Primary Chalkboard

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!

Morning Meeting Ideas

Friends~Do you host a morning meeting with your class? I do, and it is one of my most favorite parts of the day. It truly sets the tone for how our day will unfold. It helps to build a strong classroom community all year long. I am so lucky that at my new school we have time set aside in grades K-4 to have morning meeting each and every day!

Today, I am going to share with you some ideas to get your own morning meeting time started!

I was so lucky this year to be working with a morning meeting master! I got to observe one of our 2nd grade teachers this year that has been doing morning meeting forever. Mrs. Poling has the best format and her's is so directed towards character education. She starts each week off with a word of the week. Like this week was COOPERATION. She reads a book at each morning meeting that goes along with the word of the week. She even has a song for each word! So AWESOME! She introduced me to these great CDs by Red Grammar. They are perfect for morning meeting. We use the Just Say Hi as our signal to begin MM. Student head up to the front and sit in a circle and sing along!

Some ideas for Words of the Week are:

Compassion, Active Listening, and Self Control

I highly recommend you get yourself a squeaky hammer! I use a squeaky hammer to call the meeting to order and my students get a huge kick out of it. I always welcome them in a fun way. You can see some ideas below. After I call the meeting to order, we count off to check our attendance.

We also welcome each other with a fist bump, hand shake, or a high five!

Next, we get to our shares. The students love this time because they get to share their exciting news with the class.

I love this book for keeping my morning meeting on track. It has awesome ideas and tips!

I use our stuffed hedgehog Henrietta to choose students to share. I pass the Henrietta around and the students hold her in their laps as they share. (This really helps in the beginning when the students are a bit nervous.) After each share, I say THINK and the students put their heads down and think of a comment or question about the share. The student who shared chooses two students to call on. During this time we are working on eye contact and listening skills.

We also say our class pledge and work some brain gym to We Are the Champions by Queen!

I love to get them up and moving as much as possible. Check them out below activating both sides of their brains and pledging to show courage!

We also review our ABC sounds and read our word wall at the end of every morning meeting. Starting in January, I began having a student lead morning meeting. At my school, we work on special goals for presenting like voice level and poise. Morning Meeting is a perfect time for my kiddos to practice this!

Grab some FREE information about our ENRICH goals and how my morning meeting leader is assessed by clicking HERE!

I am always amazed at how much we accomplish during this time!

We then meet again up front for calendar time and also to focus on our word of the week. Sometimes, like Mrs. Poling we will read a story that goes along with our word or we may do some role playing. I like to mix it up a bit. The cool thing is grades K-4 all have the same word of the week so we are all focusing on the same skill.

You can check out more of my morning meeting ideas by clicking the picture below. My Morning Meeting Manual will get you started on your way to a successful morning meeting!

You can also see how I lead morning meeting in a much tighter schedule at my old school. Still one of my 2nd graders favorite parts of the day! Just click my blog button below to get started!

Presidents' Day Fun!

Hi Everyone, it's Nicole from Mrs. Rios Teaches. The question of the day is,... Are you all ready for Presidents' Day?

Whether your answer is "yes", "no", or "almost", I have some great ideas to share with you!

Click on my blog button to head on over and check out my post!