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Classroom Organization

I have moved to a new school this year, so I decided to reorganize all of my materials and rethink how I organize my classroom. Whew! It is an exhausting process and I hope I can finish before school starts in two weeks.

Below is a sneak peek of an in-progress look at my classroom.

My manipulatives are organized into decorative boxes in the bookshelf. The boxes are organized by the big conceptual ideas in grade three: place value, addition and subtraction, fractions, geometry, measurement, multiplication and division, and statistics and probability. Baskets and two decorative boxes contain manipulates I use throughout the year, such as linking cubes, playing cards, dice, etc.

The bulletin board will display anchor charts and word wall cards. I created the header in PowerPoint.

The baskets on the shelf are for our M.A.T.H. rotation. For more information about the M.A.T.H. rotation, please see Laura Santos' blog post.

The table will display manipulatives and needed materials to complete tasks in the M.A.T.H. rotation or to provide extra practice if needed.

Visit my blog regularly for updates on my classroom organization!

Rotating Banner

Playing today! Thrilled with my new rotating banner for my TPT store!

Place Value

Number sense  refers to a student’s “fluidity and flexibility with numbers,” (Gersten & Chard, 2001). The student has a sense of what numbers mean, understands their relationship to one another, is able to perform mental math, understands symbolic representations, and can use those numbers in real world situations. 

The National Council of Teachers in 1989 identified the following five components that characterize number sense: 

•  Number meaning
• Number relationships 
• Number magnitude 
• Operations involving numbers and referents for number 
• Referents for numbers and quantities

Conceptual understanding of place value is integral to the development of numbers sense. Followers have asked about how I teach place value, as it is often the unit which kicks off a new school year. Due to requests, I have updated my Place Value resource on my TPT store. Click on the picture to obtain your free sample of my unit.

We begin by playing with big numbers and developing a sense of magnitude - students love reading and writing numbers beyond 1 000. We read their phone number as a large number and look for examples of the magnitude of numbers in our environment. Reading Schwartz' How Much is A Million culminates the investigation.

The students represent numbers in a variety of compositions - standard form, expanded form, written form, and with models. Activities for representing numbers are included in my freebie.

We continue with looking at number patterns on the hundreds chart, calendars, and on number lines. Activities for the hundreds chart and calendars are included in the free resource. This leads to an investigation of skip counting patterns. Students love to make a series of patterns - one which contains an error - and have a classmate deduce the incorrect sequence. We progress to order numbers in ascending and descending order.

We represent the relationship between numbers symbolically using <, >, and =. Again, activities to develop these conceptual understandings are found in my freebie.

The unit finishes with a look at estimating using referents. We place numbers on a number line and round numbers to the nearest 10 and 100. Once again, activities can be found in the free resource. The image below is the game board for the rounding activity.

I hope you had a restful summer and these ideas help make the transition back to school easier!

Persuasive Texts In Readers' Workshop

My new unit of study, Persuasive Texts In Readers' Workshop, has been posted to my TPT store. Post a comment on my blog or Facebook page to receive a sample freebie.

Persuade

Upcoming! My Readers' Workshop unit, Persuade, will be uploaded to my TPT store this week.

Students have opinions and often unabashedly share their thoughts with others. This unit of study moves students from an introspective look at their identity to a shift to communitarian awareness. Students explore the persuasive techniques for advocating a position, selling a product, and inciting action. The unit of study moves from analyzing multimedia, to exploring social movements, and culminating in an engagement in activism in order to broaden an intra-cultural perspective, increase empathy for others, and dispel stereotypes.

The unit of the study has 13 sessions Each big idea, or session, has the following:

•  Session Synopsis
• Anchor Chart(s)
• Word Cards
• Purposeful Task
• Response Prompt

Interested? Post a comment with your contact information and I will send you a freebie sample!

Saskatchewan School Library Association

Today was my last meeting as an Executive member of the Saskatchewan School Library Association. Ten wonderful years were spent learning and laughing with colleagues who pushed for school libraries to be the centre of collaboration and literacy.

Thank you to Charlotte Raine for the beautiful tribute.