Season One is done! I’m so grateful to each and every one of you for joining me each week to hear my favorite teaching tips and ideas around elementary math. I hope I’ve helped make your teacher life much easier, and I’m excited to reflect on what this season has meant to me in this Season One finale.

In this episode, I answer a few questions that were submitted in a Q & A survey. I also share my final thoughts and reflections on Season One, my plans for the future of Elementary Math Chat, and one final Teaching Tip of the Week to help you work smarter and not harder to finish your end-of-the-year checklist.

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To view the show notes with the full transcript, head to https://krejcicreations.com/episode41.

P.S. Has this podcast been helpful for you? If so, screenshot an episode, add it to IG, and tag me @krejci_creations. This helps spread the word to other teachers!

The countdown is on...summer vacation is right around the corner! With all the special events that fall at the end of the year, the final week of school can be challenging to plan for. Every day has a different schedule, and the amount of instructional time also varies. If you need help planning activities to keep your students engaged until the end, this episode is for you!

This week, I share 5 of my favorite end-of-the-year activities to help keep your students engaged during the final week of school. You’ll hear ideas to help you fill anywhere from 5-10 minutes, 20-30 minutes, or 60 minutes to help you plan around special end-of-the-year events. These activities are low prep and fun for everyone involved, including you!

I also share an idea for an end-of-the-year gift in this week’s Teaching Tip of the Week. This gift won’t cost you a dime and your students will treasure it for many years to come.

Resources Mentioned:

Line Plot Project

Create a Math Board Game

Mystery Person BINGO

Episodes Mentioned:

Episode 22: 6 Low Prep and Engaging Early-Finisher Activities

Episode 33: Testing is Done! 5 Ideas to Plan For a Day of Fun!

To view the show notes with the full transcript, head to https://krejcicreations.com/episode40.

P.S. Has this podcast been helpful for you? If so, screenshot an episode, add it to IG, and tag me @krejci_creations. This helps spread the word to other teachers!

Summer is right around the corner, and so are those last-minute requests from parents wanting to know how to prevent the summer slide. This episode is chock-full of ideas to keep kids engaged with math over the summer, which means you'll have plenty of tips to share with your families!

This week, Melanie Doppler from Math Coach Connection joins me to discuss simple ways to help families connect math to everyday experiences at home over the summer. She shares clever ways to connect math at mealtime, during a trip to the park, when planning a vacation, and so much more! 

These tips will help parents keep the conversation going about math over the summer without the dread of making their children sit down to practice math skills, so grab a pen and paper and get ready to hear some amazing tips to share with your families!

To view the show notes with the full transcript, head to https://krejcicreations.com/episode39.

Connect with Melanie:

Instagram

Website

TPT Store

The Dog Ate My Homework Podcast

Summer Resources Mentioned:

Summer Math Guides

3rd Grade Boot Camp Course Information

Direct Link to the Course

Summer Math Resources

Math Projects:

5th Grade Baseball Math Project

4th Grade Baseball Math Project

2nd Grade Baseball Bat Bandit Math Mystery

Math Mysteries:

All Mysteries

Career Projects:

5th Grade Bundle

4th Grade Bundle

3rd Grade Bundle

Party Projects:

All Party Projects

P.S. Has this podcast been helpful for you? If so, screenshot an episode, add it to IG, and tag me @krejci_creations. This helps spread the word to other teachers!

This week, I share my favorite teaching tips and ideas for the second half of my area and perimeter unit. Those lessons covered solving for missing dimensions, problem-solving with area, and a review lesson to help students prepare for the test.

You’ll hear ideas to help you teach these concepts in a visual and relatable manner, how to incorporate review skills in your small group activities, and fun ways to help students prepare for the test.

Don’t miss this week’s Teaching Tip of the Week where I explain how to play one of my favorite multiplication fact games. This game is unpredictable, it’s full of risk, and that’s what makes it so much fun to play!

