Teacher Approved Tips: New Student Kits and Math Review with Number Patterns [episode 82]

Emily
Hey, there, thanks for joining us today for teacher approved tips, a special series from the teacher approved podcast. Every Thursday, we’re bringing you a weekly bonus episode, highlighting new and favorite teacher approved tips from us and other amazing educators.

Emily
Our first tip is prepare supplies in advance for new students who will join your class throughout the year. Tell us some more about this, Heidi.

Heidi
So this might not seem like a back to school tip. But it actually is because now is the time that you want to be thinking about this. Once a new student shows up without warning the third week of September or even earlier, sometimes it is too late to be prepared.

Emily
And that’s why we love having new student kits ready to go. They don’t take much effort either. Decide how many new student kits you want to have on hand, based on what kind of turnover your school usually gets. That’s probably going to vary a lot from school to school. I always want to err on the side of too many versus not enough.

Emily
You can ask around to your co workers or the office staff if you’re new at the school to get an idea of how many new students you should expect during the school year. And then maybe prepare a few more than that.

Heidi
Then as you are putting out your supplies for your students at back to school, just go ahead and fill up your new student kits too. Think about all the things your students would need to jump right in on a random day of school, especially anything that will need their name on it.

Heidi
So think of desk nameplates, folders, notebooks, and if you provide the crayons, glue, scissors and all of that, put each of those in the bag too.

Emily
Remember to add to these kits every time you’re making something with your students names on them. So that might include popsicle sticks for your name jar, tags for the job chart, a magnet for the lunch cow, you get it.

Emily
And don’t forget birthday certificates or whatever you prep in advance for student birthdays. I always stored these in a big Ziploc bag even though it wouldn’t really close with the notebooks inside.

Heidi
But since she will be making these kits probably every year, you may want to invest in reusable zipper pouches. Amazon has like packs of 14 16 by 12 inch mesh zipper pouches for under $12. So that’s only 83 cents of pouch.

Emily
Yeah, that’s a good deal.

Heidi
And then you don’t have to worry about anything falling out. I know I had a lot of years where I had like my row of packs tipping over in my closet and the zipper pouch would have really fix that particular headache. Yes.

Heidi
So if you want the big pouches look for 16 by 12 inch mesh zipper pouches, which is a tongue twister, or search for 8 three size pouches and we will link to some of those in the show notes.

Emily
You’re already doing the work to set up for your students. So making these kits now is such a simple way to give your future self a gift. Plus, having these kits ready for new students will help them feel that there was a spot waiting just for them when they arrive. We want those new kiddos to feel welcome right from the start.

Heidi
So trust us that Wednesday morning or a new student gets registered for your class five minutes before school starts so you know that you will be giving yourself all the high fives for getting these kits ready to go now.

Heidi
We would love to hear your ideas for what to add to your new student kits. Come share your thoughts over in the teacher proof Facebook group.

Emily
Our second teacher approved tip today comes from Blue Sky Designs by Mrs. T.

Lauren
Hi to all the Teacher Approved listeners out there. I’m Lauren Thorpe and I’ve been a tutor, a substitute teacher, and a full time classroom teacher here in Australia. I am now a stay at home mum just beginning to homeschool my oldest child. I also support teachers through my business called Blue Sky Designs by Mrs. T.

Lauren
Thank you to Emily and Heidi for having me on the show today to share a math tip with everyone. The range of tips and ideas that are shared on this podcast is so valuable and I hope you find mine helpful today too.

Lauren
Today I’m going to share a super simple and really engaging math activity idea that you can use to review so many math concepts. And that activity is to ask students to find the rule of a number pattern and complete the sequence.

Lauren
So you’ll give them the first few numbers in a sequence. Perhaps those numbers will be two, four and six, then students will need to firstly identify the pattern. In this case, it’s that the numbers are increasing by two each time.

Lauren
Secondly, they can complete the next few numbers in the sequence. The thing that makes this such a great activity is how easily you can adapt it. So if you’re working with first graders, you can have some simple skip counting patterns like I used in my example, if you work with seventh graders, you can use much more complex patterns that might even be multi step. For example, they may need to multiply the previous number by seven and then add three to get the next number in the sequence.

Lauren
If you’re working on shapes, you can have a shape based pattern, perhaps two shapes with four sides, followed by one shape with three sides and so on. You could use coins if you’re working on money or fractions. And it works brilliantly if you’re focusing on the order of operations. You can use this activity as a time filler for early finishers or as a regular review task at the end of each math unit you cover.

Lauren
You can set patterns at different difficulty levels to to cater for the range of needs in your class, or ask students to come up with their own patterns for a friend to figure out. This is a great way to see how well students can understand and apply the math concepts you’ve been working on in class.

Lauren
So I hope you find that helpful. If you’d like more ideas like this, I have a blog with plenty of teaching tips in a range of subject areas including math. I have some more problem solving challenges and activity ideas like the number pattern activity I shared today. I share ideas for reviewing multiplication, helping kids practice addition, activities for place value intervention and ways you can combine math with English.

Lauren
My blog is called The Musings of Mrs. T and I’d love for you to take a look. If you want to try using the activity I shared today with your students. I have some ready made number pattern task cards available in my TPT store as part of my number sense bundle.

This bundle is ideal for third to fifth grade and includes a private and composite number bingo game, umber sense logic puzzles stories, a guide for helping kids read long numbers and worksheets to help students express numbers in different forms like expanded form or word form. You can find the number sense bundle in my TPT store Blue Sky Designs by Mrs. T.

Lauren
Thank you so much for listening today. I hope that you’re encouraged to try using number patterns in your learning space and to adapt this to suit the needs of your students. I hope you really have fun with it and that your students do too.

Emily
Thank you, Lauren for sharing that tip with us. This is such a great tip because you can do it at any time as a time sponge activity that requires almost no prep.

Heidi
And I love the suggestion she gave for tailoring your patterns to your students needs by varying the difficulty. Plus, it’s a great idea to let the students come up with their own patterns for the other students to uncover. They love doing that sort of thing.

Emily
Be sure to check out more from Blue Sky designs by Mrs. T.

Heidi
That’s it for today’s episode. Remember to make your new student packs now and try Lauren’s teacher approved tip to use number pattern puzzles to review math concepts.