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     There is just something about back to school time that makes everything seem so fresh and new.  I love getting to know new students and seeing how much my old students have grown and changed.  We have been back in action for 3 days and I think I had forgotten how tired the first week of school makes me!  My classroom is ready, I am well on my way to establishing routines with my students and hopefully I will be back to blogging regularly!  Today I am linking up with my math blogger friends to bring you tips for getting your math class off to a great start!  I want to share with you some of the ways I set up my classroom and some of the routines I teach to help increase math talk in my classroom.   Wait Time One of the best things you can do to increase the math talk in your classroom is to be very aware of your wait time.  When you ask a question or listen to a student's response, how many seconds are you giving yourself and your st...

I have 3 more weeks of summer vacation but I have already been back in the classroom getting things ready!   When you have 3 small kids at home you have to take every second you can to stop by the classroom and get stuff done.  I have moved to a new and much larger room this year and have inherited a bunch of stuff because we are down a few classrooms this year as our enrollment has declined.  I spent a full day in the classroom last week and managed to pull together a few things.  My big accomplishment for this week was creating and assembling a great bulletin board.  I have been thinking about different board games I love and how to use them in my classroom decor.  I have always loved scrabble but have never found a way to use it in a math classroom.  One night on TPT , I stumbled upon a Scrabble font and decided to create my own math vocab bulletin board out of scrabble looking tiles.  Here it is: You can head to my TPT store and grab this set ...

We have made it to our fourth and final week of this book study!  It has been a great summer learning about fractions and I am excited to be back in the classroom putting what I have learned to good use.  If you have missed previous posts, you can check them out by clicking on the links below July 8th Part 1: What is a Fraction? July 15th Part 2: Addition and Subtraction with Fractions July 22nd Part 3: Multiplication and Division with Fractions July 29th Part 4: Discourse with Fractions    Chapter 8 Developing Awareness: Six Strategies for Fostering Student Talk About Fractions This section of the book steps away from the ideas about developing fraction reasoning and instead focuses on how to structure your class so that you can provide opportunities for kids to talk about fractions.  A lot of the strategies presented in this section are good teaching strategies that are also very beneficial classroom practices in general.   Strategy 1: Using Strategic Tas...

Back to school fever seems to have gripped the nation!  I know some schools go back next week but I have 3 more blissful weeks left!  However, I am already headed into back to school mode and spent this morning shopping and creating.  I have many more made its to accomplish before back to school but today I want to share with you one I managed to get done today.  When you are done head over to 4th Grade Frolics for a lot of back to school inspiration.   I was cruising around the dollar store this morning getting my back to school organizational essentials.  I was thinking about all the things I needed to get done at home and in my classroom before I have even less time.  One thing I had been thinking about was creating an emergency box of essentials to keep in my classroom.  I have had various supplies stuffed into my filing cabinet for years but I really wanted to do this in a more organized fashion.  Because I have already dropped a lot of...

Welcome to week 3 of our Beyond Invert and Multiply book study!  Last week, we looked at decomposing numbers to help with fraction addition and examined the 6 mistakes kids often make when subtracting fractions and mixed numbers.  That post got lost in cyber space for a few days but is back in action now so if you missed it, be sure to check it out !  Here is the posting schedule.  July 8th Part 1: What is a Fraction? July 15th Part 2: Addition and Subtraction with Fractions July 22nd Part 3: Multiplication and Division with Fractions July 29th Part 4: Discourse with Fractions Chapter 5 Developing Awareness: Multiplication and Division Problem Types Several years ago when reading the Common Core standards, I stumbled upon a few tables in the glossary that I found so interesting.  One was the table about the different problem types for addition and subtraction word problems that we talked about 2 weeks ago and the other was the table for the problem types f...

Welcome to week 2 of our Beyond Invert and Multiply book study!   Last week , we looked at some research around fractions and dove into the 12 different problem types for addition and subtraction word problems.  This week we will be taking a closer look at fraction addition and subtraction.   Here is the posting schedule.  July 8th Part 1: What is a Fraction? July 15th Part 2: Addition and Subtraction with Fractions July 22nd Part 3: Multiplication and Division with Fractions July 29th Part 4: Discourse with Fractions Chapter 3: Making Sense: Addition with Fractions Fraction addition used to be my enemy.  I remember struggling with fraction addition more than I struggled with any other topic in elementary school math.  I learned it in such a rote and procedural way and it didn't make a lot of sense to me.  Now when I think back to that experience and I read some of the research on fraction addition, I see myself in the classic cases of how not to teac...

Welcome to the first installment of our Beyond Invert and Multiply book study.  You can order this book at  Math Solutions  or on  Amazon .  There is a great video introduction to this book  here  if you want to learn more about it.   This book is written about fraction operations and is a follow up to Beyond Pizza and Pies .  I have received several emails and Facebook messages from folks asking which book they should get if they have to pick just one.  My answer to that is that if you teach grades 2-3, go with Beyond Pizzas and Pies.  If you teach grades 4 and up you REALLY should have both.  If your students lack the foundation knowledge covered in Beyond Pizzas and Pies, many of the activities suggested in Beyond Invert and Multiply will be a struggle for your students.   Chapter 1: Fractions As Numbers I love the way this chapter starts off with the classroom scenario of the human number line.  This is a great w...