Resources Mentioned:

Missing Dimensions Task Cards (used for whole group lesson)

Area and Perimeter Riddles

Area and Perimeter Review Boom Cards

4th Grade Test Prep Boom Card Bundle

Related Resources:

Area of Squares and Rectangles Task Cards

Missing Dimensions with Perimeter and Area Boom Cards

Related Blog Posts

How to Make the Most of Review Days

To view the show notes with the full transcript, head to https://krejcicreations.com/episode38.

P.S. Has this podcast been helpful for you? If so, screenshot an episode, add it to IG, and tag me @krejci_creations. This helps spread the word to other teachers!

Area and perimeter was one of my favorite units to teach. I enjoyed helping students make real-world connections to what they were learning, and they enjoyed imagining that they were planting a garden or painting a bedroom wall. However, this unit came with its fair share of struggles.

In my experience, area and perimeter taught in isolation were simple concepts for most students. They began to confuse the two concepts when they got to word problems, mainly because the words area and perimeter were never included in the word problems. Instead, they had to rely on context clues to determine whether to find the area or the perimeter. This was something I embedded into my lessons from the start!

This week, I share my favorite teaching tips and ideas for the first three lessons in my area and perimeter unit on perimeter, area, and area of combined rectangles. I share helpful ways to teach students conceptual understanding and creative ways to embed other review skills into your small group activities.

In addition, you’ll hear a clever way to help students determine whether to multiply or divide when converting units of measure in the Teaching Tip of the Week.

Resources Mentioned:

Perimeter of Squares and Rectangles Task Cards

To view the show notes with the full transcript, head to https://krejcicreations.com/episode37.

P.S. Has this podcast been helpful for you? If so, screenshot an episode, add it to IG, and tag me @krejci_creations. This helps spread the word to other teachers!

Why was the quadrilateral late to school? Why did the right triangle go to the beach? The answers to these fun riddles are included in this week’s episode with even more geometry tips! 

This week, I share my favorite teaching tips and activities for the last three lessons in my geometry unit on classifying quadrilaterals, line symmetry, and shape patterns.

I share two days of whole group lesson ideas for classifying quadrilaterals, helpful tips and small group ideas for line symmetry, and how I changed my pattern lesson from one I dreaded to one I looked forward to each year. 

In addition, you’ll hear a fun idea for a small group extension activity using geoboards in the Teaching Tip of the Week.

Resources Mentioned:

Classify Quadrilaterals EDITABLE PowerPoint Lesson - 4th Grade

Classify Quadrilaterals Better Lesson (Day 1)

Symmetry Sort and Solve

Growing Pattern Task Cards with Unifix Cubes

Episodes Mentioned:

Episode 26: Teaching With Unifix Cubes: 5 Math Skills to Pair Them With

Related Blog Posts:

Classifying Quadrilaterals: Fun Ways to Learn About Our 4-Sided Friends

Simple 2-Day Plan to Help Students Classify Quadrilaterals With Confidence

To view the show notes with the full transcript, head to https://krejcicreations.com/episode36.

P.S. Has this podcast been helpful for you? If so, screenshot an episode, add it to IG, and tag me @krejci_creations. This helps spread the word to other teachers!

Geometry is one of those topics that people either love or hate. I’ll admit, as a student, Geometry wasn’t my favorite. I could work with numbers all day long. But lines, angles, and theorems? It wasn’t my thing. 

However, as a teacher, I enjoyed teaching Geometry. It was a nice break from all the fractions and computation we were so used to. But, I was fully aware that my students might have the same dislike for Geometry that I had when I was young. This motivated me to make my Geometry unit as interesting and as engaging as possible.

In this week’s episode, I share my favorite ideas for the first three lessons in my Geometry unit, which cover lines and angles, classifying line relationships, and classifying triangles. 

These ideas include warm-up activities that will hook your students from the start, simple ways to relate Geometry to Olympic sporting events, kinesthetic games to play, and my favorite small group activities.

I also share an idea for how to handle those challenging questions that come at the end of your lesson (when student engagement is low) in the Teaching Tip of the Week.

Resources Mentioned:

Olympic Skiing and Types of Lines PowerPoint

Winter Olympic Athlete and Angles

Classify Triangles Sort and Solve

Uclid of Alexandria

To view the show notes with the full transcript, head to https://krejcicreations.com/episode35.

