Fun Valentine Lessons and Activities

Valentine's celebrations are over in my class.

We have a 4 day weekend for Presidents Day so my students got their sugar fixes today.

I'm sharing some snapshots of our fun filled day.

We started off with a team building activity. Each team got mixed up heart puzzle pieces and the goal of each 4 member team was to make a heart with four different colors. When all the hearts were mended and each team member had 4 colors, then each student glued their puzzle down.

My treat for my students was giving them a box of candy hearts, but before they could eat them we did all kinds of math. This included probability, fractional parts, bar graphing and pictographs of the heart colors and determining the area and perimeter of the box.

We made adorable Love is Valentine crafts for a table decoration.

It was a day of sweet success!

Find more great ideas on my Pinterest page or TPT store

I recently started a Facebook Group for teachers to share ideas, questions, and inspiration

Come Join the group!

Hit the Beach with Relay Learning Fun

Tomorrow is my last day of school and of course my students have summer on their minds already.

So we did the cutest learning relay today from Miss Math Dork, Beach Bum Relay.

I love the versatility of this fun team relay. I used the template provided to program math review questions for each of the ten rounds. Each team task had a question for each team member to correctly solve before having it checked by the teacher. I threw in all kinds of skills we learned this year: long division, decimals, place value, rounding and multi digit multiplication. If the team got all 4 questions right one of the team members was assigned to draw a portion of a beach scene picture. As the rounds progressed, teams ended up being on different rounds based on their team accuracy and time spent on drawing. My class loved it and everyone was engaged. As you can see every teams final beach scene came out uniquely theirs!

Here's a picture of the teams in drawing action

Find more great ideas on my Pinterest page or TPT store

Error Analysis Activity: Building Critical Thinking

My class tackled multi step math problems with a new strategy I put in place called Right  vs  Wrong.
The purpose of it is to help student verify the answers given by their classmates which is perfect for error analysis and building critical thinking.

First students work in pairs to solve a problem and show their answers in complete detail.

Then, in pairs students rotate and review fellow classmates work.

I placed a simple Right Wrong chart next to each problem to review.

Students read, reviewed and verified if they thought the answer was right or wrong.

If they thought it was wrong they had to give a reason.

Here it is in action

Reading and verifying

Student is marking the Right Wrong chart with their input

Sample chart when we finished

Reasons are given for why classmates thought a given problem was wrong

My students loved this strategy and it required student engagement and accountability.

I've made new Right vs. Wrong printables you can grab for free at my TPT store if you'd like to try this strategy.

~Enjoy

I recently started a Facebook Group for teachers to share ideas, questions, and inspiration. 

Come Join the group!

A is for Assessments: Fun Ways to Evaluate Student Learning

I'm sharing my bag of tricks for great assessment ideas for the classroom.

Here are some of my favorites:

 

Grade the Teacher 

 

This is by far my absolute favorite way to assess my students in the classroom.

It is so versatile and engaging and can be used for any subject. Plus it builds critical thinking and reasoning skills. Students get to "grade" the teacher's work, which is purposely filled with errors for them to find. It's great for an exit ticket and error analysis. Plus, students don't even realize they are doing ALL the work by correcting and reteaching the teacher! It is such a hit with the students. Grab it at my TPT store.

 

Carousel Writing

Create a set of questions related to a topic of study. Write them out on chart paper. These questions will be used as brainstorming sheets for a pre lesson assessment, and then again for a post lesson assessment.  Group students at one of the chart questions and have them discuss and record ideas. Upon a designated signal pass the charts to a new group and continue the same process. Each group will respond and add to all question charts.  The neat part of this is if you do the same questions as a post Carousel Writing you can see growth in ideas.  The samples below were for a science unit on Living Things. The pre lesson Carousel brainstorming was in red and the post lesson was in green.

Stoplight Vocabulary

This idea comes from the book Getting Into Words by Shira Lubliner.

Use this web link printable to color code vocabulary word familiarity in stoplight colors:

Red: If you don't know the word
Yellow: If you have heard the word, but not sure of its meaning
Green: If you know the word and can use it in a sentence

What are some fun ways you assess students?

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