Whenever I talk to other upper elementary teachers I find that math centers are something teachers either love or hate. There is rarely ever any middle ground when it comes to math centers. When I first started teaching, I tried centers and failed miserably. I didn’t use them at all for a few years, and […]
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Breakout classrooms and escape room activities are continuing to grow in popularity in today’s elementary classroom. I too ventured into the world of escape classrooms, and my students and I absolutely love it! I’ll be real with you and acknowledge that I didn’t have a smooth start, as I had quite a bit of a
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My absolute favorite thing to teach in math is area and perimeter. There are SO MANY fun things to do with this topic that keep students active, moving, and engaged. In this post, I’ve shared some of my favorite methods for teaching area and perimeter. Each of these lessons are from my Third Grade Area
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I love using these spring math centers for 4th grade! If you teach third grade, you can see my 3rd Grade Spring Math Centers here. These activities should take me through all of March and April. In April we’ll be out a week for spring break (yippee!!) and I won’t have centers during testing week.
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Many upper elementary teachers notice a severe lack of number sense in their students, and that makes high levels of math extremely difficult for students. Number sense refers to “a well organized conceptual framework of number information that enables a person to understand numbers and number relationships and to solve mathematical problems that are not
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Geometry is typically the one topic in math I run out of time to teach thoroughly. While I certainly believe it’s an important topic, I do place my greatest emphasis on my standards that incorporate number sense and operations. With that shortened time frame, I have to make sure my lessons are as powerful as
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Students love these 4th grade Christmas math centers! From fall through Christmas I have have so much fun with my students, and seeing holidays and events through their eyes makes everything a little more special. This can be a great opportunity to engage students in meaningful math tasks that reinforce a rigorous curriculum. I’ve recently
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Like fractions, introducing decimals is something that should be taught for deep conceptual understanding in order for students to be successful in high level math classes. It can be easy, even tempting, to breeze through a decimal unit, but students need plenty of opportunities to explore decimals with manipulatives and pictorial representations, and reason with
I love teaching through the holidays. From fall through Christmas, I have have so much fun with my students, and seeing holidays and events through their eyes makes everything a little more special. This can be a great opportunity to engage students in meaningful math tasks that reinforce a rigorous curriculum. I’ve recently created ten
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There are many, many different approaches to teaching math and structuring an upper elementary math block. Over the years I’ve tried more strategies than I can count, and I’ve found that there is no one right way to teach math. Different concepts and activities lend themselves to different structures. The key is to be flexible,
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