Multiplication Facts Fun and Games

As a 5th grade math teacher, I always hope that my students come to me knowing all their multiplication facts by memory.  Today, the students played a game that made it SUPER easy for me to tell who needs that extra help in getting their facts down.  As a bonus, the students loved it!

All they needed to play this game was a pencil and two paper clips (to use as the spinners) and pieces of construction paper cut into squares.  I cut these out years ago and have kept them to use when playing games like this and BINGO.

Students could play in pairs or in threes, as long as each student had their own color of game squares to mark their spot on the game board.

All the students had a blast playing it, especially my competitive students!  I told them that they could "bump" off another student's game piece if they spun the factors that gave them the same product.  This just added to the excitement!

My kids were so mad when I said it was time to put up the game.  Luckily, I keep it in a bin of games that they can play when they finish their work.  Anything that gets them excited about practicing those all-important multiplication facts makes me happy!

Here is the link to this free game if you would like to use it in your classroom.  It's three of the same game boards and spinners, just in different colors...because multiple colors just makes everything better!  :)

Hope everyone is having a great start to their school year!

First Week Fun!!!!

The first week is in the books!  It was such a fun five days getting to know all the students and getting back into the swing of school.  That first day makes all the previous days of staff development and classroom prep so worth it!  Love, love, love my kiddos!!!

That first day, we meet, as a team, with all the fifth graders to go over our grade level expectations and procedures.  So, my math class was only 30 minutes.  I really wanted to get to know my students, and have something to look at to keep my memory fresh.  This Fraction Getting to Know You activity from Breeze Through Math was perfect!  We were able to review equivalent fractions and get to know each other!

I also showed the students a collage of me and my favorites so my students could know a little bit about me!

I really wanted to make sure that my students really learned how to participate in multiple types of activities that are common in my classroom.  So, I planned the week in order to expose them to different activities that have different expectations.  The students loved doing everything, so it worked out well!

The second day of school, I used Erika Forth's amazing Back to School foldables so that students can know my expectations for working on these types of activities, as well as go over my classroom procedures.  And this year my school is really pushing goal-setting with the students, so the "My Goals" envelopes was just perfect!

The third and fourth days, the students were reviewing addition and subtraction of whole numbers.  I also used this opportunity to have my students practice the expectations for partner-work and group-work.  They really enjoyed these activities, especially with all the moving around the classroom that they got to do!

Friday was solely spent on setting up the students' laptops.  Our district provides laptops for all 5th -12th grade students.  This being their first year, getting logged-in can take forever!  But we succeeded, and now each student is logged-on, has games downloaded, and is connected to our OneNote on the school server.  Thank goodness!  :)

I'm so glad to be back to school and so excited for what this school year will bring!