Host a Classroom Scrabble Tournament!

Do you like to play Scrabble? If so, imagine how much fun you'll have teaching your students how to play! Scrabble is a classic word game, but it's become popular again in part because of iPad and computer apps that allow you to play with friends around the world. It's fairly easy to set up a classroom tournament, an event that will keep your students completely engaged during the last days of school. You can find all the files I reference below on my Odds N Ends page on Teaching Resources. Even if you don't want to set up a tournament, you can still teach Scrabble to your class as an educational game and a fun way to wrap up the year. To use the game in the classroom, you'll need one Scrabble game for every four students. You can purchase 6 games together as a School Scrabble kit, but usually you can ask kids to bring in games from home and that works fine.

Introducing the Game
Before you actually start the tournament or allow students to play on their own, be sure to teach the rules of the game. Don't assume that kids know how to play, even if they own a game board. Most kids today don't seem to know the basic rules of the game, let alone the finer points. Oh, they'll tell you they know how to play, but, trust me, they don't! You can introduce the game by displaying the Scrabble Practice grid on a whiteboard or showing a real Scrabble board with a document camera. It’s not exactly like the real board, but it’s close enough for an introduction.

Draw out 7 letters for yourself and 7 letters for the class. Write the class letters in huge blocks on the board with the number values clearly shown. Play against the class play and write the words for each round directly on the board. Use this as an opportunity to clarify the rules of the game. On the first day that you introduce the game, don’t worry about calculating the scores properly. However, before starting your tournament or letting them play alone, be sure to teach students how to keep score using the proper point values for each letter and the values on the board. If you have the computer version of Scrabble, set up a projector and let your class play against the computer by working in cooperative learning teams. Students in teams can put their heads together to come up with a word to beat the computer. Call on each team to share their word and let the team with the best word come to the computer and play it. If you don’t have the computer game, plan for them to play a practice round before starting the actual tournament.

Hosting a Scrabble Tournament
When setting up my Scrabble tournament, I found it best to divide my class into pairs of students who competed against each other. I always paired students who had excellent word-building skills with students who needed some help. They were allowed to whisper and discuss their word choices together when playing. Here are two of my boys consulting about their Scrabble strategies! I have to say that looking at that picture brings back some great memories!

The way I set up my tournament was to have students rotate to a different table each day for three days. I created a Scrabble Board Assignments seating chart to help me keep track of who went where each day. They earned points based on whether their team won the round, lost the round, or tied (had scores within 10 points of each other.) On the 4th day, the top two teams played off to determine who was first place and second place, the next two teams played to determine third and fourth, and so on. You can find the complete directions for setting up the tournament on my Odds N Ends page on Teaching Resources.

Be sure to allow plenty of time to introduce the game, and at 4 days for the actual tournament. My students loved learning to play Scrabble, and the tournament was a hit every year that I hosted one! I hope your students enjoy it as much as mine did!

Fun Twist on Book Reports!

Five Looks on a Book is a simple and fun activity that offers a nice twist on the traditional book report. Students name five adjectives that describe their book and then write one supporting detail for each adjective. You can download this freebie from my Reading Workshop page on Teaching Resources.

The original idea for the activity came from 3rd grader Adrienne Duarte, and I created the graphic organizer to go with her idea. When I first shared this activity online, Facebook fans helped me brainstorm adjectives to describe books. We came up with 99 different adjectives, and Stephanie Schifini compiled and alphabetized the list. Thanks, Adrienne and Stephanie!

If you use this activity with students, I would recommend having students brainstorm adjectives for books before showing them your list of 99 adjectives. In fact, why not make it a challenge? Tell them that you have a list of 99 adjectives and you want to see if they can come up with a list of 99 adjectives without looking at your list!  

Post a large sheet of paper on a bulletin board and allow students to add adjectives throughout the week. When they have found as many as possible, reveal your words and compare the two lists. After students complete their worksheets, arrange them on the bulletin board around the poster. Title the board, "Take A Look!" and you've just created an instant bulletin board display!

Five Looks on a Book is such a quick and easy activity that you could easily repeat it several times throughout the year, or even once a month. You can download this 3-page freebie from my Reading Workshop page on Teaching Resources. Give it a try, and let me know what you think!

