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!

#MyMathJourney

Oh Sunday....

How I both love and hate you.

I don't know about you

but lately I feel like my weekends

are so packed, that Sunday becomes

a mad dash to get everything done that needs to get done. 

I'm linking up with Jennifer from Mrs. Laffin's Laughings

for A Peek at my Week! :)

I'm trying to stay on top of things for this next week----

and that starts with #MyMathJourney

Recently my district has adopted Math Expressions. 

I'm in year 2 right now. 

The process for me is slow. 

It has taken some time for me to get used to teaching differently---

but I've seen great progress with kids so I'm excited!

There's so much to get in and teach

 that the majority of my math block has been whole group instruction. (ICK)

This year I have a very large divide in math skills

that my students possess

 as we start learning the concept of multiplication, 

and whole group all of the time....

well....

it just isn't working. 

So after so much blog stalking....

(here are two that I keep going back to for help)

and TpT purchases....

I'm gong to try to run things just a bit different this next week. 

Math Plans-  I plan to run both whole group and small group instruction this next week in math. I will utilize our math intervention time to work with small groups of students that needs some extra help. While I do that I also have on-level and enrichment activities to both practice the current skill that we're learning in class and also topics that we've already done to spiral them back.  It's a very large work in progress but here's a small overview and what I hope will happen.  

Mini-Lesson: We will discuss the topic of the day for each day at the beginning of the math block. After that, I will send my higher level students off to do some independent work on the topic just taught, and I will then work with small groups of students who will need more instruction.  When its time to rotate I will send my small group to do some independent work and continue.  Students who aren't working with me will work on the following: 

1. Independent Work (work that covers our topic being taught right now)

2. Fact Practice- This will consist of a computer website this week, but will change as the weeks go on to practice facts in different ways.  This week we will do digit whiz. If you haven't used it yet, I recommend that you check it out. Kids LOVE it! And, it's free, so what could be better?

3. Centers- This is an activity that students will work on if they finish up their independent work early. They will be different each day. Some days will be extra work on our current skill, other days it may be a math journal or a skill that we are spiraling.  Activities include partner work, games, or writing. 

4. Small Group- This will be with me for additional teaching and practice. I will also then cycle around the room as students work on independent work to check in. 

The end of the math block will end with a closing/ mini-lesson as well so we can do a small formative assessment. This way I can see where we are from today and decide what we will move forward with as the next day approaches. 

Due to the length of this post already, I'm just going to leave math at that. Next week I'll share more in-depth on how it will look as I have a week under my belt and can talk more about the actual teaching going on and the concepts being taught!  

Reading- Small groups are starting this week as my students are all trained in Daily 5 and area ready to go. I'll be working with small groups on story elements (a review) and comparing and contrasting. We will be using the story: The Three Little Pigs to help us do that. Based off of book levels, different groups will get different stories.  We will be making Venn-diagrams to compare stories as the week goes on and then sharing the different versions that we read with each other.  Some of the books that I will be using are: (click each picture to go to amazon)

I have more... much more.. but I'll stop there. This is getting long. If you stuck with me, thanks!!! Hope everyone has a great week!

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! 

A Peek at My Week {9*15*14}

Here we are,

Sunday again! 

Man, it sure comes fast!

I'm excited today to be linking up with Jennifer

from Mrs. Laffin's Laughings

for another edition of 

A Peek at My Week. 

Be sure to stop by and say hello to Jennifer, 

and link up or check out some great ideas 

that other bloggers are sharing from their 

week ahead!

Reading:  This week in reading, we're still using whole class read alouds to talk about story elements and summary. This is giving me the opportunity to finish up Daily 5 training and finish up assessments so I can hopefully start small groups next week.  Our book this week is Enemy Pie by Derek Munson.  

This is what Amazon has to say about the book, 

"It was the perfect summer. 

That is until Jeremy Ross moved into the house down the street

 and became neighborhood enemy number one.  

Luckily Dad had a surefire way to get rid of enemies: 

Enemy Pie! 

But part of the secret recipe

 is spending an entire day playing with the enemy. 

In this funny yet endearing story, 

one little boy learns an effective recipes

 for turning your best enemy into your best friend."  

