Solving Problem Solving Problems

Or here's hoping, at least.

Are your kids like mine? I feel like my kids see a word problem, pick out the two numbers, and add them just because reading the problem is soooo muuuuuch liiiiike wooooork. I was trying to come up with a way to help my students tackle word problems that they would be able to carry over to use with any kind of word problem they encounter.

I already have a problem solving strategy pack in my TpT store, but I wanted something that was more versatile and, honestly, I wanted to be able to use it with my students who needed some intervention on bringing those critical reading skills into the math block. I feel like so many of my kids genuinely came into this year believing that you read in reading class, and you do math in math class, and the two never overlap. I've made it my mission to disprove their little theory this year. Bwahahaha! (Just picture me reading that in my best mad scientist cackle.)

Anyway, that's where this problem solving pack comes in. It's worked out so well that you can expect me to make them for every topic.

This set includes two versions of a graphic organizer that my students are using to help them break down word problems.

 

One version of the graphic organizer includes a blank space at the top for the word problem strip to be glued to the sheet. The other doesn't. I am currently using the second version with my students. We started out with the first one last week, and they glued their problems onto the sheet, and then we walked through the steps together in a whole group minilesson. At this point, I have given each student a copy of the second version, which they are keeping in a sheet protector with a vis-a-vis marker in their math binders. The problem of the day is going on the board so that we can go over it together after they have worked the problem. This has become my new way of doing our Problem of the Day/Math Review, and so far, it's working really well.

I've actually gone a step beyond this set with my class. For each problem, I am giving my students time to solve the problem for the day, and then I am posting 4 possible answers and having them use their activotes to choose the correct answer. Before doing this, I had several students who were not solving the problems before choosing an answer, so this has actually helped with that problem as well.

Once I feel confident that all of my students understand the process well enough to use it with any word problem, this activity may go into one of our math centers or I may continue using it the same way. I'll decide that when we get there.

The word problems are on "copy friendly" sheets, allowing you to pick a page and run just a few copies for your whole class. I'm always looking for a way to save on copies!

There are 25 pages of word problems for this topic. The problems are a randomly mixed review, so the multiplication and division problems are mixed throughout the packet. 

A few possible uses for this set might be:

• Intervention groups
• Whole group problem solving lesson
• Homework assignments 
• Math center
• Problem of the Day
• Substitute plans

I'm getting ready to start working on my next set of word problems, and since we're going into review mode (read: testing panic mode) I feel like I need it all and need it now. If you could request one topic for a review set like this, what topic would you pick? Let me know in the comments!

I think mine would be adding and subtracting fractions.

Snow Day!

After being out all last week for weather, it's another snow day in Tennessee!

Admittedly, this one wasn't necessary, IMO. Or maybe it's just that I'm like a lot of other teachers and beginning to panic about all that I have to teach my kids in this short time that we have left together. There's so much content that we have left to cover, of course, but there's a lot more than that this year. This group of students has challenged me in a way I've never faced before. I love them, of course, but have you ever just had one of those years where you just knew your kids needed so much more than academics, and there just isn't enough time to meet all of the needs that you see. That's been the story of this year.

I started the year with my colleagues' sympathy and disbelief that all of these personalities had been put into the same room. I cringed when I heard some of the comments because I knew these kids better than that: I knew their hearts, and I saw so much promise. As the year has gone on, I've seen some of them make tremendous progress in ways that no state test will measure, whether that progress is academic, behavioral, or emotional. I'm proud of my kiddos, and I wish that everyone could see what I see in them.

Moving on, I'm trying to find ways to help my students practice their math skills in a way that is both efficient and interesting. In my school, we have a 45 minute intervention block 4 days a week. I am a math, science, and social studies teacher, but for that 45 minutes, I am also a reading teacher. We weren't given any real guidance on what the students who are not in intervention groups should be doing, other than being told that they could not be covering new material. I decided that the best use of this time is review centers. I'll explain my center organization system and how I keep track for grading purposes another time, but for now, I'd like to share a task card set that I just made for my task card center. These have been a great way for my students to review or practice skills that they need a little bit more work on. This new task card set that are available in my TpT store.

We just started working on this topic and our district pacing guide has us only spending a week on it! What?! I know my students are going to need more practice, so I created this task card set with that in mind. I can't wait to start using it later this week when we FINALLY get to go back!

The set includes 20 question cards, a recording sheet, and an answer key to make it self checking and perfect for center use or other games and activities.

   

Just an FYI about this set: I have chosen to focus on just the order of operations and using parentheses and brackets in this task card set. I am working on another activity for working with variables and am hoping to have that completed over the coming weekend. 

I hope you find this set helpful! I know that my class struggled last year with the short amount of time that we had in our pacing guide for this skill, so I'm hoping that it helps my class this year. How do your students do with the order of operations and learning to use parentheses and why? Are you feeling an unusual amount of pressure to get everything in due to snow days this year?

Conference form

As I'm starting to think about the start of school, I'm revisiting some of my classroom forms that I use with students and their parents. I have forms my students use to request test retakes, "think sheets" for behavior, and of course, several beginning of the year forms to send and receive information from parents. I also LOVE my parent conference planning form that I started using a few years ago.

I remember my parent conferences during my first few years of teaching, and I'd like to think I've come a long way from those days. I remember sitting blankly across from parents, not always completely sure what I wanted to say to them about their child. There were the standard reminders about my homework policies and reporting to them what their child's current grades were in my class, but I never really felt like I had it "together," if you know what I mean.

When I started using this form to plan what I wanted to communicate to each parent, I immediately felt like my conferences became much more intentional and meaningful. It's such a simple thing, but it's one that nobody told me about in college, and as I sat unprepared in that first round or two of conferences, I really wished they had.

