{Acitivity Sticks}

Our math curriculum at our school works wonders, but it can be a bit dry, so I wanted to come up with some quick activities to get my kids up and moving every 15/20 minutes. I came up with...

Activity Sticks!

Basically, when the kids are starting to drift I say "activity time!", I set the timer for one minute and draw an activity. We then do the activity until we finish or the timer goes off. The kids love it! You'd be surprised how excited they get when I draw push ups, especially the boys! Haha, show offs. :)

** UPDATE: Visit me on my TPT or Teacher's Notebook store to download these activities and browse my others!**

TPT: http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Brain-Break-Activity-Sticks-858074
Teacher's Notebook: http://www.teachersnotebook.com/product/rsullard/brain-break-activity-sticks

We love them, I hope you do too!

Teach On!
Rachel


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{I'm Alive! Texas Book}

I promise I didn't give up on my blog! I have actually been working on some great stuff to share... but I can't find my camera to take pictures! I'll have it up this weekend though, promise!

In the mean time... here is a little Texas book I whipped up. Nothing fancy, just something I am using to introduce our Texas and local history unit.

Texas Book

Teach on!

{Scoot Activity}

This is a very popular activity, so I'm sure that many of you have used or seen it. But I really wanted to post it because of how wonderful it is! My students LOVE it and after you do it once, it is a quick easy way to review in ANY content area!

This week we are studying place value in the hundreds place, so I whipped up a version of scoot for review before our test.

All you need to do is cut this sheet up and put one square on each desk.
place value scoot

Each student will get one of these sheets.
Scoot

When they get to a desk they match the number on the paper to number on their own paper. I use a timer to countdown 30 seconds at each desk (time depends on the difficulty of the problems.) At the end of the 30 seconds we say "3,2,1 SCOOT!" This cues the students to move to the next desk and repeat the process. The first time you play you will want to practice just the scooting part without doing any problems first. They tend to take the problems with them and leave their pencils and such, haha. After you play once, they have the hang of it and it's such a simple process!

I use this game at least once a week. Most recently for sentence editing practice, homophones practice, and compound words.

Try this activity. I'm sure you'll love it!

TEACH ON!!

{Homophones}

We studied homophones last week and in while in the spring spirit we made some kites! It was a simple, fun acitivy that turned out so cute... in my opinion.

They wrote a homophone pair on each piece of the kite, with an illustration of each on the diamond shape. I wanted to hang them from the ceiling, but they were just too small. :( The bulletin board is not a disappointment though!

Sorry about the lighting. The sun was hitting the hallway strangely.

The pair of homophones on the diamond is "moose" and "mousse."

"buy" and "bye"

This could be applied to many other phonics/grammar areas, such as contractions.

Enjoy your weekend and then.... TEACH ON!

{Ocean Animals}

Sorry I haven't posted in a while. I guess blogging just isn't routine yet!

So, next week we are going on a field trip to... Sea World! To prepare ourselves for our learning adventure we are researching all of the animals we will see. As a class, we will read and learn about many animals, while partners work together to complete this book about the animal of their choice.
Ocean Animal Journal 2

We will also be discussing life cycles of insects soon. I whipped up this simple form for my students to fill out as we talk about the different insects.
Life Cycle

This is a simpler version of the animal research book. The font was a little hard to read and it lacks the critical thinking questions the new version has, but it might work for someone out there, so I thought I'd share. :)
Ocean Animal Journal

I hope these are useful! TEACH ON!