#mtboschallenge Week 17: Tips for Keeping Students Engaged & Learning before Christmas/Winter Break

This is Week 17 of the #mtboschallenge on twitter.  The challenge is to blog once a week for the remainder of 2014.  Each Saturday there will be a different prompt shared to blog about.  The prompt will be shared prior to Saturday on twitter using #mtboschallenge  You can link up on my blog (or any other blog that shares the link up). Also share your blog post on twitter with #mtboschallenge .  You can copy the following graphic into your blog post.  Each Sunday @druinok from Teaching Statistics will host a 3-2-1 Summary prompt where you can blog about anything you choose.   Feel free to join the blogging challenge on either Saturday, Sunday, or both days.  Today's Sat prompt is to share your best tips on how you keep your students motivated and learning with all the excitement in the air leading up to Christmas/Winter Break.  Thanks for joining the Challenge!

The next couple weeks leading up to Christmas/Winter Break is one of the most challenging times of the school year to keep students focused and learning.  While visions of sugarplums may not be dancing in their heads, they are definitely starting to get restless and there is an excitement in the air that has nothing to do with what they are learning in our classrooms.  I can hear Andy Williams singing in my head, "It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year...to try and keep students focused & learning."

Here are some tips to keep students engaged and learning:

1)  Have a plan and stick to it.  Try to plan backwards of what you want to accomplish before your break starts.  The more planned and organized you are as a teacher, the more likely it is that you will accomplish what you need to before you go on break.

My plans for this week.

2) Have some fun with decorating your classroom.  The students will enjoy the your festive decorations.  I stick to mostly putting up winter/snow decorations so I can keep them up all of January, but I do have a few fun Christmas touches.  I will have to take some photos this week to update my decorations for this year.  Easy Christmas Decorations

3) Try to plan in some fun activities to keep the students engaged.  

• Skunk and other math games. 
• Deck the Halls With Coordinate Graphing  
• Turkey X-Mas  This is not educational, but the students LOVE it!
• Blog post by Colleen Young with lots of Christmas activities

4)  Remember whether break is coming or not, every day in your classroom is precious and you don't want to waste a second of it.  By planning in advance for some fun and still educational activities, you will make sure to get through whatever curriculum you have planned and also have some fun with your students.  These next few weeks are some of my favorite of the school year.  I'm as excited as my students are for Christmas break and I want to enjoy our time together.

Please link up below and share your best ideas/tips how you plan on handing the next few weeks to optimize the learning of your students.

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#mtboschallenge Week 5: SKUNK and Other Favorite Math Games

This is Week 5 of the #mtboschallenge on twitter.  The challenge is to blog once a week for the remainder of 2014.  Each Saturday there will be a different prompt shared to blog about.  The prompt will be shared prior to Saturday on twitter using #mtboschallenge  You can link up on my blog (or any other blog that shares the link up). Also share your blog post on twitter with #mtboschallenge .  You can copy the following graphic into your blog post.  Each Sunday @druinok from  Teaching Statistics will host a 3-2-1 Summary prompt where you can blog about anything you choose.   Feel free to join the blogging challenge on either Saturday, Sunday, or both days.  We really hope you join the challenge!

The prompt for this week is to blog about a favorite math game or activity your students enjoy.  Please check all the blogs that link up and leave comments.  

I play a game in my classroom called SKUNK and the kids absolutely love it.  Each player needs a piece of paper with the word SKUNK written at the top of it.  Draw lines between the letters to create a score column for each letter.  Basically the leader rolls two dice and then you find the product of the numbers (great practice for beginning multiplication up to 6 x 6).  As long as players remain standing they get to write down each product rolled.  Once they sit down they add up the total points they earned for that round (each letter S-K-U-N-K is a separate round).   Play ends for each round when everyone is seating or when a one or snake eyes (double ones) are rolled.  Anyone standing when a one is rolled loses their points for that letter round.  Anyone standing when snake eyes is rolled loses all their points for the game up to that point.  The game ends after five rounds and winner is the person with the highest point total.  Also I play that if a one or snake eyes is rolled on the first roll of the round it does not count, otherwise no one would get points for that round. 

