The One With Early Finishers: Monday Made It

I can't believe it is already time for another Monday Made It.  Summer is flying by and that little fact hit me hard this past week.  I need to get it in gear if I'm going to accomplish all the things I want to accomplish.  My husband and I are going on vacation with his parents and siblings the week before school starts so I have to have everything ready a week early.  I refuse to spend my vacation thinking too much about school.

Here are a few things I accomplish this past week.

I MADE it through the first week of a two week workshop on robotics.  Over the course of the week I MADE my very own Wall-E and learned how to program him.  The second week of the workshop involves programming Wall-E to complete a course.  I'm a little nervous about that.  Hopefully it goes well.

One of my big goals for the summer is to create some activities for early finishers.  Think file folder games.  I was excited to find a great little activity by Teresa called Pick and Flip.  I was even more excited to discover that it was FREE.  Yay!  I made hers and then made a few of my own.  I think this is something that I will continue to make throughout the school year as my students are introduced to new concepts.  

I printed prime #s, composite #s, add up to 15, add up to 21, multiples of 7,  and multiples of 9 from Teresa.  I added multiples of 6, multiples of 8, and multiples of 12 myself. 

I printed them on cardstock.

Cut them out.

Folded them in half.

And laminated them.

Voila!  

Students put clothespins on the appropriate squares and then flip the card to check their answers.

You can find my three additions for FREE in my TPT store.


Jump on over to 4th Grade Frolics to check out more great ideas.

The One with the Integer War - Bunco Style

Oh my goodness.

My students and I had so much fun in class yesterday.  

And to top it off there were some great conversations about integers going on.

A few weeks ago as we were ending our unit on fractions I came across this blog post and immediately knew I wanted to try it out with my students.

Thank you Controlling my Chaos for sharing this fabulous idea.

It started with the purchase of 14 decks of cards.  Thank goodness for Dollar Tree.  I was able to get all of them for only $7.   And then I removed all of the jokers, jacks, queens, and kings from the decks.

I arranged my desk so that students were sitting with a partner.  This set the stage.  My students knew something was up when they walked in and saw the new arrangement.

Each pair of students were given a deck of cards which they divided evenly between the two of them.

They then played the old card game war...only with a few slight changes.

While the black cards represented positive numbers, the red cards represented negative numbers.

Aces were worth one.

Here's where it gets interesting.

The tables were numbered in true Bunco fashion.   The winner of each table gets to move up a table.  The goal was to get to the head table.  The winner of the head table stayed at the head table, but the loser had to go all the way to the last table.

Really you need to know go read Controlling My Chaos's post.   It is a much better description and even includes pictures.

My students and I were had a blast.  We were all smiling and learning.

Students were really getting into it.  There were a lot of "OOHs  and AWW MANs flying around.

They were begging to play longer.

They were upset today when they walked in and the desk were back to normal.

We'll have to play again soon.

The One With Blokus

I attended a workshop today on enhancing my current lesson plans in math with the new common core standards. At one point during this workshop we played the board game Blokus and talked about ways to use this in our classroom.



I had never played this game until today, but let me tell you I'm in love with this game. I want it for my own personal use as well as my classroom.

It is a strategy game. One that will make you think. It requires a bit of problem-solving skills.

This game is designed for four players. Each player has 21 game pieces. Each person's first game piece has to be placed in his or her corner. You then take turns playing a new piece each turn. Your pieces cannot touch sides, vertices only. Right there is some Math vocabulary. The goal is to be the first person to use all your pieces...if you can do that. GOOD LUCK!

When you get to the point where no one can play, you tally up your score. Each unit square is worth -1. The person with the highest score wins. There are also a couple of ways to earn some bonus point.

We received a handout for the students to work on after they've had a chance to play the game. This handout covers several concepts: integers, percents, ordering numbers, and several more.

A couple of questions that are on the handout...


* For your color game piece only, what percent of game pieces were you not able to play? How did you figure the percent?

* What is the ratio of all unused game pieces to all used game pieces for your group? Put that in a sentence.

* Compare your score with the scores of your team mates. Place these numbers on the number line below:

*What is the distance between the lowest and highest scores? Justify your answer.

The game can also be used for symmetry, transformations, rotation, etc...


 I can't take credit for because I received at a workshop. I believe she got it from a magazine. You can download this activity for free in my TPT store.

Have you ever played this game? Have you used it in your classroom? How have you used it?

The One With The Five Minute Game

Several years ago I heard about this game at a workshop. I've kept it tucked away in the back of my brain and have used it a few times. My math classes played it yesterday so I thought I would share it with you.

Though I'm not 100% sure, I think the game is called Round Table. That is what I remember, but like I said, I learned about it several years ago. I have desk this year instead of tables, so we called it Straight Line. Original right? The kids thought it was funny.

This game can be played with any subject matter. I've played it in history before as well. Each row or table is a team. The only materials you need are a piece of paper, pencil for each student, and a stopwatch or clock with a second hand. The paper starts with the person at the front of the row. You present the teams with a question that has several answers. For example, yesterday they had to list multiples of 6. The first person writes down an answer and then passes it to the person behind him. They do this until it gets to the last person in the row. This is where I thought having rows was more fun than tables. The last person then runs it back to the first person.

Don't worry I had them put all their stuff at the front of the room so that aisles were clear.

The rules:
*No talking.
*No heping each other.
*You must write an answer before you can pass to the next person.
*You cannot change some one's answer.

The team with the most correct answers at the end of the set time (I usually give them one minute) is the winner.

Like I said, this game can be played with any subject. Here are a few more ideas off the top of my head.

Math: Multiples, Factors, Two #s that have a sum or difference of ?

Science: Elements from the periodic table, Bones, Muscles, Organs

English: Adverbs, Nouns, Pronouns, Adjectives, Prepositions

History: States, Capitals, Presidents

The ideas really are endless. It's great for the first or last few minutes of class. I would love to hear other questions that can be used in this game.