COMING SOON! No Worksheet Wednesday Linky Party for March!

We have an EXCITING new weekly linky that will take place throughout the month of March!

It's called No Worksheet Wednesday and we hope you will join us!

All of us at the Primary Chalkboard have vowed not to use a single worksheet or printable every Wednesday during the month of March.  We really, really hope you will join with us in this project!

Why are we doing this?

*We are strong advocates for authentic learning experiences within the classroom.

*We know hands-on, active learning is critical to our students' development.

*We believe that learning activities that promote THINKING are the most powerful activities 

        we can provide for our students.

*We want to showcase and promote these types of activities for our followers! :) 

*We understand there is a time and place for worksheets in the classroom. However, we know worksheets are just one part of our classrooms, so lets put a spotlight on the other parts of our rooms! :) :) :)

To join us, make a vow not to use a single worksheet every Wednesday for the month of March.  (Remember, recording sheets that allow students to record their thinking are not worksheets. Writing paper and journals are a great way to embed authentic writing into your lessons without the need for a "worksheet.")

Each week, take pictures and blog about a couple activities you did for No Worksheet Wednesday. Share those pictures and activities on your blog and then link up with us on the Primary Chalkboard to share with others!  

The first link-up will take place THIS Wednesday right here on the Primary Chalkboard blog!

When you post, please be sure to grab the button at the top of this post and use it in your blog post. Link back to us in your post.  The very first linky for No Worksheet Wednesdsay will open this Wednesday morning at 6:00am EST and will remain open until  11:00pm EST on Tuesday.  Then, the next week's "party" will begin! :)

The link-ups will be held on these dates:

March 4th

March 11th

March 18th

March 25th

We can't WAIT to read all of the amazing hands-on learning activities you come up with! :)

See you this Wednesday!!! In the meantime, get your photos and plans ready! :)

Quick & Easy Indoor Recess Ideas!

Hey y'all! Casey here, from The Original Math Maniac.

Not all of us are blessed with the often frustrating season we call WINTER.  However, here in NC, Elsa has paid us several visits and brought forth an unusual amount of ice and snow. This means an increase in cabin fever and, yes, the dreaded INDOOR RECESS.

 When the weather is rotten and my students are forced to stay inside, I often pull out the same ol' bag of tricks. However, after so many days of being trapped in our homes and with each other in our classroom, ordinarily peaceful students are starting to look more like Komodo Dragons. 

With that in mind, I searched Pinterest high and low for some new ideas to change up Indoor Recess. Please visit my Pinterest page to check out these fun ideas. I will be continously adding to this board to avoid stagnation.

Also, I whipped this fun little Charades dice game. You can download it for FREE from Google Docs by clicking HERE.    Instructions are included and I guarantee at LEAST 30 minutes of indoor fun. :) 

I am ALWAYS looking for new ways to entertain my little green beans during indoor recess, please help a fellow teacher and leave your suggestions in the comments! 

What's New in Our TPT Stores????

Hey there, fellow teacher heroes!

We wanted to make sure that you are all aware that TPT is having a HUGE sale TODAY! (2/25/15)

We also wanted to make sure that you had the scoop on what is new and popular in our stores. :) 

Matter: It's a Solid, It's a Liquid, It's a Gas!

 Ice Cream Float Science

Social Studies Tab-Its

Interactive Notebook Math Flip Flip Books

Text Evidence Reading Passages: Biography Edition

 Classroom Management Life Savers!

Noise Level Monitoring System

Top Secret Word Book

Word Work for Big Kids Growing Bundle

Reading Intervention for Big Kids

2nd Grade Closer Reading: Informational AND Literature BUNDLE

What's Your Opinion? 

Earth's Natural Resources

Reading Response Rubrics and Prompts Pack

Reading Skills Pack 1: Read, Think, Match Bundle

Anton Explains All About Antonyms
Science Interactive Notebook: Simple Machines

March Just Print Club: Interactive Notebook Test Prep (3rd Grade Math)

St. Patrick's Day Printables For Any Word List

The A, E, I, O, U Posters

 

Celebrating the 120th day of School

 Class Journal Covers and Differentiated Writing Paper

Making Sight Words Fun and Engaging

Compound Words

 

Shamrocks, Zombies & Rainbows: St. Patrick's Day Math & Literacy Centers

Dinosaurs! A Common Core Research Writing Project

Theodor Suess Geisel Close Reads Pack

Informational Text Graphic Organizers Close Reads Pack: Grades 1- 5 Bundle

Phonics Interactive Notebook 2

Fold and Go Differentiated Spring Mini Books

Targeted Assessments: Operations & Algebraic Thinking: Grade 5

Order Up! Order of Operations [Brackets] & Fractions

Comprehensive Kindergarten Phonics Bundle

 Fluency Work for Emergent Readers

Teacher to the Core

Spring Into Writing, Reading, Fluency, and Art Bundled Unit

Differentiated Practice: Initial Consonant Blends

Differentiated Practice: Place Value

 1st Grade Passages for Partner Reading

Spring Reading Skills & Comprehension Activities

Under the Sea (9 Non-fiction Passages for Curious Learners)

George vs. George (A Revolutionary War Match Up)

 Let's Learn About Money!

