Summer savings for math teachers

Now is a great time to stock up on items for school.  In this past Sunday’s newspaper, Office Max has a brown paper bag where you can put items that you choose (read the small print because some items are not given a discount) to get a 15% discount.  This may not have occurred in all newspapers, but hopefully it did where you live.  Another place to buy items are thrift stores.  My school has implemented reading every day for twenty minutes.  I get my classroom reading books from thrift stores.  I am very careful about the ones that I choose, but they are very affordable.  If you have any great ideas about how to save on supplies, please leave a comment.

End of the year activities

Now that the end is near, here are some suggestions for what you can do with your students. 

1.  Play Jeopardy.  It works really well with a LCD projector and smartboard.

2.  Play math equation race on the chalkboard or whiteboard.  This is where the students are grouped in fours and each one takes a turn at the equation.  The first team to get the most correct is the winner.

3.  Play Uno.  The class can have several games going on at once.

4.  Play Math War with multiplication and division facts.  I got my cards from Barnes and Nobles.  The students really enjoy this game.

5.  Play bingo with basic math facts.  I purchased a bingo game from a Parent Teacher Store.  Let one of the students call out the cards. 

I hope you try some of these suggestions and let me know how things turn out.

Have a happy summer!

Are we doing anything today?

How many times have you had students walk into the classroom and ask the following questions?  Are we doing anything today?  What are we doing today?  The students actually have no idea about what is going on in the class.  For years, I did not tell the students what we were doing until the class started.  I never wrote it down anywhere.  I just said it out loud.  One day it all changed.  I was at a school that did not meet its standards; therefore, we were required to do certain things.  One of them was to write the topic and objective of the day on the board.  Instantly, the students knew what they were doing and did not have to ask me anymore.  All they needed to do was read the board.  This was so an aha moment.  It was so simple and I wondered why I never thought about it before.  Since that day, I have not had any students ask what are we doing today.