Freebie February and Sponge Activities

Today is all about sponge activities.  We all need them for those awkward few minutes before the bell rings, or before you leave for your specials class, or ...  You know.

Some of the best sponge activities are those that need no prep. I have 1 that my kiddos love and all it requires are a sticky note and a chalkboard or whiteboard. I call it Mystery Number. I write the Mystery Number on the back of the sticky note (the side that sticks to the board). After drawing a number line on the board, I put the sticky note in the middle of the number line. 

As students guess, I write their guesses on the number line and ask if the guess is greater than or less than the Mystery Number. Obviously, when the correct number is guessed, I turn over the sticky note and congratulate the students. This really helps children with numeration concepts.  

Since I'm focused on sponge activities, the Freebie February product for today is one that can readily fill those odd moments. Triads I combines critical thinking with vocabulary development. It disguises lots of learning with tons of fun. 

The Triad cards show 3 words which can be linked by 1 word.  In this example, the common word is CARD; birthday CARD, credit CARD, and CARDboard. As you can see, the common word can come before or after the given words. The answers can be compound words or common phrases.  

Triads I is a super sponge activity, but it is also excellent for enrichment, lovely for literacy centers, and fabulous for fast finishers.  I strongly urge you to solve several Triads as a whole group to get your kiddos cerebral cogs turning.  

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Freebie February Day 4

It's about time, teachers, to reveal Freebie February's 4th offering...

Valentine's Day Square Puzzler is a critical thinking activity that will really test your students' tenacity and problem solving skills. The challenge is to recreate a square using the square puzzle pieces so that all of the images match on every interior side.  Like this:

In this example, the last piece will NOT fit there. The other pieces will have to be rearranged.

This product includes 3 puzzles; a 2x2 (above) that is perfect for starting out and for young learners, a 3x3 (at right) which is exponentially more difficult, and a 4x4 that is challenging, even for adults.

These puzzles are quite versatile. You can put them in a center and easily differentiate for your students. They are useful as an anchor activity and are absolutely perfect for fast finishers.  This is one activity they are unlikely to finish in a flash.  They also make a sane activity for a Valentine's Day party.

My G/T students beg to work with square puzzlers, but I find almost all students love them. (Students who are easily frustrated may shy away from these puzzles.)

This activity is utterly awesome when you want/need to observe how your students problem solve.  

Grab your copy now! It's only free for 1 day.

If your students love these puzzles, and I'm sure they will, you may be interested in these:

Freebie February -- You're Going to Love It!

It's Day 3 of Freebie February! I hope you find today's offering useful for your literacy centers.

This circus themed product has 16 rules of syllabication.  They are letter paper sized and in beautiful color.  Each rule has a circus themed example to further illustrate the principle described.

Rules of Syllabication *The Circus Edition* is CCSS aligned. Did you know that every grade from K - 5 has a CCS Standard for working with syllables? This product will help you meet those standards. 

Enjoy!

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February Centers and Freebies

It's about time, teachers, to focus on February.

I'd like you to keep calm and focus on some new centers for your classroom.  

Friendly Frog's Valentine's Day Syllables Center is a low prep literacy center. Friendly Frog appears in many of my syllabication products. This time he challenges your students to sort word cards according to whether they have a prefix or a suffix.

February sports a lot of pink, so you may like Valentine's Day Hink Pinks, Hinky Pinkies, and Hinkity Pinkities.  These riddles that evoke pairs of rhyming words, are wildly popular. They work well in a literacy center, as an anchor activity, a sponge activity, and are the perfect challenge for fast finishers. This set is FREE! So download your copy now.

Scrattle: The Valentine's Day Edition is also FREE!  This center combines word work with computation and spurs your students to create more difficult words through competition.  It really and truly is appropriate for K through 5th grade because you can effortlessly differentiate for math abilities.  3 different recording sheets are provided.  One requires students to use addition, 1 calls for multiplication, and the 3rd uses mixed operations (+, -, x) with parentheses. My students beg for Scrattle. As a result, there are many versions available and all of them are FREE! 

Have you heard?  It's Freebie February in my TPT store.  Each day this month, a different priced item will be offered for FREE for just one day. So check in daily to see what I'm giving away.  

Today's offering is How Many Ways? -- February Edition. This product, like Scrattle, is appropriate for all elementary grade levels. It is a critical thinking, interactive bulletin board activity that could be used as a center, an enrichment challenge, an anchor activity, and/or for differentiation. You can read more about it here.

Freebie February!

It's February! Better yet, it's FREEBIE FEBRUARY @ It's About Time, Teachers! As you can see on the calendar above, there will be a FREEBIE offer from my TPT store everyday.  Yes, everyday!  One priced product will be FREE everyday, and everyday that FREEBIE will be different.