Now's the Time for Math Stations!

Have you  used math stations or math centers in your classroom this year? If not, this is the perfect time to start! As you prepare for end-of-the-year tests, you need time to work with small groups of students on specific skills. But what are you supposed to do with the other kids? If you set up math stations, the rest of the class can work with a partner or alone on a math review game or activity. This photo shows two of my former students playing a matching math review game. Math stations make the end of the year so much fun!

I've experimented with several methods for using math stations. and I discovered that setting them up wasn't nearly as difficult as I had imagined. Math centers can consist of nothing more than a deck of math cards and a set of directions. I generally used the Rotation Station model or Choice Stations with center menu options. You can learn more about both models on my Implementing Math Stations page on Teaching Resources. On that page, you'll also find some great free math games to use in centers.

Math Stations for Middle Grades (3 - 8)
After years of using math stations successfully, I decided to write an ebook to share my strategies. Math Stations for Middle Grades includes management strategies, prepared math games, and a variety of templates so that you can create your own problems to go along with the games. The item shown here is for a single classroom; I now have a school site license available as well. You can preview everything online before you purchase to see if the materials are right for your classroom.

More recently, I've created loads of freebies and games to use in math centers, and many of them are aligned with the Common Core. Just take a look in my Math File Cabinet to see what you can find!

Easter Egg Showdown Review

Easter egg activities aren't just for little ones! You might not take older kids on an Easter egg hunt, but you can bring colorful plastic eggs into the classroom and jazz up any review activity using this Easter Egg Showdown freebie!

Showdown is a cooperative learning activity in which students work first alone, and then with a team, to solve problems or answer questions on task cards. Easter Egg Showdown is a variation in which the task cards are tucked inside plastic Easter eggs. Students select an egg, open it, read the problem or task, and everyone on the team writes a response. In the final step, team members compare and discuss their answers. In this example, the task cards contain sentences, and students have to identify the subject and the predicate of each sentence.

Easter Egg Showdown Freebie
The Easter Egg Showdown packet includes teacher directions, student directions, the Subject and Predicate activity shown in the photo, Division Showdown task cards, and blank templates to create your own. You can download it from my TpT Store or from the Seasonal page on Teaching Resources. Feedback is always appreciated!

One reason I love this activity is that you can easily adapt almost any Showdown lesson to use with the Easter Eggs. To find more Showdown activities, visit my TpT store and type "showdown" into the search box. Showdown works well with basic math review problems, vocabulary words and definitions, states and capitals, or science and social studies questions. What an "eggsciting" way to review!

Island Conquer Area & Perimeter Games

Area and perimeter are two concepts that students frequently confuse, so fun math games to practice those skills are always welcome - especially when they are free! Island Conquer is a set of two games that provide opportunities for students to explore area or perimeter on a coordinate grid. Students play with a partner and take turns using the Coordinate Cards to plot rectangles on the Island Conquer game board. After each person plots a rectangle, he or she calculates the area or perimeter of the "captured" island. At the end of the game, they add up the total area or perimeter to find out who is the new Island King or Queen!

You can download this freebie from the Geometry folder in my online Math File Cabinet at Teaching Resources. I hope your students enjoy this game as much as mine did!

Fraction Spinners Freebie

I recently asked a question on my Teaching Resources Facebook about what teachers need right now, and several of you responded by asking for fraction activities. Fortunately, I have a whole page on my website devoted to fractions, and most items are free!

This Fraction Spinner set is one freebie you'll find there. It doesn't come with directions, so I decided to post a few ideas here and ask others to share their suggestions. There are actually 2 variations of the spinner; one has different denominators and the  other spinner has twelfths as the denominator for all fractions. I changed the image and heading on each spinner slightly so that if you use both of them, your students won't get mixed up.

Click to download these two spinners or go directly to the Fraction File Cabinet page to find them and other fraction freebies. Just print the spinner that's right for your class and use a paper clip and a pencil as shown on the directions.

