Mental Math and a Freebie

Remember this past summer when I posted about Mental Math here?  When I created my unit, I had no idea that so many of you would be struggling with the same concept!  We have started reviewing mental math in our second grade classrooms.  Today we reviewed the adding 10's.  We are going to explicitly teach it for each adding and subtracting until we feel confident that they understand it.  Then we will have them work on mixed problems for adding and subtracting 10's and 100's.  Want to check out the mini unit?  It's a great one in my biased opinion!

As I started preparing for next week, I realized needed a game that my kids could play to review this skill.  I made a quick spinner game that lets the kids make their own 3 digit number.  I think it accompanies the unit well!  Be sure to pick up your own free copy by clicking the picture below.  First comment will also get you my Mental Math Mania pack for free!!

Happy Monday!

Freebie

Whoa!  Over a whole month since we last blogged!?!  Not cool!  So sorry, friends.  I guess after seeing that our last post was all about the changes that we were about to embark upon and our lack of blogging, you can see that we have been B-U-S-Y.  It's been quite a month.  I will be the first to admit that the changes have been a little fun- new faces, new friendships between kids.  But also very stressful!  So many report cards, so much work to grade each day/week.  Overall, the kids have all adjusted well and we are plugging along nicely.  It hasn't been hard, just an adjustment.  So, I am just popping in to say hey and offer up a little freebie for you.  A few weeks ago, I noticed that my kids did not know how to look up words up in the dictionary.  I don't know about you but I definitely don't have tons of time to teach dictionary skills!  So I made this little station activity for my kids to use as they look up the meanings of words on their word lists.  In an apology to you for our absence, hop on over and pick up your own copy for free!  Thanks for hanging in there!  Thanks also for your words of encouragement and advice on our new adventure.  You were so encouraging to us and we appreciated it so much!

Groundhog Persuasive Writing Freebie

I am getting this up a little later than I had hoped, but between "snow"days and report cards, I have been really overwhelmed! I am trying to incorporate more persuasive pieces of writing in throughout the year now that we are teaching the Common Core.  I made this writing activity and thought I would share it with everyone.  It basically has the kiddos decide whether they want 6 more weeks of winter or spring to begin.  We had a discussion about Groundhog's Day and what seeing his shadow would mean.  After they decided what they wanted, they had to brainstorm reasons to support that decision. This has a planning sheet to help with that.  Last, they write a letter to the groundhog trying to persuade him to see or not see his shadow.  The class enjoyed it and some of the reasons were a lot of fun to read.  The font is from The Tattooed Teacher - which if you don't follow her, you really should!  She has great stuff and is fun to read. Juli has been working on a unit she got from Rachel and is loving it. She will be blogging about it soon.  I am stalking her matter unit that I hope to snag on one of these TPT sales soon.  Please feel free to use the Groundhog Writing this year - or maybe next year since I am behind in getting it shared.  Click HERE to grab your copy.

Homophone Freebie

We have been teaching homophones this week. I found this cute activity on Pinterest where students write and illustrate their pairs of homophones on pears.  I did the activity with the class and the first words that come to mind are "hot mess." Granted I do tend to be completely slightly OCD.  But I didn't think the class would be game to play "Let's redo this so I can feel better about it." Not to mention that doing something over to calm my OCD tendencies has no educational value! So I put it out in the hall. Here is how it looks:

I really just wanted it to look neater.  I made a new one to use next year. Click on the picture to download your own copy.

A Christmas Freebie

We are proving to not be very good at this blogging thing lately!  I don't know about you but I am so exhausted at the end of the day, blogging is the last thing that is on my mind!

Heather and I have been busy planning many upcoming units for our classes.  In our math plans we have been creating some stations to go along with our mini lessons!

One of the stations that we have planned for our upcoming Christmas stations is a hundreds board activity that focuses on place value.  As I finished it tonight, I thought that I would give it as a freebie as an apology for being MIA.

Click the picture below to pick up your free copy.  The picture is a completed version, but when you download it, it will be ready to print and copy for your classroom!

Enjoy!

Thematic Maps

We teach Map Skills to our Second Graders.  Personally, map skills to 7 and 8 year olds is completely BORING!!  I mean really, map skills for any age is not tons of fun.  To help make the concept a little more fun and create a way to apply their knowledge, we assign a Thematic Map Project each year.  This project is one of our favorite times of year because our kids' creativity really comes out.  Each year, the themes are different and exciting and we LOVE them!  It is a project that is sent home to complete and then returned to school to be presented and displayed.  We typically give about 2 weeks for them to work on them before we ask that they are returned to school.  Students choose a theme that interests them (cheer-leading, soccer, dance, etc...) and create a map.  The outline of the map is in a shape that matches the chosen theme and the landmarks, streets, and map key items are all named to match as well.  The students are graded on a rubric for the following items:

Map Title
Map Key
Compass Rose
Labeled Landmarks and Streets
Neatness and Creativity

Here are a few of this year's maps:

If you are interested in trying out this fun project in your classroom as well, click here to download the letter that we send home to parents.

Happy Map Making!

   & 

Fall is in the Air!

As Heather mentioned in her last post, I headed to Tennessee this past weekend to cheer on the Tennessee Vols as they played the Akron Zips.  Remember back in this post?  I explained that I married an avid VOL fan which makes me now a fan by marriage.  Here we are before the game!

With college football brings tailgating, cooler weather, and FALL Activities in the classroom!!  It is also one of my favorite seasons!  So, I felt the need to start making some activities for my kids to use in my classroom.  We've covered both 2.NBT.2 and 2.OA.3 and I need for my students to be able to apply these strategies all the way to 1,000.  I decided to make these to be able to use in a station with a recording sheet for accuracy.  

You can click on the picture below to get the whole pack at my TPT store.  But since I love fall so much, I am also including a little freebie for you.  

Check out all the awesome stuff that you get in the pack!!! (There's much more, but I couldn't do a preview of ALL 51 pages that it includes)  The range is from 5-1,000.  It is a perfect pack to use to differentiate!!

And as I promised, click below to get yourself a fun little fall freebie!!

Happy Fall!