Dry Erase Desks?

 I thought I would take the time to share one of my favorite secrets with everyone. I use dry erase boards a lot during math and sometimes I just don't have the time to drag out my student white boards, markers, and erasers. To help with this problem I often let my students use their desks as their dry erase boards. Yes I said desks. My kids LOVE the fact they get the write on their desks. On a side note, I always go over the rules; we are only allowed to draw on our desks when we have permission and only with dry eraser markers. This secret really works. I promise. I have even taken it a step further and have drawn on my teacher table during small groups. It works just the same. I have found over the years of doing this that newer markers work best and some colors are better than others when it comes to leaving residue. The student's desks allow the students to have a larger working area. It works great when we are working with manipulatives. If any residue is left after erasing, a good Clorox Wipe (or any wet wipe) will take it right off. Here are a few pictures to show you what I am talking about. I hope everyone enjoys this tip. Happy Blogging!

BTW: I do know the ones place says 9 and there are only 2 units. My student hadn't finished placing her units when I took this picture. :)





2. A little residue was left after erasing.



1. Using our desks to work on making numbers







3. Good as new after using a wet wipe!



Base Ten Bots



Too Cute!

 I feel like such a slacker. Last week was crazy. We had our GAPSS accreditation review at my school last Tuesday and we were all stressed out. Everything went fine and looking back at it; I don't even know why I was stressed out about it. I finally had the time to finish up a math performance task today that my class did a while back. It is a place value performance task, looking at numbers in the thousands, hundreds, tens, and ones place. The kids got to create their own Base Ten Bots out of cubes, flats, rods, and units. After they made their bot, they had to answer questions related to the number it took to build the robot. They had to put the number in a place value chart, be able to write the number in standard, expanded, and word form. They had to find what the number would be with 10, 100, 1,000 more and 10, 100, 1,000 less.  They also had to round the number to the nearest 10, 100, and 1,000 and more. My kids had a blast making the Base Ten Bots and I really got a chance to assess their number sense knowledge. You can check out the task by clicking on the picture. I hope your class enjoys this activity as much as mine did!