Multiplication and Division Made Fun

Facts. They are so important to know.

Think about how often you use numbers in your every day life. Gas cost $2.25 and it take 10 gallons to fill my tank, bananas are 75 cents each and my family eats 8 in a week, I have 24 students present today, but they need to work in groups of 4… and so on. You solve these problems quickly in your head, because you are fluent with your math facts giving you the ability to manipulate numbers. 

What is someone does not know their facts? Then 75 x 8 becomes 75 + 75 + 75 + 75 and before they get to 8 they have given up. 

In second grade students are introduced to the concept of multiplication and are expected to fluently multiply and divide within 100 by third grade (3.OA.7). This is a foundational skill that students must master in order to be successful in fourth and fifth grade… and life going forward. 

How do you teach these foundational skills? How do you support students that should know their facts, but don’t? Drill and practice? Flash cards? No! Learning needs to be fun. It needs to be engaging. It needs to be hands-on.

Keeping Up with Mrs. Harris and I collaborated to make your multiplication and division instruction, as well as, RTI time easy. We created games that will captivate students, they won’t realize they are learning, but at the same time they will foster fluency and accuracy of these facts.

I introduced these games during my small group instruction., to ensure students knew exactly how to play and to model my own mathematical thinking as I played along side them. Once students understand how to play each game it is easy to tailor activities to meet the needs of each student. You can pull specific facts out to focus on, or provide various manipulatives for those busy students.

Make multiplication and division engaging! The Computation Intervention Bundle: Multiplication and Division will ensure your instruction is fun for all students.

If your students are still struggling with addition and subtraction we have that covered too. Our ComputationInterventionBundle:Numbers0-20 will build on the prerequisite skills needed for multiplication and division.

Intervention Time: Computation

RtI time can be stressful. Finding an intervention that meets the needs of your learners that is also engaging is hard. Stress no more. Meghan Harris from Keeping Up with Mrs.Harris and I have teamed up to create the ultimate Computation Intervention Bundle. If you are working on adding and subtracting numbers 0-20 we have it covered.

Building foundational mathematical skills is so important for our young students. These skills are ones they will rely on heavily not only throughout their years in elementary school, but in every step of their careers as learners and their life outside of school.

So, these skills are important to teach with fidelity. But shouldn’t they be fun too? These skills need to be reviewed frequently. Facts need to be memorized, yes I said it, memorized. But not through drill and practice. Let’s engage our little learners in activities that will stick!

How do you make it stick?

Manipulatives make it fun and memorable. Use counters, play-doh, mini erasers (hello Target dollar section!), dice, number cards, number lines, subitizing cards, and spinners to make math unforgettable.

Introduce games during your small group time. You want to ensure that students know how to play and are actually playing the game correctly. Play along with them!

This is an excellent time to model your mathematical thinking for students. Encourage them to explain their thoughts and strategies as they play as well. Once students are comfortable you can put these activities in stations to review all year long. Switch them out occasionally. Soon they will be begging to play certain games!

Many first grade and second grade OA standards are addressed in this bundle. While we made it with those grade levels in mind, it would also benefit kindergarteners that grasp the concept of adding to 5 quickly and need a challenge.

Make learning fun again! Get this bundle now, while it is at a discounted price. If you purchase today you will also get all of the updates as we add more content. Don’t wait, because the price will increase.

Interested in trying it out for free? Head over to Keeping Up with Mrs. Harris for a 30 page FREE sample!

The First 30 Days

It has been a very busy first month of school for my students and myself! There has been so many times that I have thought about typing a blog post, but became distracted with other ‘must-dos’. L It’s Sunday, and usually I go to a body sculpt class at the Y, but I am going to skip that today to relax, watch some football, and share some of our exciting projects.

This year I am blessed with the opportunity to teach the advanced math class. For my county this mean that the first unit I teach is a ‘recap’ of the first semester math standards, then I start teaching unit 4 (addition & subtraction with regrouping). Basically, by January I will be teaching 3rd grade math to my class. I was super pumped when I found out this was the plan… I LOVE curriculum and am excited to teach third grade standards to my second graders.

In the recap unit I had to cover place value, of course. This is one of my favorite units, and I was kind of sad we had to ‘fast forward’ through it. We still had fun though!

During math centers the kids practiced writing numbers in standard, expanded, and word form on the Activboard.

