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!

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!