Multiplication Facts Review with Card Games

School is back in full swing, which means I will have more to blog about! I am the exact opposite of most teacher-bloggers out there because I don't like blogging during the summer. Especially this summer, because I had a beautiful baby girl in May and I spent most of my time cuddling!

I'm going to link up with my BBB Holly for Tried It Tuesday! I know I am late to the party, but oh well!

So, math facts. I always start the year off reviewing multiplication facts. I found this little beauty on Amazon for $8 and couldn't resist. I am loving it already!

We have only played one game so far, but the excitement and motivation going on in the room was amazing! I had only planned on 30 minutes to introduce the activity and play, but the kids were having so much fun (and computing like crazy) that I let them go an extra 20 minutes! We could have went longer, but the fire drill was going to happen :) I can't wait to introduce more games next week.

Have a great Saturday!

Multiplication Facts Practice

Hey, hey awesome teacher blog world! I am dropping in today to tell you about our fabulous facts practice and linking up with Joanne from Head Over Heels for Teaching for her helpful Spark Student Motivation linky.

 Every term we do a different celebration for students who are passing off their math facts. Some of my students are working on addition facts still, most are on multiplication and a few are on division facts. During the 2nd term we were working towards an ice cream sundae party. This term we are working towards a movie party with treats (pictures to come).

Each student received an sundae page that was their ticket to getting some goodies. Every time they passed off a fact I marked the fact off and they were able to color it! They LOVED coloring in each section!

Some students passed everything off and some only passed a few off. All the students passed off at least enough to get one scoop and one topping.

I created a Google Doc where parents could sign up to bring certain items for our celebration. I have awesome parents and everything was donated! I even had three volunteers come in and help serve up the sundaes. It was a blast!

Now, to the particulars...

My students have a "Math Facts" rotation in our Math Groups where they practice the fact they are on or review their facts EVERY DAY! This has helped my class tremendously. In years past, I have never made my students practice daily and I can really see a difference this year. To practice we use the site xtramath.com, flashcards, and math fact card games. 

Every Tuesday during our intervention time the students have the opportunity to take 4 math fact timed tests. I use the drills from Multiplication and Division Boot Camp by Teacher Chick to have them practice.

I give the students 45 seconds to complete the drill. They have to pass it off starting at the top and then pass it off again starting from the bottom. This way they can't just memorize the order :) The set also come with a BUNCH of fun games for the students. We actually started the year off by going to "Boot Camp" and used this. It was a blast and set up our math practice for the rest of the year.

Bottle Cap Multiplication Game

At the beginning of June I was stalking looking at Tara's amazing blog and saw her amazing Pop Top Math game for multiplication facts. I am ALWAYS on the lookout for multiplication fact games! So knew, KNEW this one had to join the ranks. I called my mom, my grandma and my mother-in-law and told them to start saving all their lids.

Well, fast forward a couple weeks and I was at a conference in Park City, Utah and the people catering the event gave us Stewart's Root Beer for lunch one day. Ummm...YUM! As I went to chuck my trash the boys serving the food were just about to throw away a cup full of the bottle caps from the root beer. The crazy teacher in me immediately stopped them in a 'I am a crazy person' way and I ended up with the caps. Do any of you ever do crazy stuff like that? Anyway, all the teachers around me groaned because they KNEW I had scored on this one! One lady even offered me $10 for my 50 bottle caps, which was kinda weird. 

This is good stuff.

In my Math rotations I use the letters M   A   T   H - go figure :) The M stands for Math Facts. During this rotation the kids are always working with facts. Always. 

So, I made my game own Pop Top game and here is how it turned out...

I like it...a lot!

Make sure to link up with Tara for today's Monday Made It!

Online Math Facts Practice!

I love Tried it Tuesday with Holly from Fourth Grade Flipper! I get so many fabulous ideas and tools from all you awesome teachers who link up.

Okay, sooooooo...math facts practice...yep. This group of fourthies is/was definitely in need of immediate practice with math facts. I have always always always used my trusty folders with the transparency to write on with an Expo and the math facts paper behind it. But, this simple activity was taking waaaaaaaaay to long this year. And I wanted to incorporate math facts practice into my math workshop groups so I started looking. I can't remember how I stumbled upon xtramath.org but I am VERY glad I did.

Signing up and entering your students is so SIMPLE! It took me less than 3 minutes...seriously. You just sign yourself up, enter the first name of each student and then print pins for the students. Easy peasy!

 

The program gives you a report of how the kids do each day (the student names are to the lefter of the Mastery column, I just cut them out). From here you can click on one of the dots and it breaks it down even more.

You can see exactly what is going on every time a quiz is taken. Love it!

Here are some action shots.

One thing I really love about this program is the teacher guy walks the kids through everything. Headphones are needed because he talks to the kids. The kids are practicing for about 6 minutes during the technology rotation in our Math Workshop/Guided Math. You can set it up on one computer and it will randomly have the kids come back by displaying the name of another student once a different student is finished. Oh, and all of the facts are practice...addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division.

I would LOVE LOVE LOVE to know how you practice math facts! Please leave a comment and let me know.

Now go link up with Holly!