Fraction Spinner Game Suggestions
What would you do with one of these fraction spinners? They're perfect for creating fraction center games or cooperative learning activities. I suggest having students play with a partner rather than in teams so they'll be more actively involved. Here are a few ideas to get you started:

• Simplifying Fractions Game (Same Denominator Spinner) - Have students take turns spinning the spinner and recording the fraction. If it's already in lowest term, they score one point. If it needs to be simplified and they do it correctly, they score two points. If they think it's in lowest terms but it's not, they lose a point.
• Adding or Subtracting Fractions Game - Students spin twice and record each fraction. They also flip a coin. If the coin lands on heads, they add the fractions and simplify. If the coin lands on tails, they subtract the smaller one from the larger one. Students score a point for each correct answer. Because there's no answer key, both players will have to work the problem or one can check with a calculator that handles fractions.
• Comparing Fractions Game - Each student spins the spinner once and records his or her fraction. Players compare fractions and decide who has the larger fraction. The person with the larger fraction for that round wins a point. They continue playing until one person scores 10 points.
• Ordering Fractions Game - Students spin the spinner 3 times and record all 3 fractions. They rearrange the fractions so that they are in order from least to greatest. If the other player agrees on the arrangement, the player scores a point. Continue playing until one person scores 10 points.

I love how easy it is to take a simple item like a fraction spinner and create lots of different math games. How would you use these spinners in your math class?

Teaching Resources 

Valentine Hearts Math Investigation

Have you ever wondered whether all boxes of Valentine hearts candies are the same? Do they have the same colors? Do they weigh the same amount? Does each box contain the same number of candies? Inquiring minds want to know! Questions like these provide a perfect opportunity for a bit of data analysis fun!

A few years ago I posed these questions to my 4th graders and decided to investigate. With the class divided into cooperative learning teams, we examined 10 different boxes of candy. We weighed them and looked at the range, mode, median, and mean of the data. Then we counted the candies, graphed the colors, and crunched the numbers to look at the variations between the boxes. As you can see from the partially completed class data chart in this post, you'll end up with lots of data in a short time that's perfect for also sorts of mathematical analysis.

It was a terrific activity for the week of Valentine's Day because they were definitely stretching their brains, but they were having lots of fun, too! This activity would also work well AFTER Valentine's Day when you can snap up boxes of conversation hearts at cheap prices. Your students won't mind a bit if Valentine's Day has already passed!

Where to Download the Valentine Data Analysis Freebie
You can find this free Valentine Hearts Data Analysis packet on my Seasonal Page on Teaching Resources during the month of February. All of the files are stored in a large zip file, which you'll need to download and unzip to access the individual files. If the activity is not on the Seasonal page, you can find it on Laura's Best Freebies, a private page on my website with over 75 of my best free resources for teachers. Here's what you'll find inside the file:

• Smartboard slides for recording and analyzing data (not required for the lesson)
• Promethean board conversion from the Smartboard file above
• Student samples of how our class results were recorded and analyzed
• Teacher directions including student activity pages

Kids love to have candy on Valentine's Day, and this is a fun way to sneak in a little learning at the same time! If you don't want your students to eat the candies they've handled for the activity, be sure to purchase some extra boxes for snacking after the lesson is over. Yum!

Honoring Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Free Short Video and Printable Resources!


Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was one of the greatest leaders of our time, and I believe it's important to honor him and recognize the impact that he had on America. However, as a classroom teacher I struggled to find appropriate teaching materials for elementary students on this topic. Most resources were either too vague to be effective or too detailed and overwhelming for 4th and 5th graders. My students were old enough to start learning about racial inequality and the civil rights movement, and they needed to have opportunities to explore and discuss these concepts.

So I was excited to discover that BrainPOP.com has a wonderful free video called Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. that's perfect for upper elementary students! It's just 4 minutes long and features two lovable animated characters, Tim and Moby. Somehow Tim and Moby manage to explain the important events in Dr. King's life and his impact on the civil rights movement in a way that's very easy to understand.

BrainPOP.com has a number of resources to go along with the video like an online quiz and several activity pages. But I wanted to create a few more items to include cooperative learning lessons, extended vocabulary practice, and discussion cards. I must admit that I got a bit carried away! I ended up creating a 13-page packet of supplementary materials!

You can download this teaching packet for free by clicking on the image which will take you to my TeachersPayTeachers store. You can find loads of other seasonal activities there, too! If you like this free lesson, you might enjoy my January Activities Mini Pack which has a character map activity that involves listening to a story and recording details about Dr. King's life. I hope you enjoy these activities, and please follow me on TpT to be sure you receive notifications when I add new freebies!

