow day, yesterday, allowed me to sit with my computer and do something I enjoy; web surf. I admit, it really is fun for me. Look at what I came across here. Although some links might be inactive, there are plenty that are not. This site is called Mr. Young's Bouncy "A". Check out my delicious account to view specific activities from this site that I found useful.

Happy Weekend!

Creativity in Non-Fiction

What I like most about teaching third grade is that the kids go from reading for fluency to reading for understanding. The second/third trimester of third grade focuses largely on understanding non-fiction text and gathering and processing research. Right now, my kids are doing a hero project. I am truly impressed with how well they are able to collect research! They are using Kidspiration to take notes on their hero. (From books and pre-determined search engines) With just a little bit of scaffolding, my students really are rising to the challenge.

In keeping with the non-fiction theme, I came across ABCya Word Clouds and thought that this would be an innovative and creative way for my students to express their understanding on their hero, or another non-fiction topic. It's visually appealing and forces them to think about adjectives, verbs, and nouns that describe their subject (person, animal, place...)


Here are my kids' work on a bulletin board!

:-)

While I'm on the subject of Math...

Usually I do not blog in the middle of the week, but due to the copius amounts of snow that is plummeting outside, I decided to take some time to catch up on work and write a blog post.

This Friday, I will be presenting at WSD's best practices inservice on integrating web resources into lessons to make them more engaging. In the session, the participants will also be creating a Delicious Account in order to book mark great sites that they come across. Having a Delicious account has really allowed me to search for sites when I have the time, and gather the sites easily, when I need them.

Anyway, here is one site I came across a bit ago and was a huge hit in my class. It's called 3DStarmattica and the students "travel" to various places around the world to find hidden polyhedrons. My kids love this because not only are they learning polyhedrons' features, they are learning geography. Cross-curricular learning is powerful because it allows the students to make connections.

Happy Snow Day everyone!

Music and Multiplication

It's not too much fun memorizing multiplication facts! Flash cards work for some, but not all. So, I was on a search for fun ways for my students to learn their multiplication facts! I came across this video on square numbers. What a great find! I have used this video as an activator to several math lessons. The kids come to the carpet with a whiteboard and marker. The first two times I showed this video, I asked them to write down words or phrases that helped them understand the meaning of a square number. The following two times, they wrote down square number equations that they saw on the video.

Music WORKS! I hear my kids singing the song throughout the day, which means they are learning their facts. Here is a picture of my students in action!