Five for Friday... on Sunday ;) 9.25.16

Happy Weekend!

Happy Fall!

I am so excited to be back in action, and I'm hoping that this will be a more regular thing for me. A personal goal that I had this school year was to blog more. I'm really wanting to get connected again. So I'm starting out with an old favorite of mine: Five for Friday with Doodle Bugs Teaching!

It was a slow process, but this week we managed to rewrite, label and discuss our first mentor sentence. We didn't do much more than that, but it was a harder book to start with! I used this book to talk about September 11th, and since we had it already read we stuck with it!  

Really working on growth mindset for a school wide initiative. We took some time this week to discuss some of these quotes and how we can use them in our everyday 

It always amazing me each year how quickly our math picks up at the beginning of the school year for our third graders.  We are already working on 2s, 5s, and 10s for count-bys, and discussion things like commutative property!  These guys are rocking it, but it's been up-hill most days! 

Speaking of an up-hill battle some days, I've really gotten creative to get us up and moving in the morning!  We are loving these math centers from Ideas by Jivey! Check them out!

I've been working really hard on a classroom redesign. It's been a slow process, however I've started to put some things together and some furniture is slowly being delivered. I've done a lot of clearance shopping this past couple weeks after the back to college items have been discounted! I'm also lucky to have had some great support through our schools PTO!

Here's a sneak---

I'm Still Here! Five For Friday {4.24.15}

Happy Friday Friends!!!  I know that I have been absent for a really long time.... I do apologize for that. I am thankful for the connections I have still been able to keep through twitter and instagram though!  I needed to take some time to focus on life and school. It sure has been a very hectic year with getting back to work after having a baby (who is one now!!!yikes!!) and selling our house.... moving in with my parents and have had almost everything go wrong in the last 5 months to move on to a new adventure.  I'm happy to say that school in winding down, after a fabulous year and a wonderful group of students. I have a lot to share from what we did and I have a lot of great news in terms of our future--- we're building a house! I'm linking up for one of my favorite linkys today.... Five for Friday with Doodle Bugs teaching to give you a little look into what I've been doing this week, and maybe a little from last week.... it's been so long since I've blogged I have so much I want to share!! Enjoy!

I've been plugging away on fractions with my kiddos. We're using math expressions, anyone else?  I missed this part of the year last year b/c of being on maternity leave so it's been a little scary for me!  However, I have to say that it's been going very well.  My team is amazing and I've also teamed up with our ESL teacher, math interventionist and another teammate to do some team teaching and small group work with fractions.  My kids are doing well, but let me tell you, it's hard!  I'd love to know some of your suggestions for resources for fractions. We've been doing a lot of hands on activities. I've found that to be best, but I'm always on the lookout for more!

We end the school year with a great project in 3rd grade. I talked about it last year here.  We do a pioneer simulation where students are assigned to an identity and a group and they 'travel the trail' west.  We have a heavy emphasis on non-fiction reading and learning for 4th quarter and this fits perfectly with it.  One of my favorite activities is this interactive word wall.  We've done a lot with words and parts of speech this year, so it was a great activity to familiarize students with some of the pioneer vocabulary.  I love using vocabulary boxes with them as well.  It really helps them understand the words.  

Speaking of pioneers, we have changed up our teaching of it this year and have added some STEM activities to go along with our learning. It's been wonderful.  I will do a longer post when I have time, but here is a look at what we had to do this last week. Students had a limited amount of time and resources to create a shelter for their pioneers to protect them from a coming storm. I was very impressed with their creativity and teamwork. 

We're doing a school wide writing project this year at school. It's been going amazing and also everything can't get enough of it. We're all making cardboard books or cartoneras and publishing them for a celebration at the end of the year.  The process has been amazing. I'll share more at a later post, but wanted to let you know in case you wanted to get involved. You can check out more from my co-worker's blog Books Del Sur here!

We did a twitter challenge at school this week. It was amazing. I got to step outside of my box and do some things like a twitter chat, selfie with my co-workers and share ideas to those that I don't know.  It got people on twitter that didn't know much about it and it also got us collaborating from across the halls.  We always do a great job with collaboration but this was a different way! It was so fun.  If you want to know more let me know.  My coworker Jennifer set it up for us! She blogs at Mrs. Laffin's Laughings and also be sure to follow her link to her writing blog! Are you on twitter? I'd love to connect with you. I can be found @MrsBentin3

Happy Friday!

Have a great weekend! :)

A lot of Friday Randomness! Five for Friday 10-10-14

Is it Friday already??? 

 I don't know about you but these weeks are flying by

 and that makes me slightly nervous. 

 I can't even remember what I did yesterday! YIKES!  

The good news?? 

My third graders are finally starting to be third graders.

The key word there is starting.... I know it's a process,

but we're getting there!

You know the drill...It's Friday, 

so I'm linking up with Doodle Bugs Teaching 

for Five For Friday!

