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Ninja Notes

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interactive math notebooks

Ways to Bring Graphing Activities into Your Classroom Daily

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What are some fo the ways you teaching graphing to your students? We try to include graphing activities throughout all the subject areas. Come read how we make graphing more authentic in and out of math class.

It always surprises me when I hear teachers saying they are starting a math unit on graphing and statistics. Reading a graph or a chart is a skill we use throughout many subject areas. Looking at patterns in statistics comes up in science and social studies all the time. Here are the ways we weave graphing activities into our classroom all year long and throughout the different subject areas.

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How to Help Your Students Master Decimal Operations

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We find that many students struggle with decimal operations because their understanding of decimal number sense has a few holes in it. Come learn some of the ways we support our grade four and grade five students before, during and after learning to add and subtract decimals. And come grab a free set of decimals place value task cards to get you started.

Some students have difficulty working with decimals. Others misunderstand how place value helps when working with decimals operations. And other students struggle with number operations in general. Read on to find out the ways we support the different math learners in our classroom before working with decimal operations.

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How to Teach Students to Analyze Errors in Math

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When students understand how they make mistakes while calculating math equations, they can begin to prevent making them. We teach our students to analyze errors in math. Come see how we use this strategy to help students deepen their math understanding and grab a free activity you can use in your upper elementary math class. We use this activity with our grade four and grade five math students and all of them benefit from it.

Over the years, we’ve had students that don’t want to correct their math errors. Why do students need to know how they made a mistake? For students, it helps them understand where they went wrong so they don’t repeat the errors. For teachers, it helps narrow down how to support or teach the student. But how do you teach students to analyze errors in math?

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Mastering the Angles: Innovative Approaches to Teaching Geometry Concepts

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Are you looking for ways to teach geometry concepts in your upper elementary classroom? This is one of our favourite units. We teach 2D shapes, 3D objects and transformations with interactive math notebooks, task cards, Boom Cards and a huge project where we build an arcade. It's so much fun! Come see how we do this in our math class.

When we start talking about quadrilaterals, trapezoids, and parallel lines, many students get lost quickly. There are so many new and uncommon words introduced in our geometry concepts unit and it is especially difficult for English Language Learners. These are some of the ways we build an understanding of shape and space concepts in our classroom.

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How to Use Interactive Notebooks to Teach Number Sense

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Interactive math notebooks are one way we teach number sense in our upper elementary classroom. Math class hasn't been the same since we started using interactive notebooks. Yes, they are work, but the benefits are HUGE! Come see what we do to make it work and get some ideas for yourself.

We use interactive notebooks in our math class as part of a unit on number sense. We have found creating a reference book of concepts and procedures that students can refer to when working in math helps them build confidence and develop independence.

We’re not going to lie. They are a lot of work, but the working is meaningful. We found on average our math grades improved and students were able to retain more of their learning year over year. Read more to find out how we use them in our classroom as one way to develop number sense.

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How to Change Math With Interactive Notebooks

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Are you avoiding interactive math notebooks because they seem like too much work? Are you struggling to teach math because you worry about your own knowledge base? Never fear! We have the solutions! Let's get you teaching math today!

When a colleague told us we should try interactive notebooks in math, we agreed and then went on our merry ways and did math the same old way for another year.

At the end of that school year, she approached us again and DEMANDED we buy an Interactive Math Journal lesson plan set. We took a look, bought it and then went on summer vacation, never to think about math for a whole two months.

Near the end of the summer, we opened it up and it CHANGED OUR WORLD. We will never teach math the same way again. That being said, there are a few things we learned about the process and we wanted to share these tips with you so you don’t have to spend so much time figuring things out yourself.

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