  

Math is an easy subject to incorporate food into…. and FOOD = FUN! I gave each kid a three-digit number. They had to write it in standard, expanded, and word form. Then, they got to build it using BIG Cheese-It’s (hundreds), pretzel sticks (tens), and chocolate chips (ones).

In Social Studies we learn all about our state: Georgia! The first unit is all about how Georgia is unique. They learn about the five regions, landforms, and rivers. Our culminating project is a salt-dough map of the state.

 

The dough is made out of flour,  salt, warm water, and a bit of oil. I made two batches the night before to save instructional time. 
The first day they cut out their maps of Georgia and glue it to cardboard. I gave them each a handful of dough to spread across their map. They had to pinch the dough to form mountains in the regions where they are located.

Day two involved painting the maps. First, they painted to entire map green. Next, they used red to outline the regions and blue to draw the rivers. Last, they painted the mountains brown. I am very thankful that I had a parent volunteer to help out, in addition to my team-teacher and a parapro.

Although, my class this year is very chatty, they LOVE to learn! I love their eagerness, it gets me excited every morning when my alarm goes off!

A bit of it all!

I've been busy, busy, busy... focusing on everything that I don't need to be working on. For example, I'm getting married in less than 7 months (wow!) and I should probably be selecting invitations or a baker, but instead I am happily typing this post. I have become addicted to TPT and have found myself spending a lot of time creating items. I really enjoy it! Well, have sold a few items on TPT and decided I would open a Teacher's Notebook store too (Click the link to check it out).

I played around with creating a banner for my Teacher's Notebook store, but I just can't seem to get it right. Any suggestions? What program do I use to create it?

Anyways....We started our fractions unit today and I am really excite about 2 units I purchased for TPT. One is a fractions book from Amy Lemons and another is a unit from The Teacher's Wife. Make sure you check them out - they are both excellent resources. These ladies inspired me to create a little fractions unit.

In the packet there are mini-anchor charts (numerator, denominator, halves, thirds, fourths, fifths, and whole), fraction cubes game (3 nets that make cubes..fractions, color, and shape) and corresponding worksheet, equal parts coloring activity, naming the number of equal parts activity, fractions of a set with colored goldfish activity, fractions mini-book (each page requires students to write the fractions identify the number of equal parts, and divide shapes into equal parts to show the fraction).

 I can't wait to play the game with the fractions cube, color cube, and shape cube. Students will roll all three, then find the shape on their paper and shade the fraction using the color they rolled.

You can get the unit on either site: TPT or Teacher's Notebook

A closer look....

One of my popular items has been my subtraction with regrouping posters! They were made a few months ago, and since then I have learned a lot about making classroom displays. My skills have grown! So, I decided to update these posters and make them a bit SNAZZY-ER! :) ha!

 Again, they are available in my TPT and Teacher's Notebook stores.

Can you tell I love From the Pond's borders? And congrats to Mel at From the Pond on her new arrival of her little boy!

I LOVE anchor charts! I created these Good Readers charts as a reminder for my students. I wanted something they could refer to and monitor their use of reading strategies.

I bet you can't guess where to get them.... TPT or Teacher's Notebook

Ok... last but not least. I created this types of nouns review pack. Great for identifying common, proper, and plurarl nouns.

TPT or Teacher's Notebook ... Please check it out.

In other news, my dad told me he sold our boat today. We've had it for 14 years!! I'm a bit sad that I would be able to go up to the lake and cruise around with him this summer, but I'm sure we will find something else to bond over.

Ok, ok.. that's all for now. I am tired and I should probably grade some papers... but I think I will go lay on the couch.

Multiplication BINGO

Tomorrow we are playing Multiplication BINGO. I made 12 different BINGO boards for my kids to use. I am also going to give them a filled-in multiplication chart - since our lesson tomorrow is on how to use the multiplication chart. I'll pull a multiplication flash card from the stack (Facts 0-9) and let the kids find the answer using their chart. It should be fun! Grab your own set of cards in my TPT store!

Multiplication Memory

We started out multiplication and division unit today. I quickly whipped up this little memory game to toss in one of my math tubs. The kids will hoepfully enjoy playing Multiplication Memory. Click the link to get it from my TPT Store (only $0.50!).

Multiplication Memory

I plan on creating some more multiplication activities and posting pictures of our arrays we are making later this week. So, stay tuned for more multiplication fun!