Click for Amazon

I will also use this book for my mentor sentence of the week and focus on several writing elements that we will be doing in workshop, which I'll share later. 

Math: This week in math we will be starting our math journals to get used to doing them during our intervention time.  I will start with some easier prompts for students to copy and answer, and as the week goes on they will get more challenging. Our focus this week is on division strategies, and building fluency with 2's and 10's for multiplication. 

Writing- In launching our workshop this week the focus is on narrowing down a topic (small moments), gathering ideas (a review from last week) and building proper sentences.  We'll really use our mentor sentence this week to practice putting a subject and verb together to answer the who and what what in our sentences.  I also plan on using this freebie from Lovin' Lit to help out with our sentence writing. I think with all of our talk on sentence structure and learning the parts of the sentence that I can use this with my 3rd graders!

Source

Wordwork- I plan on introducing spelling contracts this week to students. This is a new thing for me, that I'm really excited to use. I purchased it this summer from Fourth and Ten.  Basically it is a month long assignment where students do different activities to practice their spelling words (instead of just spelling them to a parent aloud or writing them down over and over for practice).  I've been looking for something new and fun for awhile, and I'm hoping this is it. We use Sitton Spelling in our school so we don't necessarily have a new word list to send home each unit. It's a list of core words for the year that are introduced and a list that they come to the grade with that they should also know. So I've broken apart those lists to spiral the words through the year over the course of each month.  Their job is to complete several activities with their words for the month to practice. 

Source

I hope everyone has a great week!

First Full Week... I'm tired! Five for Friday {9-12-14}

T.G.I.F.! 

Welcome back to the blog for another edition of Five for Friday with Doodle Bugs Teaching. 

Here's what I've been up to this week! 

S.L.A.N.T

I got my slant box this week from my amazing slantbox partner, Jenna.
Her teaching blog is Passionate About Primary.

Check out her blog as she starts her first year in a 1/2 combo class. 

Jenna really took the time to get to know me over the month of August. 

I was very impressed with the things that she decided to send me

and the time that she took to make the box special. 

If you're interested in signing up check out Jameson's Blog

to her how to "Send Love Across the Nation to Teachers!"

MATH

Sometimes know as the other 4 letter word....

but not all of the time :)  (I kid, I kid....)

We've hit the ground running this week with math and so far so good.

We've started our multiplication concepts 

and have used a lot of different activities to help us along the way. 

Here are a few samples....

Book Themes:

Teaching themes of books to third graders is hard in my opinion. 

I have yet to find a great way to do it through the year. 

I've seen different things done in the past, and am finally trying something different. 

I've made a theme spot in  my room for all of our class read alouds. 

I'm hoping it helps us narrow down what theme or message we get from the books the we read.

A colleague of mine did this a year or two ago, so I can't take credit for the idea, 

but I'm thankful that I remembered what she did so I can try too!

Any other thoughts or ideas????

Writing

We started our writer's workshop this week and

I. AM. So. EXCITED!

We're doing something a bit different this year, 

so it's newer to me, but my whole hallways is a buzz over it. 

One lesson this week was idea hearts. We changed them into inspiration hearts thanks to an awesome teammate of mine! So after we read some stories and talked about how authors get ideas, they got to make their own idea hearts in their writing notebooks. 

Finally today, Friday, there was a little bit of time to write. 

I picked an idea from my inspiration heart and wrote as the kids wrote. 

It felt great. 

A couple things to note....

1. This was a quick draft/first write sketch for us

2. It was not prompted at all, but free choice

3. Kids had 15 minutes to write and couldn't stop until I told them to

4. Not ONE student complained and everyone wrote!!!!

Now, some stories were much more developed than others but this quick write will really give me some beginning ideas for working with students as we continue with our workshop!!! I'm so excited. 

Arm Candy

I ordered and received my Harry Potter bracelet from Kimberly aka the Trashy Crafter!!
SWOON!!!

I am so in love with this piece, that I've already gotten my eye on a necklace too. If you haven't checked out 

First of all she was so great to work with. Her product came super fast, and it was packaged using recycled paper as well. I just loved everything about it!

I decided on the Harry Potter bracelet but she has so many to choose from. It was hard to just pick one. :) 

Hope everyone had a great week. 

I am just glad that I survived my first 5 day week!

Happy Weekend!