To start things off, I'm offering Presidential Trivia Task Cards (hot off the presses just last night!!!!) for FREE, but only for 1 day.  

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How Many Ways? Critical Thinking Challenge

I'd like to introduce you to How Many Ways? - February Edition.

If you like critical thinking math challenges for your students...

If you like open-ended activities that take very little prep...

If you like interactive bulletin boards that stay up for an entire month...

...then you will love How Many Ways? -- Feb. Edition. 

Here's the 4-1-1:

This is what your bulletin board could look like. For this example, your students are challenged to get to the target number, 30, using the numbers on the hearts and any combination of the specified operations. So, they could use just addition and get there in these ways:

4 + 4 + 4 + 4 + 3 + 3 + 3 + 3 + 2 = 30    

or

4 + 3 + 2 + 1 + 4 + 3 + 2 + 1 + 4 + 3 + 2 + 1 = 30

By adding or substituting another operation sign, such as x, students can find the target number in many more ways. For example:

(4 x 4) + (4 x 4) - 2 = 30

 3 x (1 + 2 + 3 + 4) = 30 

(4 x 3) + (3 x 2) + (3 x 3) + 3 = 30

How fun is that? Clearly there are many, many, many equations that can be constructed to equal 30. However, you are not done. Not even close. 

Included in this product are 29 more target numbers, plus 3 blank targets for you to program. Also included is a division sign, should your students be ready for that operation. 

It is up to you to determine how challenging this activity is. If you teach the littlest learners, you can program the center to just require counting. I have even included number hearts with counting dots.  

If you teach older students, this activity will challenge them to use algebraic equations (although the variable is implied), reinforcing the order of operations and the value of parentheses.

As you can see, the heart icons are presented in color and black line.  If you choose to use the black line hearts, I encourage you to copy them on colored paper.

How Many Ways? -- Feb. Edition works well as a math center.  I provide heart shaped paper for students to record their equations and let them post them on the adjacent board. We post them in columns of 10, making it easy to determine how many ways we have found.

It is also a great anchor activity and/or sponge activity.  But my favorite way to use this activity is as a challenge for fast finishers.  It is not only highly engaging for those quick minds, but I also use them as checkers.  That is, they review the posted solutions to make sure they are accurate.  If they agree, they can put a little valentine sticker on the equation to validate it, as well as to show that it has already been checked.

Now that you've met How Many Ways? -- Feb. Edition, I hope you will become life long friends.

Have you met the other members of the family?
    

        

February: Do What You Love

One of the things I love to do with my students is immerse them in poetry because it offers so many teaching possibilities. Naturally you can focus on poetic structures and poetic devices. But have you ever used poetry to teach reading skills? Because poetry is usually short and the message concise, it's a perfect venue for studying vowel sounds, contractions, punctuation, parts of speech, syllables, rimes, inflections, .... The  possibilities are nearly endless. It's always good practice to relate these skills to what is being read. Practicing skills in isolation may transfer to reading skill building; then again it may not.  

Does it sound daunting to combine poetry with ELA skills?  It doesn't have to be. As the ELA coach for my elementary building, I determined that poetry was generally intimidating to my teachers, or at least viewed as a luxury that may not receive much attention. Resolving to change that, I began giving my teachers units of poetry with "possibilities" for using it in the classroom.  Since I work with K-5 teachers and students, these Poetry Possibilities units have applications for all elementary levels.

Poems have reading skills already built into them.  All you have to do is look at it with a "reading skills eye." Thus, if the poem is replete with a particular consonant blend, use it in a guided reading lesson about that blend.  If the poem has a sprinkling of contractions, devise a review lesson about contractions using the poem.  As an example, look at the following poem, noting that it has several compound words in it.

Due to the structure of a poem, it is easier for young children to locate the compound words. If you reproduced this poem on sentence strips for use in a pocket chart, that would facilitate identifying the compound words as a group.  With a little magic and masking tape, you could make the compound words come apart. Alternately, you might focus on the punctuation and how it helps the reader to read with expression and fluency. Or, you might choose to conduct a mini-lesson on contractions. For example, the Possibilities for the above poem include:

If you are interested in more seasonal poems with teaching points and skill suggestions, visit my TpT store here. For February poems and possibilities, I have 3 (!) products: Black History Month Poetry Possibilities, February Poetry Possibilities, and  Poetry Possibilities for Winter.  Another unit, 100th Day of School Poetry Possibilities, is useful this time of year, as well. (Better yet, it's FREE!!) 

As a reading specialist, I highly recommend using poems for guided reading lessons and review lessons.  It has always been a favorite activity of my remedial students if for no other reason than they had less text to conquer.  Just a word of caution: reading poetry is principally about creating enthusiasm for reading.  Take care not to defeat that goal by always turning poetry reading into a skill drill.

As proof of just how much I love teaching with poetry, I present my Poetry Possibilities units: