Building Fact Fluency

Aloha, Friends! 

It's Courtney from Teaching in Paradise.

Today I'm here to share a tip with you on building fact fluency with your students.

I'm not sure about you..but my students always seem to struggle with their addition facts when they enter third grade. Don't even get me started with the subtraction facts either! lol. I also hear from the 4th, 5th, and 6th grade teachers at my school that it is a never ending battle. Each year the kids just DO NOT know their facts. 

As teachers, if we expect our students to know their facts, we need to allow them the time to practice their facts! In an ideal world, they would actually be practicing at home, but we KNOW this doesn't happen at home for most! 

In my classroom, each day of our math block begins with Math Drills. This seriously only takes about 5 minutes of our block, and I see improvements daily. Rather than making copies and having them pile up on my desk wasting a ton of paper, I print one copy of each drill and insert them into clear sheet protectors. 

Then all of the sheet protectors go into their math drill folder. 

The students use their dry erase markers to do their drills. I quickly go over the answers and the students correct their own drills. We don't log our grades anywhere. The students take a mental note of how they did for the day, and they are challenged to beat their scores the next day. 

I get my drills from this awesome site: math-drills.comhttp://www.math-drills.com .

You can print addition, subtraction, multiplication an division drills. I begin each year with addition. At the start of this school year, most of my kiddos couldn't even get through half of the page (50 problems on each page). After about a month or so..almost the entire class was whizzing through the entire page-with accuracy! 

Now, we are currently working on our subtraction facts. Eventually, we will add in multiplication drill pages as well. I usually add in 4 different sets of each operation. This way we can change it up each day. The drills from the website are already labeled 'drill a', 'drill b', and so on. This makes for easy reference to which drill set we will be working on.

The best thing about is this is that it's easy and the kids WILL get their facts down! 

I recommend getting thicker sheet protectors, because they will last longer. I am still using the same drill folders from 2 years ago! 

I've also got a little treat for you today :)

I've created some labels for you to add to your math drill folders! All you need to do is print, laminate, and tape onto the front cover of the folders. I have included a black and white version to save on ink. You could easily print on colored paper for a pop of color. Also, there are red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and purple labels in this file. 

You can pick these labels up in my TpT Store for FREE! 

If you decide to use these drill in the classroom I would love to hear about it OR see it!  Tag me in a photo (@teachinginparadise) on instagram so I can check out your math drill folders!! 

Thanks for stopping by today! 

Building Relationships with Students and Families

Hi Friends! Welcome to the Elementary Grapevine!

I am so thrilled and honored to be a part of this new collaborative blog and am excited to work alongside all of these talented bloggers to bring  YOU new ideas, resources, and of course some fun freebies!

My name is Courtney and I am the blogger behind Teaching in Paradise

As most of you may know, I live and teach in the beautiful state of Hawaii. I am currently teaching 3^rd grade on the island of O’ahu. I have already started my 5^th year teaching (summer was way too short), my first year being the Grade Level Chair, and a District Level Mentor Teacher!! I am excited for these new responsibilities as I continue to learn and grow in my teaching career! This past summer, I married the love of my life and my very best friend! Our wedding day was literally the best day of our lives! I do not have any children, except for my doggy daughter ;) 

This is Kiani. I swear she is part human- she totally lets me dress her up and do ridiculous things like make her wear glasses! lol

My back to school tip is that it is very important to build strong and positive relationships with your students and parents in order to have a successful school year. Students need to know that you care about them and parents need to know that you have their child's best interest at heart. One way I like to begin building these relationships is by sending a postcard home over the summer introducing myself to the child. I give a little information about myself, then invite them to meet me and drop off their school supplies. I also make sure to let them know how excited I am to have them in my class and what a fun and exciting year I have planned for us. Students are THRILLED to receive mail (this is the first time for many of them) and they come in extra excited to meet me.

In the past I have always purchased the 'Welcome to 3rd Grade' Postcards from the education stores. It usually took me an entire week to get all my postcards handwritten. This year, I was short on time so I decided to create these postcards and type my letters to students.

With 28 students, this was a total time saver! I hope that you can use these postcards to send a little joy to your future students. I have created postcards for 1st grade-6th grade. You can get these editable postcards for FREE in my TpT Store. 

This side is editable for your convenience. You will need to print these pages double-sided. 

Thank you soo much for stopping by to 'meet' me today. For more ideas, tips, and freebies please follow me on my blog Teaching in Paradise, my Facebook page, Instagram, and TpT .