A 2022 Go Figure Debut for a Retired Primary Teacher Who is New!

Diana has a store on Teachers Pay Teachers named Sunshine and Laughter. She has been teaching for 34 years - 15 years in 1st grade, nine years in 2nd grade, five years in 3rd grade, and five years as an ESL teacher. She is now retired and works full time on her TPT store.

When she was teaching, Diana’s favorite part was the actual teaching. She loved working with her students in small groups for a couple of reasons - to pinpoint exactly where they needed more support, and to get to know them better while building a relationship with them. Diana always tried to make her classroom a comfortable, safe space for her students. She wanted it to be engaging, but not distracting. Because she knew the importance of reading, she always had a student reading corner in her classroom even when she was a Math/Science teacher.

Diana lives in Texas and has been married for 23 years to a wonderful, supportive man and they have a sweet daughter in her last year of college. She also has a cute Yorkie named Bentley. Her absolute favorite thing to do is to travel to the beach, and her family goes as much as they can. Growing up, her family always took vacations to the beach, and she thinks that's where her love of sun, water and waves first began. When Diana is at the beach, she feels at peace, and she finds the sound of the waves exceptionally calming.

FREE

Diana’s store contains 240 resources, 23 of which are free for downloading. Their general content is science, math and language arts. Her featured free resource is a Multiplication Matching Game for grades 2-3. Students make three-way matches using multiplication facts. The students match a multiplication problem with its related story problem and array. The game can be played two different ways. First, after making a copy of the game, cut the game apart into cards. Then give each student in the class a card. They have to find a three-way match on their own, or put the students into groups and have them make the three way matches as a team.

Only $4.00

Her highlighted paid resource is Food Chains for grades 1-3. This science resource contains a variety of food chains in different ecosystems. Each poster shows the path of energy the producers and consumers travel through within that ecosystem. The colorful posters are bright and easy to use to introduce food chains as a whole group, in your science stations, and are as anchor charts to display in your classroom.

If you are a primary teacher, Diana’s TPT Store is worth checking out. You will find many fun, engaging and creative resources that you can easily adapt to your classroom. AND your students will have a fun and exciting time learning.

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This year, My Go Figure Debut features TPT sellers that are members of The Best of Teacher Entrepreneurs Marketing Cooperative (TBOTEMC) of which Diana and I are members. TBOTEMC has been in existence since 2014 and is made up of teachers who work together to take their Teachers Pay Teachers stores to the next level. They use the power of cross-promotion to collaborate in their Pinterest, Facebook, and Teacher Talk blog marketing teams. Members advertise their TpT stores, personal blogs, social media sites, or grow their email lists in TBOTEMC’s THREE $100 GIVEAWAYS of TpT Gift Certificates and $100 Amazon & $100 PayPal CA$H Giveaways. T For more information on how you can join this group, go to The Best of Teacher Entrepreneurs Marketing Cooperative. 

Why Do We Call Our Number System Base Ten? Many of My College Students Don't Know!

Don't you love tests where you ask a question which you believe everyone will get correct, and then find out it just isn't so?  I gave my algebra college students a pretest to see what they knew and didn't know.  One of the first questions was:  Why is our number system called Base Ten?  This is an extremely important concept as it reveals what they know about place value.  Below are some of the answers I received.

1)  It is called Base Ten because we have ten fingers.  (Yikes! If that is so, should we include our toes as well?)

2)  It is called Base Ten because I think you multiply by ten when you move past the decimal sign.  (Well, sort of.  You do multiply by ten when you move to the left of the decimal sign, going from the ones place, to the tens place, to the hundreds place, etc.)

3)  I think it is called Base Ten because it's something we use everyday.  (Really????)

Enough!  It is called Base Ten because we use ten digits (0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9) to write all of the other numbers.  Each digit can have one of ten values: any number from 0 through 9. When the value reaches 9, just before 10, it starts over at zero again.  (Notice the pattern below.)

0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, etc.

In addition, each place is worth ten times more than the last. Ten is worth ten times more than 1, and 1,000 is ten times more than 100. The pattern continues infinitely both ways on a number line.

The decimal point allows for the place value to continue in a consistent pattern with numbers smaller than one. As we move to the right of the decimal point, each place is divided by ten to get to the next place value. One hundredth is one tenth divided by ten, and one thousandth is one hundredth divided by ten. The pattern goes on infinitely.

100's, 10's, 1's . 0.1, 0.01, 0.001, 0.0001, 0.00001, etc.

Since all mathematics is based on patterns, this should not be a new revelation. Perhaps on the post-test, my students will omit the fingers and instead rely on patterns to answer the questions!

Using the Periodic Table to Create Science Bulletin Boards

Only $4.00

As many of you know, my husband teaches middle school science. He has never been one to do bulletin boards, never has been and never will be. My daughter (also a teacher) and I usually construct them for him. For many months now, I have been looking for individual tiles of the periodic table.  I saw a bulletin board on Pinterest (one of my favorite places to gather ideas) that I wanted to recreate for my husband's science lab. I finally turned to Teachers Pay Teachers (where I should have gone in the first place) and asked in the Forum if anyone had such an item. I found that The Triple Point had just what I was looking for. It was a set containing 118 images of Periodic Table tiles, one for each of the 118 elements. Since the resource was only $4.00, I purchased and downloaded it immediately.

After copying the individual tiles onto card stock and laminating them for durability, I laid out the bulletin board (see below). To be honest, my husband did staple everything onto the board as well as arrange the other items. Didn't he do a great job?

In case you can't read the meme in the middle, it says, "That will be $5.00 for the Electrons; the Neutrons are Free of Charge." After all, every classroom needs a little bit of humor!

A Dinner Dilemma - Using Math to Solve How Many Bites a Child Must Eat at Dinner

Using Math to Solve
How Many Bites a
Child Must Eat

Being a grandparent lets you try some new discipline methods that you never thought of as a parent. My grandchildren don't always like what I serve for dinner (Unbelievable, isn't it?); so, many times some food is left on their plates. My children want their children to at least take a bite of everything on their plate which often times feels like a monumental task for our grandchildren. The solution? I have an oversized sponge die on hand for such occasions. The child who doesn't want to eat something rolls the die, and the number that comes up is how many bites they must take before dessert is served. Now, the child must argue with the die and not the parent or me! (It's difficult to argue with an inanimate object.)

Besides taking care of a dinner dilemma, my grandchildren are learning to subitize sets. (Oh, there's the math part of this article!) Since there are no numbers on the die, only dots, the child must count the dots to find out the number. Surprisingly, even the youngest are learning to recognize the dot patterns and can state the number of dots without counting. This indicates they are learning to subitize sets, a necessary prerequisite to memorizing the math facts, especially the multiplication tables. If you aren't sure what subitizing sets means, go back and read my blog posting entitled Can't Memorize Those Dreaded Math Facts. In the meantime, enjoy a new way to enjoy dinner because it is pretty dicey!

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$3.35

You might like a math game that uses dice. It is called Bug Ya and can be purchased at my TPT store. Three games are included in the four page math resource packet. One is for addition and subtraction; the second is for multiplication, and the third game involves the use of money. The second and third games may involve subtraction with renaming and addition with regrouping based on the numbers that are used. All the games have been developed to extend the recall of facts through playful and intelligent practice. Be sure and download the preview.