Organization. Yes, we are back! Back in school... we started on Thursday, for a half day- then had Friday off. So, tomorrow will be my first full day with my kiddos... I am expecting severe exhaustion! Of course, I am really excited though! I have moved up to 2nd grade and I have a few of my kids from last year. I am trying out some newer strategies in my math block this year and I am very excited about it! I borrowed a good friend's book this summer, Guided Math by Laney Sammons and started researching all over the Internet the best way to teach math. My first step has been changing my math block from 60 to 90 minutes! So, after reading and researching I have landed on one schedule that seems like it will really work for me. So, here is an overview: 4 groups 4 rotations (Math Facts, At your seat, Teacher's Choice, Hands On) M.A.T.H.
Time: 5-10 minutes- Problem of Day or Review of what we are learning 15-20 minutes rotations Math Facts: Play math fact games 15 minutes: Closure. What are math talks? Math Journal Sundays. With Easter last weekend, I didn't get around to posting our math journal from last week. So, I have two entries to share with you today from our Interactive Math Journals. We're just finishing up our 2D Geometry unit. This journal entries for polygons was near the beginning of the unit. I gave each student an envelope and some coloured paper, and had them work in pairs to construct as many polygons as they could think of.
They were to write the name of the polygon on the front, and on the back they were to write some of the attributes of the polygon. (We used the shapes they created for some of our lessons following that - they used them for sorting polygons in Venn Diagrams, and measuring angles). For the proof of learning, I asked students to show the difference between a polygon and nonpolygon. The next entry I wanted to share with you is on division. We made a simple flap interactive tool for this one. That's about it for today. How to Make Borax Crystals | Tween Crafts - Connecting Mom and Daughter through crafting. If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to our mailing list. Thanks for visiting! I love crafty experiments! And when I saw this cool crafty experiment of making borax crystal snowflakes from Delia Creates, I knew I had to put a sweet spin on it for Valentines Day.
With just a few simple ingredients, it is actually quite easy and satisfying to make lovely crystal ornaments. The first ingredient you will need is something called borax. But what is Borax? Borax is a common household chemical or substance. What happens when you combine boiling water and Borax? When mixed together and left overnight, or for a number of hours as the water cools, it creates crystals. But how does Borax and water create crystals? Borax is actually naturally in crystal form, and dissolves in boiling water. All you need to make your own crystals are borax, empty mason or recycled jars, boiling water, pipe cleaners, popsicle sticks, yarn, and food coloring (optional). First create shapes with pipe cleaners. Poetry Journals and Writer's Workshop Notebooks! Okay...enough jibber-jabber...Here's our two newest and greatest ideas for next year!
(I'm sooo excited about this!!!!) Poetry Journals! I'm in Texas, and the new STAAR test is ALLLLLL about poetry. So, after much research and digging for ideas, we've finally came up with an age appropriate poetry journal for our kiddos. First, we started with a typical com position notebook. After that, we worked toward figuring out what we wanted the kiddos to know in their "Poet's Toolbox" (what all good poet's use to write great poems). We then discussed which types of poetry we definitely wanted our students to learn and came up with an informative sheet to glue into the back part of the journal: This past year, and years before, we have only had to focus on personal narrative writing in 4th grade, so a folder has done the trick as far as keeping things organized.
A Pinterest Valentine's Day. I have been thinking about what to do with my friends this Valentine's Day. For the past ten years or so Valentine's Day celebrations have essentially been banned in my school. The ban went into effect when one year there was a ton of "He/She likes me, doesn't like me! " high drama. This year we have a new principal who is happy to let us celebrate Valentine's Day with our friends. I'm delighted!!! So, what to do? What to do? Well, being home sick has given me plenty of time to play around on Pinterest. To Give My Friends My friends always need bookmarks, and these are super cute. If I knew where to get a bunch of bouncy balls, I might do this one. A Craft To Do This one is from the blog A Day in My Life. The hearts below are from The Peanut Paintshop.
Treats If we are keeping things healthy, this is a great idea. Since Valentine's Day is around the corner, it's a little late to order them for this year. You are the APPLE of my eye! I'm BANANAS over you! ORANGE you so sweet! I know!!!! I Do, We Do, You Do. Reading Management Binder. You will find our new, updated binder with editable files here: Reading Management Binder Be completely prepared as you head to your PLC meeting to discuss strategies and interventions for your struggling readers.
This Reading Management Binder will provide you with an organized way to keep track of all of your reading materials – plans, conference notes, progress monitoring and data – so that you’re ready for these important discussions about your students’ reading growth. Also, pull out this binder at conference time to make sure you’re prepared for parents’ questions about their student’s growth! **For ease in finding your resources we have divided this post into categories we feel are important for planning and showing student growth. However, we recommend that your reading management binder contain a planning section, a tab for each student in your class, and then a section to place all of your whole class reports and documents.
Conference Notes Progress Monitoring Student Data. My shelf runneth over. Here is the question of the day...If a person knows they may very well need an intervention, then do they really need an intervention? Probably, but I'll just keep closing my eyes and pretending I am perfectly normal. Everyone thinks exactly like me, and everyone thinks this is heaven right here! I had lunch with my wonderful hubby yesterday. When I headed out to stop back by the school to finish up planning for the week, it seemed like a complete sin not to stop by one of my favorite places in the world, Books-A-Million. You know - just for a moment, just to look around, I will be in and out in a flash! Well, a minute turned into an hour. I mean - just look at all those sales tags! This is why I do what I do when it comes to buying new book selections for my class each year and then making such a fuss when the box comes in, genuinely showing them how excited I am to put my hands on the new books and share them.