By the way, this blog article was just featured on Denise Boehm's Sunny Days in Second Grade blog as a part of her Show N Tell Tuesday! She selected 5 freebies to feature and then opened the blog post up to other freebies through a link up. So far there are 16 more freebies for Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Be sure to check it out!

Mitten Science

Mittens keep our hands warm, but are mittens themselves warm? That's the question Selina Smith of the Classroom Magic blog posed to students in her mitten investigation.

Using inquiry science, students discovered that  mittens keep our hands warm because they trap our body heat, but mittens alone are not warm at all. Selina pairs this investigation with the book, The Mitten, by Jan Brett. Visit her blog to download the complete directions and handouts for the activity.


More Mitten Investigations
Selina's blog post intrigued me right away. I like her original question because it's easy to understand and can be explored with a simple science experiment. This activity also started me thinking about other mitten experiments that would be very easy for students to explore. A great follow up to her activity would be to have students brainstorm a list of mitten questions to investigate. Here are a few mitten of MY questions:

• Are thin cotton mittens as effect as thick thermal mittens for keeping hands warm?
• Do gloves keep hands as warm as mittens?
• Do hands get warmer the longer they are inside the mittens? 
• How does the outside air temperature affect the temperature of hands inside mittens? (If you are wearing mittens indoors will your hands be the same temperature as they would be if you were wearing them outdoors in cold weather?)

Designing Reliable Experiments

If your students are new to science inquiry, I would suggest choosing one experiment to do as a class. Later your students can choose another question to explore with a partner or a team. Download the Science Experiment Lab Write up from Teaching Resources before you begin.

To get started, give each student a blank copy of the form. Work through the various parts of the write up together, starting with the question and hypothesis.

Discuss how to design an experiment that will be reliable because this may be a new concept for elementary students. They tend to think that if they do an experiment one time, the results are "proof" that their hypothesis is correct. Experiments can be made more reliable by changing only one part of the experiment at a time (the variable), repeating the experiment, and measuring carefully.

After you design the experiment, let each team carry it out and record their results. Walk them through the remaining steps to draw conclusions and complete the science lab write up.

Can you think of other mitten questions to investigate? How would you use this activity in your classroom? Visit the Science page on Teaching Resources for more investigation ideas!

Visit Teaching Resources at http://www.lauracandler.com

A Simple Solution for Fast Finishers

By Angela Watson, Guest Blogger

None of us will ever have a class in which all students work at the same pace. That's okay! The goal is to make sure everyone is engaged in meaningful learning activities. For some kids, that means providing extra projects and assignments while they wait for their peers; for other kids, it means teaching time management and how to get things done on schedule. This is not as difficult as it sounds! Predictable classroom routines, clearly defined procedures, and lots of positive reinforcement will make a huge difference in how smoothly your classroom runs.

An easy way to support kids who finish quickly is to teach your class to always look at a When Finished sign after they complete an assignment. The sign I use is posted on my board and lists several assignments I typically have students complete when they are done with their work early. I use a red magnetized arrow to point to the assignment kids are supposed to complete. If kids need to do more than one thing, I'll use two arrows, one which says "First" and one which says "Then" to specify the order things should be completed in. For example, sometimes I like to have students show me their work before they start their next project, so I'll move the arrow that says "First" so that it points to "Show your work to your teacher" and I'll move the arrow that says "Then" so it points to "Get your book box and read silently." The bottom portion of the sign allows me to write a customized assignment on the board underneath if needed.

The When Finished signs keeps me from having to write out the same tasks over and over, and keeps students from wondering what they should be doing. Students' time is never wasted...and I never have to hear, "I'm done! Now what?"

You can download the When Finished sign for free right here! Or, visit the Routines and Procedures page to learn how to teach other expectations, such as lining up, getting drinks, passing in papers, cooperative learning, and arrival/dismissal routines.

Angela Powell Watson was a classroom teacher for 11 years, and currently works as an educational consultant and instructional coach in New York City. She is the author of two books, including The Cornerstone: Classroom Management That Makes Teaching More Effective, Efficient, and Enjoyable. She provides free teacher resources--including photos, printables, and activities--on her website, www.TheCornerstoneForTeachers.com.

