My Kind of Teaching: October 2013

Trick or treat! Cynthia is busy tricking people over at my blog for today and you are stuck with me! This is Michelle here {from Well Michelle?}!

I'm taking over this blog today as my trick, but keep reading to get your treat! Hehehehe {haunted laugh}!

Several bloggers at {The Teaching Tribune} have joined together for this Trick or Treat Blog Hop. You will find more tricks as well as plenty of treats as you hop from door to door.

So now here is my little Halloween treat for you! This FREEBIE includes a healthy Halloween party idea complete with a parent letter to get it organized. Also included is a mental math skeleton game that the students can play during the party! Happy Halloween!

{Click here to get his special treat!}

Now it's time to go "next door" to discover the next trickster and collect another treat. Click on the picture below to take you there!

Do your students enjoy doing interactive activities? So sad to say (but true), for several years we weren't allowed to cut and color because it was not true instructional time. Seems CRAZY doesn't it??? Even my 4th graders enjoy getting to color, cut out, and glue!!!

While I learned loads of valuable teaching strategies while we were a Reading First school (for many, many years), I greatly missed the fun and enjoyment that was taken out of centers and activities. I am a firm believer that if the students ENJOY what they are doing, they will LEARN!!

Here are some of the interactive centers my students have been doing...

My kiddos ask every day if they are going to get to play with their Cootie Catcher. (The answer is usually yes.) After our reading lesson, they get to use these with a partner to answer comprehension questions. I'm so glad they consider it "play" haha. I love to walk around the room and hear their questions and answers!

It just seems like fall is a great time to learn about spiders. With this activity, I got to bring in some informational text for the students to read. We talked about facts and opinions also. They loved doing this activity and wanted to know "when do we get to do something fun like this again??" Yep...FUN!!!

We have worked so hard this past month on multiplication of 2-digit by 2-digit numbers and also 4-digit by 1-digit numbers. Once again, by just changing the format and doing it as an interactive activity, the kids thought it was so much more FUN than a traditional worksheet. I'm so glad they haven't caught on yet! lol

Earlier in the year, we worked on rounding. I was really surprised at how difficult it was for so many of them. We continue to work on it daily in our Daily Math Spirals and notebooks.

I was so excited to see after they finished this Rounding Rakeup Interactive, that they have finally gotten it!

In case you haven't tried using Interactive Centers and Activities in your classroom yet, I have a FREEBIE for you! We've been learning about idioms, so I whipped up a little interactive to use this week. Just click on the picture to get your own copy.

You can see this new unit, Interactive Centers and Activities for Fall, in my TPT store. Click on the preview to see all the Interactives we've been making.

I LOVE to make learning FUN!

That's just...