I've made a few changes to last year's version of the form, along with adding a couple of other planning/organizing pages that I'll be using this year. Last year I had other teachers walk into 3 of my conferences, so this year I will be using a "conference in progress" sign on the door to keep that from being an issue again. It's nothing fancy, but hopefully it'll be enough to give us some privacy. :-)

I'm also trying something new this year. I always find that some of my conferences run over because of parent concerns that I didn't anticipate. Every year, the other parents who are waiting are so patient, but I always feel bad that their appointments get pushed back. To prevent this (hopefully) this year, I'm going to ask parents to fill out and return a form before the conference so that I can plan accordingly. I'm hoping this cuts down on their wait time.

This packet is available in my TpT store, and it includes the pages shown above, parent letters and reminders, and my sign for the door. You can click on the cover page picture above to go directly to this packet, if you would like. While you're there, don't forget to check out my 1st nine weeks's spiral math review set. These will be a part of my homework for the first 9 weeks, and it feels GREAT to already have that planned!

Another year over and a new one just begun

Well, not quite yet. Soon, though, we will be going back. AAHHHH! Where do the summers go?!

I've spent this one at home working on some projects around the house. I've been trying to learn to play the piano, doing lots of cleaning, and trying to get organized so that (hopefully) I don't feel so frantic this coming school year. I would have never guessed that one little person who weighs less than 25 lbs. can SO COMPLETELY turn your world upside down. Sigh. I know I'll miss these days, though, so I'm just trying to soak in all the toddler hugs and sticky fingerprints while they last.

Anyway, school... I'm just finishing up my postcards to my students and hoping to get those mailed out by the weekend.

Do you do postcards or a welcome letter to your kids? This is the first time I've done them, but I really like the idea, even if it is a little bit time consuming. I would have loved getting something from my teachers-to-be when I was growing up.

I've also been working a little bit on some new task card sets to use with my students this year. I'm sharing one today that I actually used last year with my kids, but I didn't have it ready to post until this summer. (Remember how I said that toddler was keeping me busy?)

This set is a mixed multiplication and division review with word problems. I've found that one of our struggles every year seems to be actually reading and thinking about what the word problem is asking for. My students see two numbers and either multiply or divide, but don't always read to find out whether the operation they're using makes sense. Do yours do that too? Please tell me I'm not alone!

This task card set is all word problems, and the division problems may or may not have remainders. I did this because I teach my students to think about what to do with the remainder. We have a discussion and make a chart as a class to help remind them that sometimes the remainder can be ignored, but sometimes we have to round up, even if the remainder is less than 1/2. We talk about problems where they have to split numbers of people into groups, and we have a discussion over how you can't cut a person up.

As always, there are two versions of the cards included - one with a background and one without (to save ink) - and a recording sheet and answer key. Click on the picture above to see it in my TpT store. And while you're there, check out my 1st nine weeks math reviews, which are 50% off until August 1!

Monday Made It!

SNOW DAY!!!

Well, not exactly. More like "really cold and wet day." Temperatures here will be down to around 5 degrees for the next couple of days, and since the roads are wet, everyone is flipping out, cancelling school, and buying out all the milk and bread the stores can stock.

Sigh. Winter in the South.

For the new year, I'd like to challenge myself.

One of my blogging buddies introduced me to an idea a few years ago that has stuck with me: Instead of creating a New Year's resolution (or even several resolutions) she creates one. Well, I guess she doesn't really create it. She chooses one. One word. That word becomes her theme for the year.

My word for the year: share.

Share more. Share more of my creations. Share more of my time. Share more of my self. Share credit (and blame... tee hee.) Share my thoughts. Just to share.

I think that too often we, and I mean human beings, forget to look outside of ourselves. No? Well, I know I do. My hope is that as I share, it will force me to think about others - how I can help, how I can connect, and how I can sometimes even advocate for those that need someone to share a voice.

I set up a TPT store a while back, and I started this blog, but I never add anything to either. Honestly, I love teaching and I love writing and creating. The thing is, I am still trying to get over a little bit of a fear I have of not creating quality "stuff." I am a little bit of a perfectionist, and I'm always afraid of not measuring up. As a result, when I have tried blogging in the past, I have published, deleted, revised, republished, and then deleted again sooooo many posts. I always end up with nothing to show for my efforts. Even this blog has 10 unpublished drafts right now. But this blog is the perfect place to share so many of my thoughts and creations, so it will be my starting point. I'd also like to share my time, but I'll get to how I plan to do that later. I don't have details quite fleshed out on that one yet.

My goal for this blog is to share at least one "something" a week that I have made or used with my kids. And to get started, I'm going to kick it off by sharing two things: 2 sets of task cards that I've made over Christmas Break and can't wait to use with my kids this week!

My school district has a very rigid structured pacing guide, which says that we will be doing some fraction review the first few days back. I decided to add some pizzazz to their lesson by making these task cards. As a bonus, when we're finished with the lesson, they'll go into our task card math station! I love when all that hard work leads to something that you can use multiple times! :-)

Many of these task cards are set up as word problems to reinforce the concept of fractions as division. There are also several cards included that are simple problems to solve or various ways of writing division.

I set up one of the recording sheets so that students would only solve six problems. I've also included a recording sheet that has room for all 24 cards. I don't want to overwhelm my ESOL or Special Needs students, so I may give them the 6 problem sheet copied front and back.

I also included an answer key so that whether we use this set in a group or at a center, it can be self-checking.

The other set of task cards (addition and subtraction of unlike fractions) is set up the same way, but includes 20 word problem cards so that not only are students practicing addition and subtraction with fractions, they're also having to apply critical thinking to reason through the word problems.

To purchase either of these task card sets, just click on the cover photo to visit my TPT store.

Did you make any New Resolutions that you'd like to share?