I’ve said it before, and I’m sure I’ll say it over and over again until my teaching partner and I are no longer working together. She is, for lack of a better word, my “other half” at work. I could not make it through the week day without her.
A couple of weeks ago, I had to schedule a doctor’s appointment smack in the middle of our benchmark testing. Since we are departmentalized, “M” gives the math benchmarks to both classes and I give the ELA benchmarks to both classes. We were working within a window, and I didn’t know how I was going to spread out the benchmark tests without making our kiddos completely miserable.
Enter my sweet partner and friend.
She took time out of her day while I was out so that we could squeeze everything in. She is amaze-a-doodles.
In return, I made sure the kids had some fact fluency practice while they were with my sub. When M and I started talking about the trade-off, my creative sparks went off.
Enter, Multiplication Connection!
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It’s a “Connect-5” game that is differentiated to meet the needs of kids who need practice with easier or harder sets of facts. I included 2 versions in the packet.
The first version uses traditional 2 dice and helps kids develop fluency with facts 1×1 through 6×6. M encourages our kids to use the skip counting strategy, but I left the recording sheet instructions a little more vague so that you and your students can decide which strategy works best for them.
I was so excited to leave this for our kids… and then something TERRIBLE happened.
The school laminating machine was out of film.
I was out of laminating sheets for my thermal laminator. At home AND at school.
I KNOW!!!!
M to the rescue. Again.
Enter sheet protectors.
They are for pretend laminating, too. They even play well with dry erase markers!