The first days of school are great for getting first impressions of your new students. Collecting information from students is interesting and fun when they are given open ended sentences to complete. You can gain insight on their personality (i.e. are they extroverts or introverts), learn about their interests (for differentiation), and fun facts about them personally.

Some of my favorite open ended sentences to use for my beginning of the year questionnaire are: 1) I learn from teachers best when… 2) I don’t learn from teachers that… 3) In math, I struggle with… 4) Last year in math my grades were… 5) Three things you should know about me are…

Creating a back to school questionnaire for your students should match your personality as a teacher and should be fun for students to complete. Students love to open up about themselves, especially when they don’t have to share in front of their classmates. It’s also fun to read student responses back to them at the end of the school year so they can hear how they have changed!

This video shows how Triangle Fact cards can be used to build quick recall with addition and related subtraction facts. These cards take the place of traditional flash cards, and help students see fact families and related facts which traditional flash cards cannot. These cards should not be used until after students have had time to explore and understand the operations and develop accurate and reliable methods for determining sums and differences.

Rekenreks are a manipulative often used in primary grades. You will see that STEMscopes references them in many lessons. For many of us, this is a new tool. Check out this short video to learn a little about why the Rekenrek is such a valuable tool and how to use it.

This video shows how Triangle Fact cards can be used to build quick recall with multiplication and related division facts. These cards take the place of traditional flash cards, and help students see fact families and related facts which traditional flash cards cannot. These cards should not be used until after students have had time to explore and understand the operations and develop accurate and reliable methods for determining products and quotients.

Multiplication and Division Triangular Flash Cards>>