Super Giveaway!

I am not a big football fan myself, but I usually will root for whatever team my family or friends are rooting for.  This year is no exception as one of my blogging besties, Nichole's favorite team the Broncos are battling it out today! I have joined her and a group of other Bronco fans for a SUPER link up and giveaway!  We are sharing a SUPER classroom tip, a SUPER resource and a SUPER GIVEAWAY!

My SUPER classroom tip is to hand over the grading to your students.  I have delegated my grading almost entirely to my students and I LOVE it!  

Each of my students takes a marker to grade their work (this keeps them honest).  Then we go over the answers together.  The students get instant feedback (which is super important), and I get less work to take home.  I am able to see at a glance who needs help by simply asking them to raise their hands if they answered correctly.

Handing the grading over has helped my students to be more meta-cognitive and take ownership of their learning.  They even give themselves kudos and compliments!

As part of our giveaway, you have the chance to win some great resources from all of the TpT sellers that are participating.  I am contributing my Mental Math Digits Game.

In this activity, students each have ten digit cards on their desk as you read each of the problem cards.  The students use the digits to keep track of the math tasks they are computing in their head.  My students love to play this and I love how it has increased their listening, problem solving, and computation skills!

And now... Time for the Giveaway!  

We have some amazing prizes!

There are three chances to win!  We will pick one grand prize winner and 2 runner ups!

Make sure to enter the Rafflecopter below for your chance to win!  And... don't forget to visit the other bloggers for other great classroom ideas!

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Monthly $75 Teachers Pay Teachers Gift Card Giveway

It is time again for my monthly giveaway to win a $75 TpT gift card!  Thanks to all of my blogging friends who have contributed to this month's giveaway!

Don't miss out on this giveaway or any others!

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5,000 Facebook Likes Giveaway

I am always so surprised and humbled by how my TpT, blogging journey has gone!  Hitting 5,000 likes on Facebook was just one of those amazing surprises!  To celebrate, I am having a giveaway!  You can win your choice of gift certificates - Amazon or Teachers Pay Teachers.  Good luck!

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Show & Tell Tuesday

I am linking up with Forever in 5th Grade for Show & Tell Tuesday.  Just a little peek at some of the things in our lives and classroom!

As you can probably tell from my profile pictures and my blog, we have a lot of boys in our family.  6 of our own to be exact.  We also have 2 nephews, so up until August we were a boys only family.  In August my sister-in-law had a baby girl, and we finally had a girl in the family.  We visited them this past week, and you can tell my hubby is just smitten with his niece!

A few weeks ago, I showed my class the video, Cain's Arcade.  You can watch it below.  They have become so inspired to make their own cardboard arcade.  Here is just a sample of their work.

I will be sharing a more complete post once they have completed their projects, but let me just say, I have been impressed!

Two of our favorite picture book read alouds have been these two:

They are great mentor texts for writing and figurative language!

I love the erasable Frixion pens, so I was super excited when these arrived in the mail on Friday from Amazon!  They are erasable markers!  I am always making mistakes on my anchor charts, so I am looking forward to using these!  You can find them here.

TpT Chat Announcement

I am super excited to be hosting tonight's #TPTChat on Twitter from 8 - 9 P.M. EST!  We will be talking about productivity - because we all want to be more productive when it comes to our TpT businesses right?

What is #TPTCHAT?

#tptchat is a Twitter chat held every Sunday night from 8 - 9 P.M. for Teachers Pay Teachers sellers!  Be sure to follow Erin from ERINtegration on Twitter @Erintegration for the lastest news and info about #tptchat as well as to see the new questions each Sunday night.

How Do I Follow Along?

1. Log into Twitter Sunday night from 8 - 9 P.M. EST

2. Search for tweets with the hashtag #tptchat in the search bar.  Make sure to click "All tweets".

3. Introductions are for the first 5 minutes.

4. Starting at 8:05 I will post questions every 10 minutes using the format Q1, Q2, ect. and the hashtag #tptchat.  (Make sure you are following me on Twitter @kellys3ps).

5. Respond to questions using the format A1, A2, etc, - Don't forget to use the #tptchat hashtag!

6. Follow any sellers responding who are also using the #tptchat hashtag.

7. Like and respond to other sellers' tweets.

Hope to see you there!

Snowball Fight Multiplication

Are you looking for a fun and engaging way to spice up math practice during the winter? Snowball fight is a fun winter game that can be used to help your students practice just about any skill you can think of!

A few years ago, I had my students practice area and perimeter using a snowball fight type activity. You can read about that activity here.  But, for some reason, even though my students LOVED it, I never repeated the activity.  Well, that was until I ran across this post from Teaching Maddeness.  In the post, she talked about using snowball fight learning to help her students practice multi-digit addition.

Well, my students were working on double digit multiplication before the Christmas break, and I wanted a fun way to review what we had learned.  So, I downloaded her activity, but modified it for my class. Amanda has this freebie available in her store here.

Her set comes with pre-made numbers that you simply print off.  Alternatively, you can have your students write the numbers on papers themselves, but I found that her numbers gave a larger variety than what my students might have written on their own.  Besides, I think hers are cuter!

All the students had to do was crumple them up and ...

FIRE!

They were quite excited to hear that their teacher was ALLOWING them to throw things in class.

They each had to grab one snowball and return to meet with their partner.  They each unwrapped their snowball and multiplied the numbers together.  I asked each partner to first solve by themselves, and then check with their partner.  If they both had the same answer, they stood up for the next round.  If they had different answers, they needed to talk about it and figure out who was correct.

I was able to differentiate for those students who are still struggling, by having them add or subtract.

After the activity, I simply collected the snowballs for the next time!

What other variations of this activity can you think of?  Let me know in the comments below.

Before you go, head on over to our giveaway page to enter our current giveaway!  Every week one lucky winner gets a $25 Teachers pay Teachers gift card! 

New Year's Resolutions Blog Hop

The Classroom Clique is bringing to you a fun little hop filled with some of our resolutions for the New Year and a few freebies for you as well!  Nothing like starting out the new year with a set of FREE resources for your class!

My resolution for myself is to sleep more.  I get up super early in the morning (4:30 AM) to get things done, and then no matter how many times I tell myself I am going to go to bed early, I stay up way too late.  The result is a crankier me than I would like.  So, I need to be getting 7 to 8 hours each night - no excuses!

My resolution to my family is to turn off the technology from time to time to connect with each other.  With a TpT store, a blog and a teaching career (Pinterest anyone? LOL), I am often quite connected to the internet at ALL TIMES.  I feel like occasionally my family gets the short end of the stick when it comes to quality time with me, and I want to change that this year.  I also have tween, teen, and adult children, so they also need to unplug from time to time.

My resolution for my class is to enjoy things more.  Because I teach in a tested grade, I feel like I am often stressed about testing and test scores.  I want to just enjoy my students for who they are rather than a set of data.  I want to laugh at their jokes, make time for their stories, and marvel at their curiosity.

I love using cooperative learning strategies in my classroom, so I have created this solve and switch activity for you.  I have included 12 double digit multiplication task cards, but you can use it with any set of task cards.

You can download this freebie here.

Don't forget to visit my other friends in the hop to collect even more freebies! Hope 2016 is your best year yet!

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