Spring Mega Bundle Clipart

Interactive Poetry: SPRING

Polar Bear Plunge (A Non-Fiction Reading Strategies Unit for Grades 1 - 3)

5th Grade Unit 4 Math - Fractions and Fraction Line Plots

Unit 4 Math Name Tag Centers - 5th Grade Fractions

Reading Comprehension Growing Bundle

All About Plants

Conducting Surveys to Get on Track With Opinion Writing in Kindergarten

Close Reading April

What I'm Teaching for March

Spring is In the Air: Common Core ELA/Math Centers

Shark Research Books

Four Digit Subtraction Around the Room

Happy Shopping, friends! AND, don't FORGET to enter the promo code: HEROES when you check out today!

Why I Love Authentic Performance Tasks

Hey everyone! It's Heather from 2 Brainy Apples, and I am so excited to be blogging on PC today! I wanted to share with you all one of my favorite activities to do in my classroom ---> authentic performance tasks. I think sometimes the idea of performance tasks can get a little cloudy, so I wrote an entire blog post about why I love them, what they are, example ideas, and example photos.

I love using the GRASPS model, and I include a link to a helpful site if you are interested in using it, too. In short, the G is for goal for the student, R is the role of the student, A is the audience of the student, S is the scenario that is real world, P is the product or performance the student will create or product, and S is the scoring rubric you give to students before hand so they know your expectations.

Here are a couple of pics from one of my performance tasks so you can get an idea of how unique the products are, and you can imagine how engaged students were! Same performance task. Totally different outcome. Want to know what their task was? Head on over to my blog post! These are great for allowing students to express their creativity and get away from mindless worksheets ---> "Worksheets don't grow dendrites." -Marcia Tate. One of my favorite sayings!

I hope you will hop on over to my blog and share some of your ideas and thoughts!

Heather

         

I am such a sucker for Valentine's Day stuff. The colors. The candy. The memories of trying to figure out what the choice of Garbage Pail Kids card meant from the boy I was crushing on... In my classroom, I definitely DOWNPLAY the love stuff with the holiday. I try to make it more of a friendship holiday - with pink, red, and hearts of course!

Just in case you are still looking for a quick Valentine's Day math activity, I made a short FREEBIE that includes 8 task cards for one step and two step word problems. It is perfectly aligned to the 2nd grade standards but could easily be used with some 1st graders and as a review for 3rd grade. You can pick it up for FREE by clicking here.

Enjoy!

5 Ways to Dig Deeper with Number Lines

Hi, friends! I'm Blair from One Lesson at a Time, and I'm so excited for my first post over here at the Primary Chalkboard! I am a number line fanatic. They are such an amazing tool to use with so many different math skills. By helping students flexibly use a variety of number line strategies, we can really help them develop deep and meaningful number sense.

Today I am rounding up 5 of my favorite applications for number lines. I'll link you to a few other posts that I've written and some resources that I've created that will help you dig deeper into number line strategies in your classroom.

And away we go!

Rounding can be a super frustrating skill to teach. There are a lot of "tricks" for teaching rounding - and once I ditched them, my quality of life improved significantly. By introducing rounding on a number line, students are immediately set up for success with the underlying conceptual understandings that help us get why we round up or down. 

I don't want to oversell this, but this post on my blog has more information about the lesson that changed my life. Dramatic? Yes. Accurate? You betcha.

Open number lines are probably my current favorite thing, surpassing even my fondness for cheese. Ok, well, I really, really love cheese, so that may be a bit of an overstatement. But I really do love them. 

I was actually inspired to really get into open number lines after seeing this piece of mathematical artwork by one of the 3rd graders at my school:

I MEAN. Is that not a thing of beauty?!?! In this blog post, I do my best to demystify open number lines and show tons of different ways that they can be used as a problem solving strategy.

"Zooming in on a number line" is a quick and easy activity I like to do with my students at least a few times a month. This really helps students with a few fundamental understandings. It's a great way to illustrate which numbers "live" between the intervals when the intervals are greater than 1. You can click over to this post on my blog for more information and pictures.

The Common Core standards for 3rd grade (specifically 3.NF.2) are very explicit about the need for students to be able to understand and represent fractions on number line diagrams. I love using interactive notebooks to teach math, and find them to be particularly helpful with this standard. We first use a flap book to break down the vocabulary....

Then, I give them some guided, hands-on practice in partitioning number lines into fractional parts.  I find that one of the trickiest things about fractional number lines can be that students are often tempted to count the lines rather than the intervals. Allowing them to physically fold the number lines is super helpful in clearing up this common misunderstanding. 

Once they've gotten the hang of it, they are ready for a few more practice activities.

The activities pictured above are all part of my interactive notebook pack for 3.NF.2, which is available in my Teachers Pay Teachers store.

Elapsed time is another one of those skills that many teachers prepare to teach by tripling their daily coffee consumption. It can be tricky stuff, no doubt. And CCSS 3.MD.1 ups the ante by explicitly stating that students need to be able to represent elapsed time on a number line diagram. This really wasn't something that I had ever done prior to the Common Core, so I initially felt some trepidation about it. But, HOLY GUACAMOLE. Using number line diagrams for elapsed time was a game changer for my kiddos. It REALLY helps them "get it". So I am now a full-on believer. I use these elapsed time lines to tackle this standard with my students - they are available in my TpT store.

Thanks so much for stopping by Primary Chalkboard today! I'm so excited to be an official "Chalkie", and I can't wait to come back soon and share more teaching ideas with you. 

Happy Teaching!