Welcome To Fall!! Cool 3rd grade place value activities

I feel like things are FINALLY falling into place....just in time for FALL!!!

So a few weeks ago, I got an email from my friend/previous co worker Gennifer, and she wanted me to come and do a math training for her staff (she's a principal in a neighboring county in VA, but we used to teach together!) on Math Expressions. Since I'm SO active in our county's math and have taught successfully with Math Expressions, she wanted me to give her staff a quick overview and how to use the program successfully. I met some really cool teachers, and without going into too much detail, I really want to do training for a living now! I love all the technology trainings I do for my school, and this was SO much fun!

On the way to her school, I stopped for a PSL from Starbucks. If your blood type is Starbucks, as mine is - you know that stands for PUMPKIN SPICE LATTE!!! PSL is everything fall should be in a tall cup of caffeine! I love love love everything about fall - especially the pumpkin flavored everything. In fact, right now as I blog, I am baking pumpkin chocolate chip cookies!

One of my favorite units to teach this time of year is place value. I'm not sure if it's because it is SO easy to differentiate between my Tier I, II and III students, and my gifted students! My favorite activity, is an AIMS activity called "Clue Me In." Click here to purchase this activity from AIMS.

In this activity, students are given "mystery numbers" to find. Level A starts with 3 digit numbers, and level G and H are 6 digit numbers. The clues use math vocabulary like sum, difference, greater than, less than, and place value all the way to the hundred thousands. The clues were too difficult for my Tier II and III students to complete by themselves, so I set up teams of 4 to complete this activity, just as the directions state you should. I paired my higher level thinkers (1-2 per group) with my lower level students (2-3 per group). I put the lower level students in charge of finding the place values, circling and crossing out numbers. My higher level students were in charge of decoding the clues. It worked BEAUTIFULLY!

I put the recording sheet in a sheet protector, and let students write on it with a dry erase marker. At the end of each clue, or if students needed to start over, the paper easily erased. 

Clues are mixed up. For example, the first clue might say "The digit in the hundreds place and the tens place are the same." The students haven't figured out either digit. We talked about how you would remember to go back and solve this, and students decided they should circle the clues they had to go back to. 

This was HARD for 3rd graders! Look at the "brain stretching" as we call it in our class. This was a group of 5 - with EVERY student engaged, for a total of 45 minutes. Coolest. Activity. Ever. 

I am starting rounding and comparing now, and I am teaching my students the rounding mountains found in math expressions, with a little twist to help. 

You can find that poster on my TpT store. I will post some cool lessons on rounding next week! It's time to bake some more of those delicious pumpkin chocolate chip cookies. (If you want the recipe go HERE! 

My Favorite Math Lessons 2012-2013 part 1

Okay, so for the 2012-2013 school year, I taught math for 3 hours of my day. I had 3 classes (my homeroom, Ms. Bowles - check out her blog HERE and Ms. Hutsenpiller). This blog is dedicated to my ALL time favorite lessons that worked well. The really cool thing about departmentalizing is that I taught the first class from 10:00-11:00. If things didn't go perfectly, or the kiddos found something I didn't - I got to improve each time I taught. The students love this too, because I was always sharing what they came up with or discovered with the other two classes. Talk about peer validation! They loved hearing what other students did or said. I always incorporate concrete models and hands on practice into my lessons every chance I get. They are not only my favorite, but the kids favorite as well.

1.) Geoboards -- What did I NOT use geoboards for this year? I made up this workbook called "Geoboard Fun" based on every concept I could think of to use Geoboards for. I taught basically my whole 3rd grade geometry unit using geoboards! Why you might ask? They're GREAT! A perfect hands on tool that allows every child to create. I will give you some advice- make a "Geoboard Contract" for each child. Something to the effect of....."If I play with the rubber band, I lose Geoboard privileges." I actually had the students input, and they came up with some great rules. We wrote them on the board as a class, and everyone held up their right hand and repeated a "geoboard pledge" if you will. It went a little something like this: "I do solemnly swear, not to fling my rubber bands on purpose, and if I do, I lose my geoboard for the rest of the day." Out of 54 third graders, I took away 1 geoboard the whole year. The news spread like wildfire that day, and everyone knew I meant business. 
So, some concepts I used the geoboards for: flips, turns, slides, rotations, plane figures, symmetry, rays, angles, lines, line segments, perimeter, area, etc. etc. etc! Basically any geometry concept can be used on the geoboard. If your school doesn't have any, some square tiles/boards, and nails hammered into rows work perfectly!  However, my all time FAVORITE lesson, was using the geoboards for fractions! What a cool way for students to make the fraction themselves, count the area to make sure each section was equal, and explore equivalent fractions. I gave each student copies of a paper geoboard, and they had to draw their creations. Here is the background to the activity. Students were asked to create as many halves, fourths and eights on the geoboard as they could

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Halves, Fourths, and Eighths

The secret to this activity is to realize that the geoboard has 16 squares. Therefore, a half has 8 squares, a fourth has 4 squares, and an eighth has 2 squares. Allow students to work in groups of 2 or 3. As each new fractional partition is made, it should be recorded on the geodot paper. Provide chart paper for a class display. As fractional partitions are made, they can be cut out and added to the class display.

You can check out the rest of the photos here:Geoboard Fractions

2. Measuring the Track:

Our school is blessed to have a FABULOUS gravel track that has a soccer field in the center, a baseball field, and a playground. So, when the measurement unit rolled around in the spring, we went EXPLORING! We had been measuring things all year (Standard and Metric), and we had been on the track all year. Put the two together, and you have instant success! First, I asked students to estimate the length of the track and the width of the track in both Meters and Yards. Then, we went outside and measured, to the nearest yard and to the nearest meter, in groups of 4. (This was actually an event that ALL students did together one afternoon - it seemed like recess to them!) Then, I had the students convert the standard measurements to feet and inches, and the metric measurements to centimeters and millimeters.

3. Camp Fair Shares - Introducing Division
This is an AIMS Division activity that I just LOVE. Students have cute bears they have to divide into the correct number of boats to get across the lake. We did this particular activity on Valentine's Day - so we actually used conversation candy hearts. I had students "build" the lake on their desk, and they really got into "transporting" the bears. It really opened up a discussion of fair shares, remainders, and other division math talk.