Here's what we were up to this week!

Well, as I stated in a post not to long ago,

I have decided to do my math time differently.

It's going fantastic. Seriously Fantastic!!!!

I will write more about it tomorrow, 

but just know that I am beaming with JOY!!!!!

This week I started using interactive notebooks. 

I am loving them, and so are my kids! I'm using a combo of two great ones that I've gotten.

I'm using this along with Jivey's Mentor Sentence pack and the kids are doing awesome with it!!!

I'm loving the technology component that Erin uses in this product!!!

The kids are loving the technology component from Erin's product, too!

We just went 1:1 with chrome books and I'm trying to use them 

as much as I possibly can.  It's been hard but we have found so many 

great ways to incorporate them into our daily routine!!!

We watched a short video from Frozen and then did 

a great inferences activity!  It was a hit with my kids!

After we watched the video, we started by making a list of things we know about summer.

Then we make a list of things that poor Olaf didn't know about summer. 

From our information we were able to conclude that Kristoff 

wanted to tell Olaf about summer but Anna warned him not to. 

It was so awesome, that I had to share two.....

Some of my kiddos got done with their activities for the week early,

so we also had time to do an Angry Birds video.

This one was a challenge activity,

where students had to interpret many characters at once.....

and make inferences about what they were doing. 

I have to say they were pros by the end of the week!

Writing Word Splash!

We're well on our way to finishing up our first stage of writer's workshop. 

This week we talked a lot about using different nouns, verbs and adjectives in our work.

One way we did that was to do a word splash.  It's so fun!!!

This was part of our new writing resource that you can find here. 

Thanks to Mrs. Laffin for the great sheet to record our splash on!

1. Set a timer for a particular amount of time (I did 2 minutes to start)

2. Give a topic or say 'anything splash' to put in the middle of the splash. 

3. Write the WHOLE time, even if it's not about your topic!

The whole purpose is to gather ideas.

We then took all of the ideas and made a list of nouns, verbs and adjectives from it. 

I'm starting to collect things again.....

I don't know how it happens, but I literally have 

what feels like 500 book shelves in my room.

This week I added another by my guided reading table.

So now that makes two full ones of 'stuff.'!!!!!

Funny how I feel like I still don't have enough room! 

Anyone else do this????

Happy Friday! Have a great weekend!

News from New York!!! Five for Friday! 9*25*14

Happy Friday!

I must confess... this week is going to be 2.5 for Friday x two.

I had a post almost ready for last week and never posted.

So I'm doing some from last week and some from this week!

Totally in the rules, right?? 

The first is from last week. 

It was a major #fail. 

Seriously!

I tried to do something hands on in math

with my kiddos. 

The goal was for my students to try to see patterns of the different count bys.

I used hundreds charts and watercolors.  I've done this in the past,

but never have I had to have so many students redo because of not following directions. 

I'm happy to say that they are all done after several attempts.

The plan is to compare the different charts to talk about multiples of numbers

and also discuss patterns in the skip counting. 

It only took me a month (well not quite, but it's close) 

and I finally got some things organized in my room.

Here are two different things that are finally D.O.N.E.

Source
Thanks to 4th Grade Frolics for these FREE log-in loops for my kids!
I've finally put them all together and they are being used to store all of their
usernames and passwords!

I'm just loving my dots for the guided reading table.
 

We are using Jivey's Mentor Sentences for the beginning 

of our writing block warm-up. 

I am thrilled with how it's looking after just 3 weeks. 

The kids love it, and their favorite part is finding different parts of speech. 

Who knew??? 

Here is our 'notice it' and 'label it' section for this week.
I keep it on the back whiteboard all week, and when
we can get a few minutes we are always working with it!

Here are some student imitation sentences based off of
the book 'Enemy Pie' from last week. 

Daily 5 is in full swing. 

My kids are doing great with practicing right now,

so great that we can officially start rotations 

and guided groups next week. Cross your fingers!

Here are some of our stations!

Here we are doing some partner reading!
They are rocking at it!
I must say, they are one of the chattiest groups I've had....
but partner reading is going the best it's ever gone!

Practicing using our chromebooks to listen to stories online.

Here is a word work practice station.  She is writing with sharpies
on pieces of lamination that is left over from the machine at school.
We call it 'stained glass.'

Here is my writing prompt book being used in the work on writing center.


You can find check it out here at my TpT store!  My kids are loving the
different prompts, and not once have I heard 'I don't know what to write about!!!"
You can do a new one everyday. It comes with 180 various prompts!

We officially got our first postcard this week

from the postcard exchange I signed up for. 

I'm so excited for the journey this is going to take

us on as a class! 

I've linked up with Doodle Bugs Teaching today for Five for Friday! 

It's a great linky to share things that are going on during the week 

and to steal gather some awesome ideas! Be sure to stop by!