Monday Made It: September

I'm linking up with Tara again for another fabulous MONDAY!  :)

I can't believe it took me so long to figure out how to use this particular resource that I'll be writing about today, but it would have really been good to know last year (as are all great finds I guess). So I created my very own set of task cards to help me teach the identification of common science tools and their use. I also gather the "real tools" so that the kids can also touch the tools themselves. I commonly use the "real tools" for a quick class review (I hold up the tool and the class has to tell me what it is and what it's used for). 

Here are the task cards that I created. Click on the images for more details and to view these items at my store.

Mary from "Teaching with a Mountain View" is one of the biggest task card experts that I have recently run into and I really LOVE all of her ideas. She has even dedicated an entire BLOG and WEBSITE just to task cards. Anything that you could possibly ever want to know about task cards is on her site. 

I would also like to highlight some of her ideas here, but I would definitely check out her blogs for more information and task card details. Task cards can be used for students who finish early, be sorted by level to help with differentiated instruction, used with simple board games (chutes and ladders, checkers, tic-tac-toe, connect four, etc.), test prep, sub plans, the game SCOOT, used in cooperative groups & interactive notebooks. 

This whole idea of task cards to me is way better and more engaging than giving a kid a worksheet and saying, "Do these problems." I know my students would never respond back with,"Oh, thank you Mrs. Valera. I can't wait to start this worksheet, it looks so exciting!" 

Have a great rest of your week!