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! 

Rounding to the Nearest 10 & 100 {interactive math journal freebie}

Hi Everyone, Krystal here from "Good Enough Teacher"... So I have officially been a third grade teacher for a month, and I can officially say that I LOVE IT! I can't even begin to tell you how much anxiety I had when I made this decision.... I second guessed myself multiple times, and wondered if I could really handle it or not... But I truly love it! I never would've believed that 28 students would feel more manageable than the 22 I had last year, but we have gotten off to a great start and I am so happy with the change.

Color-coding a hundreds chart to teach rounding!

The hardest part for me is the "flying-by-the-seat-of-my-pants" feeling that comes with switching grades. After 8 years in second grade, the curriculum was really second nature to me, and I had all the resources I needed for every lesson. This year, I can barely stay two steps ahead... And since I've never taught the lessons before, I don't know what the kids will grasp right away and what they will struggle with. I quickly discovered that rounding does NOT come naturally for third graders. My team had warned me, so I bought a packet on TPT and thought I was good to go. HA!! Two weeks of rounding practice and my kids STILL didn't get it. I had tried everything. I was out of ideas. Then I saw a picture on facebook of kids coloring a hundreds chart and light bulb went off in my head!! I ran to my computer and started making a hundreds chart that the kids could color-code to assist with rounding. The next day at school, we pulled out our crayons and started coloring away!!  Because I am just barely staying afloat right now, I haven’t had time to make a cutesy TPT packet for rounding (though I totally have a few ideas to add to my never-ending to-do list!) so I thought I would share the pages with you as a little freebie.  I have included a variety of hundreds charts for you to choose from, as well as a full-color sample for your reference (or to display on your projector as you work through this with your class).  The basic concept is that the ten or hundred that each number rounds to is circled, then every number that rounds to that ten or hundred is colored the same color.  Just like my light bulb went off when I saw the idea online, all of the little light bulbs in my students’ heads started going off too!  Each day as we worked on rounding and estimating, my kids would pull out their math journals and refer back to this little chart and they were good to go. Here are a few pictures of my kids working on this in class earlier this month: 

Using one crayon at a time, we color-coded our hundreds chart as we rounded to the nearest 10

I displayed a blank copy of the hundreds chart (with only the tens circled) and colored it along with my students using the iPad app "doceri" -- if you have an iPad but no smartboard, doceri is a great alternative!

when it was time to round to the nearest hundred, we started by coloring 0 one color, and 100 another color. We then used the same color for 100 to color the number 50, which I tell my students is "the magic number" -- they write this on their assignments now when it asks to explain why they rounded a certain way... it's so cute!

another example of a hundreds chart while color-coding

this is one of the blank charts included in the download -- I explained to my class that if it rounds DOWN to zero, that means it rounds to the current hundred we are already in. If it rounds UP to 100, then we add 100 to whatever hundred we are working with... there is also a  blank chart if you want your students to write the numbers for a specific range that they are struggling with.

 In addition to the rounding pages, there are also a few pages for "compatible numbers" since Go Math (which is what I teach with) uses.... because, you know, rounding isn't already confusing enough to 8 year olds! LOL!! I hope this is helpful as you teach your students how to round.  Click {HERE} to download the pages. Also make sure you're following me on facebook, instagram, and TPT for all the latest happenings in 3rd grade this year. Enjoy!