Favorites for Friday: Improper Fractions and Mixed Numbers Video

Do you teach fractions at your grade level?  Do you need a quick fraction vocabulary review before you start working with fractions?  This video was a great help! It's relatively entertaining, but also provides great explanations for improper fractions and mixed numbers.  My students enjoy the subtle humor interspersed with thorough descriptions.  (Just beware -- many of my students started drawing mustaches for the fraction bar if it was a proper fraction.  Fun, but may begin to get confusing when others start seeing weird symbols on students' math papers.)

Do you have any other great videos for fractions?  I'd love to add them to my collection.  Feel free to post in the comments to share with others.  Or email me at MyCleverEndeavors2@gmail.com.  I'm always looking for new resources for my students!

Hope you enjoyed this week's Favorites for Friday! Thanks for visiting!  And HAPPY FRIDAY!

Favorites for Friday: Rounding Numbers

Ever try to teach a student with poor number sense skills to round numbers?  This week's favorite for Friday is a view of the video and anchor chart that made it all possible this year.  Even my most struggling students were rounding with ease after this!

First, we used this poem:

Then we watched this video: 

(pointing out the slight differences in the poem we use and the video's poem)

We made an anchor chart like this one:

(My anchor charts never look good enough for a photo!) 

This poem works with any place value, whether using very large numbers or decimal numbers. 

(We did another example on an anchor chart with a 9 in the selected place that needed to round up. That can be tricky, too!)

 For those of you that use the Common Core State Standards, I've included the 4th and 5th grade standards that relate to this particular skill:  

CCSS.MATH.CONTENT.4.NBT.A.3
Use place value understanding to round multi-digit whole numbers to any place.

CCSS.MATH.CONTENT.5.NBT.A.4
Use place value understanding to round decimals to any place.

© Copyright 2010 National Governors Association Center for Best Practices and Council of Chief State School Officers. All rights reserved.

Thanks for visiting!  Happy Friday!

Favorite Videos for 5th: Study Jams

As I get ready to go back to school next week, I thought I'd start sharing some of my favorite video resources for my 5th graders.  Have you heard about Study Jams by Scholastic?  They have lots of videos and interactive activities for math and science.  Click the image above or use this link: http://studyjams.scholastic.com/studyjams/index.htm

New TPT resource posted

My Equivalent Fractions Poke Cards are up and ready for purchase!  Discount price available for a limited time only!  :)

Prepare the cards by circling the answer on the back lightly in pencil. I've marked the correct answer for you, but it will disappear when you use your hole punch.  Punch out all 3 holes.  Students solve the problem and poke the tip of a pencil (or other object) through the hole and then flip it over to check.  My students love these!  

Whew! That was quite the year!

After several years as an ESL teacher, I went back to the classroom this fall.  I taught 5th grade at a school where I went through 2 new principals and 3 vice principals.  I'm sure you can all understand that keeping up with my blog and my TeachersPayTeachers store was more than I could manage with all that change.

But the school year ended and I'm ready to do LOTS more this summer to be ready for next fall.  I've got a huge list of products I wished I had made for this year.  I've got tons of great resources I want to pass along to you.  I've figured out some of the "tricks" to managing a blog during the school year that I hope will help this time.

To celebrate the start of my summer, I'm putting everything in my store on sale for a week.  Hopefully I'll also be adding several items, but I've been selected for the jury pool as well.  Here's hoping that for once in my life I don't get chosen.  This is my 6th summons in 16 years. I've served on 3 juries.  I'm really lucky that way.

To kick off the summer, I also have a NEW product in my TPT store!



Check out my Identifying Fractions Poke Cards.  On sale at TeachersPayTeachers for $1 for the next two weeks!  :)  After that, it goes to the regular price of $4.  Enjoy!