Elementary Math Chat Annamarie Krejci, Elementary Math Teacher

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!

Test prep is no joke! You and your students have worked extremely hard to prepare for state testing. When you finish that final test, I’m sure a sense of accomplishment and relief sets in…and it should! The hard part is over! So, take a victory lap and celebrate with a day of fun.
So, what can you plan for the day after testing to give everyone a much-needed break? This day can be tricky to plan for. You’ll likely have students taking makeup tests, so you don’t want to begin a new project or plan a movie day.
In this week’s episode, I explain how I created a day of fun choice board that included 5 categories of activities to choose from: draw, color, play, watch, and solve. I share the types of activities within each category and suggestions for additional activities to include.
The best part about this day was that I was able to sit at my desk and get some of my own work done for once!
I also share a unique job to give a few students to help take a load off of your very full plate in the Teaching Tip of the Week.
Episodes Mentioned:

EP 30: Help Students Prepare For State Testing With a Simulation Day
EP 31: Plan With a Purpose: How to Use Data To Make the Most of Test Prep Week
EP 32: Celebrate the End of Test Prep Success With a Glow Day!
Resources Mentioned:

Directed Drawings
Dot to Dots
End-of-the-Year Games
Pentomino Puzzles
Pentomino Puzzle Pieces
Pattern Block Activities
To view the show notes with the full transcript, head to https://krejcicreations.com/episode33.
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!