P.S. Has this podcast been helpful for you? If so, screenshot an episode, add it to IG, and tag me @krejci_creations. This helps spread the word to other teachers!

Multiplication facts are the building blocks of upper elementary math skills. Yet many students struggle to memorize these facts and rely on counting strategies and multiplication charts instead. 

In this episode, Danna Rodebush from Teacher Tech Studio and the host of the Upper Elementary Simplified podcast joins me to discuss what fact fluency means, why it is so important, and how teachers can motivate their students to memorize their math facts.

Danna also shares a tip for setting up a fluency program and how to involve parents in the Teaching Tip of the Week.

Resources Mentioned:

Free Math Fact Fluency Master Class

Connect with Danna:

Teacher Tech Studio Facebook Page

Upper Elementary Simplified Facebook Group

Teacher Tech Studio Instagram

YouTube Channel

Teacher Tech Studio Website

To view the show notes with the full transcript, head to https://krejcicreations.com/episode34.

P.S. Has this podcast been helpful for you? If so, screenshot an episode, add it to IG, and tag me @krejci_creations. This helps spread the word to other teachers!

Test prep is no joke! You and your students have worked extremely hard to prepare for state testing. When you finish that final test, I’m sure a sense of accomplishment and relief sets in…and it should! The hard part is over! So, take a victory lap and celebrate with a day of fun.

So, what can you plan for the day after testing to give everyone a much-needed break? This day can be tricky to plan for. You’ll likely have students taking makeup tests, so you don’t want to begin a new project or plan a movie day.

In this week’s episode, I explain how I created a day of fun choice board that included 5 categories of activities to choose from: draw, color, play, watch, and solve. I share the types of activities within each category and suggestions for additional activities to include.

The best part about this day was that I was able to sit at my desk and get some of my own work done for once!

I also share a unique job to give a few students to help take a load off of your very full plate in the Teaching Tip of the Week.

Episodes Mentioned:

EP 30: Help Students Prepare For State Testing With a Simulation Day

EP 31: Plan With a Purpose: How to Use Data To Make the Most of Test Prep Week

EP 32: Celebrate the End of Test Prep Success With a Glow Day!

Resources Mentioned:

Directed Drawings

Dot to Dots

End-of-the-Year Games

Pentomino Puzzles

Pentomino Puzzle Pieces

Pattern Block Activities

To view the show notes with the full transcript, head to https://krejcicreations.com/episode33.

P.S. Has this podcast been helpful for you? If so, screenshot an episode, add it to IG, and tag me @krejci_creations. This helps spread the word to other teachers!

You did it! You made it to the final day of test prep. What better way to celebrate than with a Glow Day? This celebration will be the highlight of your week and send your students into state testing feeling confident and ready to rock the test!

In this week’s episode, I share everything you’ll need to know to plan a Glow Day for your final day of test prep.

I explain how I blended review activities with games, how I held students accountable for their work, and how I set up and decorated the room for the Ultimate Glow Day experience!

I also share a video to play during Glow Day that will give your room an extra boost of glow and keep your class focused and calm in the Teaching Tip of the Week.

Related Blog Posts:

4th Grade Math Test Prep Kit

Resources Mentioned: Some are Amazon affiliate links. There is no extra cost to you, but purchasing through these links helps support the podcast. 

UV Black Light Bars

Black Light Strips for the floor

Neon Party Supplies (with paper garlands, circle dots garland and star garland,  black light reactive tapes in yellow, green, orange, purple, and pink

Neon tape

4th Grade Problem-Solving Packet

YouTube Relaxing Kaleidoscope Video

To view the show notes with the full transcript, head to https://krejcicreations.com/episode32.

P.S. Has this podcast been helpful for you? If so, screenshot an episode, add it to IG, and tag me @krejci_creations. This helps spread the word to other teachers!

Connect with me:

Instagram

Join my Newsletter

Join the 4th Grade Math Facebook Group

Follow my TPT Store