Geometry and Friday Fun

I had a great Friday.  The only thing that would have made it better was if  my student teacher would have been with me.  :(  She had to go to class at college today.  We finished up our Topic on three-digit addition and subtraction earlier this week.  We started leaning about plane and solid figures.  My student teacher is teaching math now.  (It is very hard for me to give over control to her.  I have major issues and obviously  my meds aren't strong enough.)  Since she was gone today I decided not to teach the next lesson.  I love teaching about shapes, so I let the kids make plane figures.  We then turned our plane figures into solid figures by adding height to them.  I saw lots of light bulbs going off above their heads.  When I asked them to make a cube, most of them said they already had and held up their square.  We talked about how plane figures only have length and width and solid figures have length, width, and height.  Here are a few pictures.

We also played this fun game.  I love our Envision math series.  Each topic has a game for the kids to play at school or home.  We played at school today.  The kids loved it!!!

I saw this idea on someone's blog.  I can't remember where.  If you saw it too, please let me know so I can give them credit.  Take a green, yellow, and red cup and stack them together.  Each group starts on green.  If they need a warning, move the green cup to the bottom.  If they need a consequence, move the yellow cup to the bottom.  My class knows that if they get to the red cup before lunch, their group will have silent lunch.  If they get to the red cup after lunch, their group will sit out for half of recess.  So far, no one has gotten to the red cup.  This is working extremely well.  I just walk over and change the cups without saying a word and their group's volume automatically drops.  This will be great for my student teacher while she is being observed by her university supervisor.  She is only supposed to use positive discipline.  This way she can warn them without saying anything negative out loud.  I have also been giving the groups that stay on green a piece of candy fruit.

After lunch we had Fun Friday.  We played Monopoly, iPad, iPods, Candyland, Let's Go Fishin', puzzles,computers, and with pattern blocks.

I can't wait to see what next week will bring.  Also, notice the poster in the picture above.  I have been doing this in small group with my kids this week and it really seemed to help some of them on their reading test today.  I am hoping to do a blog post on it next week.  Have a great weekend!!!

Reading Street Review for Unit 2 Test and a freebie

Sorry I abandoned my blog for a while.  My kids have been keeping me very busy.  My 7th grader is in the high school band and we have a had a band contest every weekend for the last month.  Yesterday was the state championship.  Our band is the State Champions for the 4th year in a row.  WOOHOO!!!!
Today I am letting my tired band student sleep in while I get some school work completed.  We just completed Unit 2 in our reading series.  It was a hard unit for my kids to understand.  They had a really hard time with nouns, especially possessive nouns.  They will have an even harder time next week when I give them the Unit 2 test and the questions are in a strange format.  So I created 5 different reviews to use to get them ready for the Unit test.  I plan on giving three of them for homework so they can get some one-on-one practice with their parents and using the other 2 as morning work this week.  Click on the picture to purchase the review in my TPT store.

 

I also completed my behavior calendar set for the rest of the year.  You can grab it for free in my TPT store by clicking the picture below.

 

I hope someone can use these.  We have been having lots of fun learning about bats and getting ready for Halloween.  We are also learning to regroup with two-digit addition.  I hope to come with some extra practice for this skill soon.

 





October Behavior Calendar

Well my son did not win his election. He wasn't upset at all and was glad he ran. 

I decided to go ahead and make my October behavior calendar before someone had to remind me.

Click on the picture above to grab a copy for free.

 

 

We just completed Unit 1 of our Reading Series.  I finally feel like I have figured out what I am doing with this new series.  I hope to create some new things to teach the skills instead of using the boring workbook pages.  I feel like I can start the Daily 5 correctly now that I have a feel for the basal. 

 

Words Their Way is going great.  I love it!  I have 4 groups.  They come in on Monday morning and cut out their sorts before the bell rings.  They spend about 10 minutes a day sorting.  On Monday they do a sort and read their words to a neighbor, Tuesday they do a sort and write their words in their spelling notebook, Wednesday they do a sort and a word hunt, Thursday they do a blind sort with a partner, and on Friday morning they glue their words in their notebook.  I give one test at a time.  I would like to start making some games for them to play but I think I will tackle that in about 6 more weeks.

 

I am going out of town this weekend and I didn't bring a single school thing home to take with me to work on.  I plan on reading a book that Flo let me borrow several weeks ago.  What books are you reading????

 

I also hope to find some of these out of town since we no longer have them here.  If I find some I am going to stock up on them.  These things make everything better. 

 

 

 



Rockin Behavior Take Home Calendar - August

Do you use this clip chart behavior from The Inspired Apple?

I am using it this year.  I have been trying to figure out a way to send home the child's report to parents.  After seeing this  blog post on Teaching with Love and Laughter, I came up with a calendar to send home.  The kids will color in the chart on the right at the beginning of the month.  Each day they will draw a star with a crayon to show where their clip was for that day.  Parents will sign inside the calendar box each day.

You can get it here in my TPT store.  I will be adding other months as I make them so follow my blog and TPT store to get the coming months.  Enjoy!