Math Activities - Problem Solving

Here are a couple of samples from my new Teachers Pay Teachers product, Scott Foresman Grade 3 Math Problems of the Day and group activities. You don't have to use the program to use these sheets. In most cases, the only materials you need are these sheets and a pencil! Activities are simple enough to use with second graders and challenging enough to use with fourth graders. Enjoy!

Lesson 1.9 - number patterns

Lesson 1.10 - rounding to the nearest ten or hundred

Click here to download my Scott-Foresman-Grade-3-Chapter-1-Math-Activities at Teachers Pay Teachers!

Technology Tricks - Changing Layout / Page Orientation

Not sure about you, but switching between my school desktop DELL and home Mac laptop is driving me crazy!!!  I have also have different word processing software at each place - Microsoft Word at school and OpenOffice at home with different printers at each. My school printer sometimes won't print my documents because it doesn't recognize my fonts. I try my best to save everything as a PDF to Google Word so I don't have to run around with a flash drive, but I still bring my laptop to school...just in case! We also have art and music in our classrooms, meaning that sometimes our specials teachers are using our computers with the Promethean Board during my our preps. I'm not complaining because I know many schools don't provide teachers with printers, computers, or Promethean Boards. Anyway, here's a tip that will hopefully help you if you're in the same boat and need a quick reminder!

If you don't have Microsoft Office / Word and want a free option for word processing, try Openoffice.org. It gives you more options than Google Docs, such as being able to import fonts.

Here's how to change the page layout in OpenOffice.

Click Format from the toolbar --> Page

Find Orientation --> Click Landscape or Portrait --> OK

Here's how to change the page layout in OpenOffice:

Click File --> Page Setup

Click Portrait or Landscape --> OK

Here's how to change the page layout in Microsoft Word:
Click File --> Page Setup

Show, Not Tell! (First Day of School with Students)

A scene from one of my favorite movies is the best thing to start off my first day of school with kids, especially since I leave home at 6:45am and need a laugh to start off the day! If it wasn't for my Sirius satellite radio, I might not be able to handle the drive... cross your fingers that there aren't any accidents or traffic!

To celebrate, here are some graphic organizers we'll be using after we read Officer Gloria and Buckle to talk about rules. I attended a behavior management training this summer that said we need to do a better job of modeling exactly what following the rules looks like, and I think this is a great way to do it! You can create your own charts on chart paper, an interactive board, or get these blown up if you are not doing these with small groups.

Please leave a comment and Click here to download!

Data Collection in the Classroom

If you couldn't tell by my earlier math posts, I am focusing on math and organization this school year. I am going to start off the year teaching students how to collect data on their learning. This will not only get them involved in their learning, but it will also help meet math standards and provide more tangible data for me, parents, and special services. I figured I'd share my generic forms with you for free on Teachers Pay Teachers.

Spelling Pretest Form

Spelling Graph 

Mad Minutes Graph

Birthday Graph Pack

Back to School Read Aloud Books

I'm just exhaused after finishing up my classroom! I've been running around doing last minute errands before teachers report Tuesday and students report on Wednesday, plus playing kickball and softball... and I am so excited to start the year at my new school! I have met so many great, enthusiastic teachers on staff at our huge school, and they all pronounce my name correctly - I pronounce Alysia Battista as "Uh-lee-shuh Buh-tee-stuh" - which can confuse people when they see it in print. Our school is grades 3-5 with the K-2 and autism buildings just steps away, so I have tons of names to memorize. My grade level has 10 classes, while 4th and 5th have 8 each. There are 11 elementary schools, 4 middle schools, and 2 high schools. What can I say, NJ may be small but there sure are a lot of people here! 

Anyway, I wanted to post my first two weeks of Read Aloud books. I feel that I haven't done enough in the past, so I'm going to see how one a day works, and then transition into chapter books once our routine is down. It's very easy to find plans that go along with them, but I don't have time to post links to them right now.  My students have very unique names like me, so I am really interested in their response to Chrysanthemum. I am going to use these books to introduce reading response in their journals, plus making predictions, making inferences, and making connections. Character education and self-esteem building is embeded in How Full is Your Bucket?, Chrysanthemum, I'm Gonna Like Me: Letting Off a Little Self-Esteem, Don't Squeal Unless it's a Big Deal, and The Principal's New Clothes (one of my favorites as a kid!)