Love playing on my SMARTBoard

This game involves both choice and chance and is a great discussion springboard when you are studying probability.  I am linking you to Illuminations.  They give a detailed explanation of the game as well as a great Thinking About Skunk sheet.  I have always played the game for fun, but plan on doing the follow up sheet this year when we start probability.  My students always ask to play SKUNK if we have some extra time.
You can play it old school with dice and a chalkboard or overhead projector (wait does anyone even have an overhead anymore?!), but we play it on the SMARTBoard and they LOVE the virtual dice.   Enjoy and let me know what you think.  

This bookcase is in the corner of my room and it is for storing math manipulatives, games, and learning station activities.  Last year was our first year implementing Carnegie Learning Curriculum and I really did not have time to do much with learning stations as I have done in past years. I'm hoping to incorporate stations more this year and also have them available for early finishers and for students wanting some extra practice or enrichment.  That will be a work in progress.

The bottom two shelves are where I store games

Over the years I have purchased many math games for my students to enjoy in class.  A few years ago (before CC and Carnegie) my students would play the games all the time at the end of class once they had finished their homework.  I have to say that the past couple years there has been very little time for that.  I am hoping to find more time for games and fun activities this year.  They are still doing math and learning while playing the games.

Blokus has always been a student favorite.  I have 3D Blokus, but they tend to prefer regular Blokus instead. I also think VersaTiles is a great way for students to independently practice important math skills and they nice thing is they are self correcting.  The blocks in the bottom right corner are manipulatives, not a game.  If I let my 7th graders they would build with those blocks all.day.long (but I don't).

A closer view of the game shelves

I absolutely love Think Fun Games.  They are great independent/partner activities.  They really make students think.  

Think Fun Games and Playing Cards

These are my Think Fun Games:  Block by Block, Shape by Shape, Brick by Brick, Square by Square, Serpentiles, and Math Dice.  I love that they come with bags for storage.  So much nicer than having a bunch of different size boxes to store (not sure they still come with the bags so you may want to check first).

Love these games by ThinkFun

I can't wait to see what other teachers blog about today.  I'm always looking to add more fun and educational learning activities/games to my classroom.

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Human Coordinate Graphing

Yesterday I introduced coordinate graphing to my regular math classes.  They learn coordinate graphing in sixth grade, so they come to 7th with a pretty good grasp of the concept.  There are some students, however, that struggle with remember which is the x or y coordinate, and sometimes forget whether to go up or down or right or left for + and -.

I am very fortunate that my classroom is right next to an exit door that is used for fire drills.  I am able to take my class outside at a moment's notice to do things like walk through the steps of human coordinate graphing.

For the x coordinate students walk right for positive and left for negative.  For the y coordinate they move forward (up) for positive and backward (down) for negative.  The whole class moves together and counts aloud as they move.  I make sure we throw in some zero coordinates so they realize that zero means they do not move.  

By sixth hour (my last class) the students were a little more wound up so I actually allowed some of the boys to leapfrog their coordinates.  They loved that!

I really feel this hands feet on activity helps struggling students to get a better grasp of this concept.  All the kids love going outside and moving around while doing math.  I always tell my students that my math class  is not a spectator sport, but full contact learning.  :)

SKUNK Game

I play a game in my classroom called SKUNK and the kids absolutely love it.  Each player needs a piece of paper with the word SKUNK written at the top of it.  Draw lines between the letters to create a score column for each letter.  Basically the leader rolls two dice and then you find the product of the numbers (great practice for beginning multiplication up to 6 x 6).  As long as players remain standing they get to write down each product rolled.  Once they sit they add up the total points for that round (each letter S-K-U-N-K is a separate round).   Play ends for each round when everyone is seating or when a one or snake eyes (double ones) are rolled.  Anyone standing when a one is rolled loses their points for that letter round.  Anyone standing when snake eyes is rolled loses all their points for the game up to that point.  The game ends after five rounds and winner is the person with the highest point total.  Also I play that if a one or snake eyes is rolled on the first roll of the round it does not count, otherwise no one would get points for that round.

This game involves both choice and chance and is a great discussion springboard when you are studying probability.  I am linking you to Illuminations.  They give a detailed explanation of the game as well as a great Thinking About Skunk sheet.  I have always just played the game for fun, but will do the follow up sheet this year when we start probability.  My students always ask to play SKUNK if we have some extra time.

You can play it old school with dice and a chalkboard or overhead, but we play it on the SMARTBoard and they LOVE the dice.   Enjoy and let me know what you think!  I am joining a couple fun linky parties.  Click to see more amazing math ideas!