Comparing and Contrasting

I begin my unit on comparing and contrasting in reading on Monday. Below is my "Comparing and Contrasting" anchor chart. Fingers crossed that all my activities will work. I will post a follow-up with more comparing and contrasting ideas :) 

Place Value Poster

This idea is from Runde's Room's Interactive Maths Journals. When teaching whole number place value, I created a place value columns poster based on Runde's idea. The slight difference is that I added the place value houses as I believe it is an added teaching tool for place value.

I used this poster when working with small groups to help them read and recognise whole numbers up to six digits. My students eventually made their own posters and we were able to have small competitions with our posters. In small groups, I would read a number to the students and they had to create the number with their number pullouts on their poster. Other teachers in my area have used the place value posters in their maths class as well with great success. It is an easy poster to create and you are able to model so much with it. Definitely worth the time creating it!

Decimal Poem

http://pinterest.com/pin/169236898469148083/

I found this on Pinterest and loved it. It is definitely worth sharing.While teaching decimal place value, students often get confused with how to read decimals. Although I teach using place value columns and houses, sometimes it just doesn't stick. So, I found this poem, and even though song is more of a lower primary thing, it worked well for my kids in upper primary.

I highly recommend using this when teaching decimal place value. Whenever a student would read a number incorrectly, I would just point to the poem and students were able to self-correct. 

An excellent tool!!!

Texts for Teaching Cause and Effect

Every time I teach a new strategy/topic in reading, I try to find texts that work directly with that topic to use in my whole class focus. With the help of Pinterest, I was able to find a few books by an author called Laura Numeroff that related directly to cause and effect.

I only used "If You Give a Dog a Donut" with my class but read both the other two and they are as good to use. These are great texts to created cause and effect chains about as for every cause there is an effect and that effect then becomes a cause for another effect (I know that sounds confusing, just read the books and you'll understand!). I will definitely use these books again when teaching cause and effect, and they can be used for students at all age levels too! Enjoy! :)

Cause and Effect Anchor Chart

As our school uses a fluid grouping structure, my reading class is full of PSD (funded) students, EAL students and low academically achieving students. It is sometimes a struggle to get these students motivated and interested in the class activities so I am constantly trying to find new ways to approach different topics. I have always found "cause and effect" an easy topic to teach in reading and the one that most students understand right away. This year, it was a little harder for me to get through to the students. I don't want to overload them with cause and effect and I want them to also enjoy their reading sessions. I have found numerous activities, games and online games on the internet which helped out during this unit. Above, is my anchor chart for cause and effect. Although it may not seem at a grade 5 level, it is targeted to the needs of my students with examples that are easy to read and understand.

Pirate Place Value

I found this wonderful and creative activity pack called Pirate Place Value (from Frogs and Cupcakes) and absolutely had to use it. My maths class loves to do activities and so I love making maths a "students-don't-think-they-are-learning-when-they-really-are" experience. Thus, rather than just having students do repetitious worksheets, I often use either activities or hands on learning for my lessons.

When learning/teaching place value, students should be able to represent a number in standard, expanded and word form. Here is a cute and fun activity for students to represent a number in all three ways. 

Build a Number

This is a great activity to test students knowledge of place value and decimal numbers. Although a few of my students struggled with this activity, many others were able to "step up" to the challenge and took their time to work out each problem.

A really good way to have students manipulate numbers and use the same digits to create decimals and whole numbers. I will definitely use this again!