What a shining example of why writers write! So not only did Ms. Teacher Tips on a Snow Day. Confessions of a Nerdy Teacher - Organization. A few months ago when I decided that I wanted to organize and catelog my classroom library I decided I was going to need a little help. I imagined the 1000+ books that were stored in my garage and mentally calculated how long it would take me to type them all into Excel. And of course I would want to include the AR Level and Points, and while I was at it I wanted to label all the books into categories…I would probably be done by 2020, if I was lucky. So I did a little Googling and THAT is how I discovered the Intelliscanner, dun-dun, dun. Confession: One of my secret desires has always been to be a librarian. All my childhood books have numbers written in the covers, and my sister was forced to play library on more than one occasion. The Intelliscanner is basically a library scanner for the common man teacher.
This handy little scanner connects to your computer, scans the barcode on your books, and puts them into a fantastic software that looks a lot like iTunes. Gotta love a prefix and suffix!! I've been completely enjoying my time in 3rd grade. The kids are a scream! I've been making anchor charts for them because I'm a visual learner. I like to see in print what I am learning. So, I just assume these kids can also benefit - hence the love of anchor charts. As you can see, I sorta ran out of room with all those suffixes, but it's better in person. My Anchor Charts! I thought I would create a page and just post the anchor charts I have used! I will add new ones as I use them. I will probably change them out at the beginning of every school year to try to keep things current.
Main idea/Details: Poetry: STAAR incentives: Nouns: Character Traits (FAST...feelings, actions, sayings, thoughts): Story plot and summarizing: Writing "Characters": Drama Text Features: "The Writing Games" Revising and editing: Adjectives: Non-fiction text features: Research Flipbooks: Persuasive texts: Comma in a series, nouns, detail anchor charts. This is a matrix I made to compare Family Farm and Meet Rosina, I also did one for the realistic fiction books, Mr. Putter and Tabby, David's New Friends, and the other fiction book for Unit 1. Storage Solutions from Baby Wipe Containers | The New Home Ec. By Just Heather | I still have baby wipe containers all over the house, even though we haven’t had a baby in diapers for more than 3 years. They make such great storage containers — the toy room has stacks of containers filled with cars, puzzles, and more tiny toys than I can count.
We have wipes containers in the office, the garage, the kitchen, and bathrooms. They’re filled with items we use everyday, things we need to tuck away, and stuff I’d never find again if it weren’t neatly stacked and labeled in the perfect container. I’ve put together a list of my favorite uses — and some new ones that make me wish we were still buying wipes! Check out these ideas for repurposing baby wipe containers:nggallery id=’126255′ Battery Storage We store our batteries in a wipes container — it's easily carted from room to room when we need it. Toy Storage Playhouse Door This is such a fun idea for creating a door on a cardboard gingerbread house. Follow Heather on Twitter, Pinterest, and her blogs. Entering into the world of blogging. One Extra Degree. Salute to Social Skills! So, the Stop and Think area of the classroom has been helpful...it's not a perfect routine yet, but the class has doubled in size since we started. That's right...DOUBLED in size.
Sounds like an insane number until you remember that I only had 3 before....then you remember that they are Emotionally Disabled, and DOUBLED sounds daunting again. Anyway, we've made some additions to the Stop and Think area, and here they are! First....let's revisit a poster that has been in the area....You'll notice the addition of zebra duct tape at the top and bottom...That would be because Thing 1 had a tantrum a week ago and kicked the wall. Repeatedly. Eventually, she kicked her way up to the poster, and RRRRRiiiiiipp! Sigh. Our new "Get Your Angries Out" poster from PeaceKids.net. I'm loving this acrostic for the word THINK. And if you want this Stop and Think printable, get it HERE! We've also added an Anger Management Toolbox to the area. So, there it is! Blogging, Teaching and Second Grade... Oh My! Branson Reader's Workshop / Anchor Charts Photos. Day In the Classroom - Foldables and Anchor Charts for Geometry.
We used Cheez-Its to explore area and perimeter. Any square cracker would work. Afterwards we ate our math. I haven’t been doing very well with my blogging this year. In fact my last published post was in January, and I started this one in January as well. I’ve been trying lots of new things this year, but instead of them all being tech based, lots of them involve hands on pencil and paper used in a more creative way or edible manipulatives like the Cheez-its we used to learn about area and perimeter. I like the foldables because they serve as a good organizational chart, but they are engaging to make. Anchor Charts. Multiple Meaning Words. Multiple Meanings just seem to be made for M&M's! This is just a fun and memorable way to reinforce multiple meaning words. Students will choose a word that has at least two different meanings, like "bat.
" Next, they will write a sentence that shows one of the two meanings on one of the two M&M figures. They will write a sentence that shows the other meaning of the word on the other M&M figure. Put a colored circle behind the M's on the title of your bulletin board display to make them look like M&M's candies. Don't forget to pass out some M&M's as a treat for a job well done! Laser Fingers.