October 4, 2016 "Fortune Tellers and Cootie Catchers"
The first quarter has come to an end for Track 4.  We are on a year round schedule and right now I am loving being off work for almost 3 weeks in October.  Our last math unit before track-out was geometry.  In third grade, much of geometry is learning vocabulary.  I first introduced a TIP chart which would serve as an anchor chart.  TIP stands for Term, Information, Picture.  After a whole group session, students began working on vocabulary pages for their math interactive notebooks.  It wasn't the best design, so I will be working on that later this week.

Rather than handing out worksheet after worksheet for vocabulary practice, I thought about making fortune tellers.  The kids love them and are always making them on their own for things such as predicting who Janie will marry or how many children Rhea will have.  I searched online for a template as it had been about forty years since I had made one of these things and luckily found Lou's designs here "Cootie Catchers" templates.  Her editable template was easy to customize for my geometry vocabulary activity.  I must say it was a hit with the kids.  I have never seen kids "study" so much.  They would get their fortune tellers out for morning work, after finishing classwork, even instead of doing Daily 5 (oops, I had to stop that,).  I even "caught" some of them sneaking a peek inside their desks when they should have been working on something else or reading to self.  WOW!  I've never seen such engagement!

Click the activity's cover page below to get your FREE "Geometry Terms Fortune Tellers" activity.

I'd love to hear how the fortune teller activities worked out with your students.  If you love them, then check out  my TPT store for multiplication facts fortune tellers called "Multiply Your Fortune!"

Until next time,

Happy Teaching!

~Gwen