Christmas Paper Chain Connections Craftivity

I love dreaming up new seasonal activities, but I always try to make them educational. A few days ago I remembered how I used to love to make paper chains to decorate our Christmas tree, and I realized that this craftivity could easily be adapted to the classroom by having students write on the slips of paper first. In fact, this idea would fit perfectly into a lesson on making connections while reading!

Making connections helps the reader make sense of what he or she is reading, and we often teach our students about three different types of connections: text to text, text to self, and text to world. Children are often taught to recognize and distinguish between these three, so I created a printable to make it super easy for students to record and classify their connections. (For some great mini lessons on teaching connections, read Stephanie Harvey's book, Strategies That Work.)

You can use this activity just before the holidays and have students create paper chains to decorate their Christmas trees, or you can do the activity at another time during the year and make paper chains for fun. The Paper Chain Connections activity can also be used with a "reading marathon" right before the holidays. Everything is fully explained in my free holiday lesson packet called Christmas Decoration Connections. You can download it from my Seasonal page on Teaching Resources during December, or my TeachersPayTeachers store any time of the year. If you download it from TpT, please take a moment to rate it. I hope you and your students enjoy this activity!

Teaching Resources ~ http://www.lauracandler.com

8 Strategies to Motivate Kids to Love Problem Solving

Students often fear math, and are especially intimidated by problem solving. These feelings prevent them from being able to relax, think clearly, and apply what they've learned to problems they're trying to solve. The resulting brain freeze serves to reinforce the idea that mathematics is scary and difficult. Math standards keep getting tougher, and students are expected to be proficient at solving complex problems far beyond what we were expected to solve at their age. How are we to help our students become confident problem solvers when math continues to get more challenging?

Strategies to Thaw Math Brain Freeze
Fortunately, there are many tools and  strategies you can use to show your kids that math isn't all that scary after all. Here are 8 strategies that helped my students feel more comfortable with problem solving. These techniques thawed their attitudes towards math and motivated them to actually enjoy problem solving!

1. Implement a problem-solving program in which students solve just one word problem a day, and start with easy problems they can ALL solve without difficulty 
2. Mix up the types of problems and present challenges that require different problem solving skills and strategies. This will require your students to tap into different types of math content and skills to solve them. 
3. Keep problem solving sessions short at first - no more than 10 to 15 minutes a day - but as students start to look forward to these sessions, you can include longer problems that require more persistence
4. Refer to word problems as "puzzlers," "brain teasers," or "stumpers," and present them as fun challenges rather than dreaded math problems
5. Alternate cooperative learning strategies with independent work to add an element of fun while ensuring individual accountability
6. Allow students to use calculators during problem-solving sessions
7. Require students to show their work with pictures, symbols, or words, but don't require them to write complete sentence explanations for every problem they solve.
8. After giving students time to solve a problem, reveal the correct answer up front and then spend the remaining time asking students to share strategies. Ask, "How many different ways can we discover to solve this problem?" Call on several student volunteers to come to the front of the class, one at a time, to demonstrate how they solved the problem. This will highlight the variety of different ways a problem can be solved. 

Daily Math Problem Solving and Growth Mindset
I've had great success with these strategies, and when I've shared them with teachers, they have experienced similar results. They've told me that their students now look forward to their daily problem solving sessions! In the same way that an apple a day keeps the doctor away, it seems that a problem a day keeps the brain freeze away!

August 2017 Update - I'm in the process of updating the Daily Math Puzzler program to align it with best practices for fostering a growth mindset. On August 31st, I'm presenting a webinar called Math Problem Solving: Mindsets Matter, and I'll dive into recent research on this topic and bust some math myths about problem solving. If you miss it, you can purchase the professional development version of this webinar from my TpT store here.

Problem Solving Assessment Freebie
One of the free files I share during the webinar is my Problem Solving Assessment pack which can help you evaluate your students' problem-solving abilities. It includes both a pretest and a posttest on 4 different levels. Believe me, you'll learn a lot about how your students solve problems when you score their tests! If you don't have time to watch the webinar now, sign up HERE if you'd like a copy of this freebie sent to you by email.

What are some of your favorite strategies and tips for helping kids to thaw out math brain freeze and enjoy solving problems?