How to Introduce Fractions

Fractions are fun and easy to teach once you teach it conceptually. I have a little basket of goods that I cut up into halves for my students to see the real life use of 'a half'. I use fruits and it's a messy activity. Anyway, I recently found an alternative to the real fruit that was surprisingly just as effective... a fruit cutting set found at a toy store. The pieces are quite small (made for tiny hands) but that's alright. It included a plastic knife and cutting board. It was too cute not to share...

 

See other fraction resources that are good for introducing fractions here or by clicking on the picture below.

Free Posters - Positive Classroom Rules

I'm getting ready for back-to-school. I might be switching grades from first grade to fourth grade. It is always good to change your grade level. I always learn new things with each batch of kids. I would also have to dig back into my fourth grade resources and do some back to school shopping. Yay!

Anyway, enough about that. I have a treat for you. I made these free classroom posters with illustrated classroom rules (it would work for first grade, second grade, third grade and even fourth grade because they're already in my new classroom).

   

I took out my washi tape collection so that I could border up my bulletin board area.  I love the way that the washi-tape separates my board into sections.  The tape comes off easily if I need to change things up again.  The poster above stands on it's own with all of the rules shown.  The other posters in the set can be placed separately around the classroom or you can group them into a larger poster that gets even cuter with the washi tape and foam stickers.  The thing that is important to note with these posters is that I deliberately took out the phrase 'Do not' because it generally sounds negative and limiting.  I don't want my students to feel stifled by that negative tone.  These rules have a more encouraging tone but it encourages only what is acceptable and expected of students.  Does this sound like a good idea?  I got the idea from a fellow teacher and I must say...

Gosh! Why don't we all do that?    I love the idea. You can download your free copy here at my TpT Store. I hope you like them.

Parts of a Flower Activities

Think of this as an all-you-can-eat buffet of stuff related to the parts of a flower. This is a collection of classroom resources that I created for third and fourth grade Science. Below is a quick listing of the contents of my Parts of a Flower printables.

What you get:

A DIY craft activity for assembling the flower parts together to make a complete flower. This can be printed on paper or card stock or traced onto colored sheets of felt or foam sheets. Available in color and in blackline templates. 

Parts-of-a-flower diagram labeling activities with answer key. 

A set of 15 colorful illustrated definition cards. 

A 'Roll and Answer' worksheet with questions about the functions of each part of the flower. Includes answer key. 

18 large illustrated word wall cards for parts of the flower key terms.

              

                        Build a flower activity               and                   Illustrated definition cards

You can get it here at my TpT Store.

Another Look at Fractions

Hi guys, I'm so excited! Now that my Summer has finally started, I got down business with my Silhouette Portrait (a paper cutting machine that does amazing things!). Another teacher introduced me to the world of possibilities that a Silhouette brings into the classroom and I just had to get one (thank you Miriam!).  I wanted to do something for fractions, for the first grade level, to help students to read fractions... literally. 

This is my Silhouette Portrait

I remember my students asking me about the purpose of the vinculum so I made each of the fractions in these posters to include a vinculum with the words 'out of' within it. A half really means one out of two equal parts. Similarly, a quarter means one out of four equal parts. 

I did not have to print anything at all from my printer. I put different colors of card-stock into the Silhouette which was connected to my laptop. Every Silhouette comes with a program that you can use to make your own soft-copy creations. The silhouette turns it into a hard-copy by cutting out the outlines of your image on paper. In my case, it was the numbers, rectangles, the offset-outline and letters on each paper, that got cut out. Then I punched out each cut-out from the rest of the surrounding paper, layered the colored cut-outs and glued them down.

      

I also did the circular fraction models for halves.

  

I made a center out of this. All of the parts here are separate pieces that can be matched up to show 'halves' or 'one half'. I keep them in this folder. 

Back to School Shopping List!

Summer time is here! Many teachers are already preparing their classrooms for the new school year. Themes, planning, stationery, printables, decorations - your head is swimming with all of the new possibilities for September. Here's a quick list of the most poplar classroom stationery that are available at most stationery stores or teacher supply stores. I got these links from Amazon.

Sharpie Markers. Sharpie has a wide assortment of markers - permanent, metallic and highlighters.

Laminators. I use my laminator to personalize my classroom with theme accents that really pop when they are laminated. It's very handy for name tags, posters, labels, charts, write-on-wipe-off worksheets, flash cards and so on. I prefer the Scotch Thermal Laminator.

Highlighters. Aside from the regular highlighters, I love assorted fluorescent ones and I recently discovered that there are erasable highlighters too! I trust Sharpie highlighters because they do not smear the pen ink on the paper, everything remains neat!

Post-It Notes	Post-It Flags	Table Top Sorters
Desktop Organizers	Binder Clips	Card Stock for Printables

I had to add the card stock - I like to print card games and task cards onto the card stock rather than regular paper for reasons explained in this blog post. Every teacher has their own style. I'm not overly picky about what I use. As long as I have a few ergonomic things that make my life easier, I feel prepared and ready to take on anything!

Father's Day Crafts

Happy Father's Day to all dads, granddads, uncles, and male teachers! 

These are just  few of the crafts we made yesterday. The shirt-card with the collar, tie and pocket was chosen for my first graders because it is simple. I had to pre-fold the sheets to form the cards for them, then I gave each child a pair of rectangles for the collar, a kite shape for the tie, and a diamond shape for the knot. They glued these down in the order given then added the pockets. I would recommend using pre-cut 8.5 x 11 card-stock for the cards and glitter foam sheet cut-outs for the shapes. I use a guillotine to speed up the cutting process.

 

 My son made the Steel Pan at his school. It was too cool not to share! Look at the pan sticks, they are match sticks... cute! It is also made of hard card-stock for the pan shape and base, and foam sheet cut-outs for the notes.