Motivating Kids to Clean!

Here's a great little tip that will motivate your students to clean like they have never cleaned before!  It's called Mystery Trash!  At the end of the day, I walk around the room and find three things that need to be picked up and thrown away, or put away, or simply straightened.  You need to be very sneaky so the students can't tell what you are noticing!  Then I tell my students to go and find the Mystery Trash!

I try to watch and see who has taken care of each item.  Once they are all done (or we are out of time), I tell the students to return to their seats.  Then I announce the winners who each get a piece of gum or candy.

I especially love the first time I do Mystery Trash with my students!  I pick a couple things like a small piece of paper on the floor or a pencil that was dropped, but then I always pick something like a book that was crooked on the book rack or a tissue box that wasn't perfectly in the corner.  They never get that last item on the first day, but after I announce the winners I say, "And the last Mystery Trash item that no one got was...this book!  Look at how it's crooked on the book rack!  We can't have that!"

The kids' eyes get wide and they say, "What?!"  They can't believe I'm that picky!  But you should see them clean and straighten the next day!  It's a beautiful sight!

3 FREE Math games your class will love!

Hey y'all! This is Kristen from Chalk & Apples. I hope everyone is settling into a fantastic school year. Today, I wanted to share a few quick and easy (and of course FREE) math games that my students are loving this year. They're all free and require little to no prep. Check them out!

Mindreader

This is my go-to game for the end of the day when we are lined up, waiting to be called for dismissal. My class loves it! Beth from Adventures of a Schoolmarm blogged about it in detail at Classroom Tested Resources a little while back, so you can read all the details in her post.

Basically, I think of a number, tell my class how many digits it is, and they start guessing. After each guess, I tell how many digits are correct and how many are in the correct place value. We also discuss whether guesses are logical or not based on the previous information. This is a great time to build some common sense skills! (For example if a student guesses 325 and I say that 1 digit is correct AND in the correct place value, 476 is not a logical next guess because the student has changed all of the digits when we knew one was correct.) Grab all the details & instructions free in Beth's TPT store!

MathAGories

This is another student favorite! I use it mostly during centers, although it made a great whole-group time filler when our power suddenly went out - for TWO hours! It's played much like Scattergories, where the most unique answers win. Students learned quickly that the easiest answers would likely get used by many of their classmates, and that they needed to think outside the box if they wanted to win. This freebie is for different ways to make a number, but the same game rules can be applied to lots of math concepts, like equivalent fractions, multiples, etc. Get the recording sheets and game instructions in my TPT store!

Odd One Out

This game was shared by Cassie from Funky in Fourth last year on Teaching Trio, and my class loves it! She has all the details in her post, plus a free game sheet. Students place 15 chips onto the game board. Then they take turns removing chips from only one row. The goal is to NOT be the last person to remove chips from the board. I love the way it gets kids thinking about their strategies and adjusting mid-game. Grab the freebie here!

What games do you play with your students? I'm always on the lookout for new games for our math workshop time! 

FREE classroom jobs chart!

Posting a classroom job chart is the perfect way to delegate responsibilities to your students. We just can't do it all!!  Plus, students love to help around the classroom.  Take some time at the beginning of the year to teach your students how to successfully complete some important classroom jobs and you will be thankful.  Nothing is better than the middle of the year when your students get so good at the classroom jobs that they are essentially running the classroom.  I just want to show up and teach I tell them!  The rest should be up to them!!!

Download this classroom jobs chart for FREE.  Just print, laminate, post, teach, sit back, and enjoy!!

First Day Welcome Letter Warm Up

Need a warm up for the first day of school?  Here's a quick little fill-in-the-blank letter you can have on your students' desks so they have something to do right when they walk in.

You can find this freebie at my TPT Store!

Fact Fluency Freebie

If you've been teaching 5th grade for a long time, you know how frustrating it can be to teach math when your students aren't fluent in their facts.   How can you teach kids to add fractions with different denominators if they don't know their basic multiples?  Suddenly, finding a common denominator is a very time consuming process.

Recently, I attended a math training where the presenter said that students shouldn't be memorizing facts.  I've heard that at a lot of trainings lately. Frankly, it scares me.  There is a misconception that the Common Core discourages memorization.  That isn't the case.  If people start to believe this misconception, math is going to be so much harder for upper grade teachers to teach.

I recently updated a FREE Common Core Math Fluency Posters set.  These posters can be useful in having discussion with kids, parents and other teachers about grade level expectations.  These fact fluencies can be the basis of intervention.  If you start your year determining which students haven't met goals for previous years, you can catch them up before they fall even further behind.

Here are a couple of the FREE posters included in the packet:

Stop by my blog by clicking on the picture below to read about why Memorize is NOT a Bad Word and for some links to resources that you may find helpful.

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Back-to-Schhol E-Book: 40 FREE Ideas and Resources

Back-to-School season is upon us!

To help you get started or add to your planned classroom resources, 40 different TpT sellers have created a “A Back to School eBook for Grades 5 and 6 from TpT Authors.” Each page is packed with tips to help you as you adjust to back to school in your classrooms. 

Click here for your FREE download:

Fifth Grade Freebies shout-outs

Several of the collaborators from "Fifth Grade Freebies" contributed to this e-book

Brian from Wise Guys compiled all of these awesome pages!

They also shared a free guided reading strategies packet.

Jessica from Joy in the Journey has a missing homework management freebie that will help keep your students accountable for their missing work.

Missy from "Wild About Fifth" has a Reading Challenge freebie that will get your students excited about reading and exploring different genres!

If you download the freebies, please leave feedback!

Head Back to School with some Freebies!

Hey y’all! It’s Kristen from Chalk & Apples, here with my very first post on Fifth Grade Freebies. I’m so excited to be joining this group of 5th grade teachers to share some great free resources with you!

Today, I wanted to share a couple of freebies that get me through the Back to School season.


You’d think on my 8th year of teaching, with 7 in 5th grade, it would be easy to get ready for the beginning of another school year. You’d think I would have the routine down, and would just be able to hop right into Back to School mode the week before school starts. But I can’t. Every year, when it’s time to get back to it, I’m so far in summer mode that I need some reminders of what it is that I’m supposed to be doing in preparation for a new year.

That’s why I created this set of free Back to School Checklists! It took way longer than I’d like to admit to figure out what I actually needed to include in my checklists, but now that they’re done, I can just reprint them every year, and be sure I’m doing everything I need to get ready. You can click the image to download it free from my TPT store!


On the first day of school, or at open house the day before school starts, there are always lots of forms to be filled out. Personally, I want parents to take these forms home and do a thorough job of completing them… but there is some information I really need on that VERY FIRST day. I really just want to have one good contact number in case of emergency, to know if there are any major allergies or medical concerns, and I want to know how each child is getting home that day.

I created this free First Day Form, which I print 2 to a page on bright colored paper. This is the one and only thing I ask parents to complete at “Meet the Teacher” night or on the morning of the first day of school. I find that this is quick and easy for parents to fill out, and it gives me just enough info to get through until they return the entire back to school packet. Click the image to grab it as a freebie in my TPT store!