August 2015 | Crafting Connections
Receive tips, freebies, and resource updates when you subscribe to my newsletter!

Rounding with Number Lines {includes FREE Task Cards!}

Sunday, August 30, 2015
It seems there are two schools of thought when it comes to teaching students to round numbers. When you search "rounding anchor charts" on Pinterest, a whole slew of cute little rhymes about "going next door" to the neighboring number appear. You can also find a plethora of images with a rounding roller coaster (which is what I used to teach rounding to my second graders long ago during my first two years of teaching).

Recently, though, I ran across a blog post by Beyond Traditional Math that made me rethink my approach to teaching students how to round numbers. In fact, the author convinced me that teaching students to use number lines to round numbers is the best approach for most children because it provides the necessary conceptual understanding to support long-term retention. Tricks are too easily forgotten, whereas the number line approach supports number sense and place value understanding. (Read the blog post HERE.)

Therefore, when I decided to create a Rounding PowerPoint last week, I used number lines. However, in an effort to make things just a bit more engaging, I added ninjas! These two posters (which can be downloaded by clicking on the images) and the anchor chart show the basic premise.

Use the number line to help upper elementary students understand the concept of rounding. Two free posters and a set of task cards are included in this blog post!

Use the number line to help upper elementary students understand the concept of rounding. Two free posters and a set of task cards are included in this blog post!

Use the number line to help upper elementary students understand the concept of rounding. Two free posters are included!

If you are interested in possibly using this approach to teach rounding this year, feel free to check out my rounding ninja resources. All of these rounding activities address rounding 2-, 3-, 4-, and 5-digit numbers to the nearest ten, hundred, and thousand... and the task cards are FREE!

Teach your students to round to the nearest ten, hundred, and thousand using the number line method. This engaging teaching resources uses ninjas to kick numbers up or down the number line!


Rounding with number lines craftivity for upper elementary students.


Use the number line to help upper elementary students understand the concept of rounding. Two free posters and a set of task cards are included in this blog post!
This set of task cards is free!

~Deb

Parts of Speech Craftivity... for FREE!!

Friday, August 7, 2015
I am just writing a super-short blog post today to share my revised FREE Adjective & Adverb craftivity!  In my experiences teaching upper elementary, students struggle with adjectives and adverbs... and understandably so.  They do have similar functions.  Students must have a solid understanding of nouns and verbs before they are able to reliably identify adjectives and adverbs.  Most of the time, students do fairly well identifying adjectives and adverbs in isolation (for example, many kids understand that "beautiful" is an adjective), but once you ask them to identify the part of speech of a certain word in a sentence, it suddenly becomes much more difficult for them!

And that's why I decided to create this FREE craftivity!  It gave my students another opportunity to identify adjectives and adverbs in sentences, yet it wasn't a "boring, old worksheet".  Plus, it makes a great fall wall display!  If you think you can use it with your students this year, please feel free to click on the photo and download it!
Check out this FREE Parts of Speech Craftivity!  Students identify whether the underlined word within each sentence is an adjective or an adverb, and then assemble the craftivity!


If you want to know more about the benefits of using craftivities in your classroom, check out either or both of the following blog posts:

Using Elements of Craftivities in Interactive Notebooks (this post contains another freebie!)

Powered by Blogger.
Back to Top