Pushing Towards Success

Well given all the craziness over here, I figured it was about time I give a little peek into our room as we keep engaged and pushing towards 3rd grade.

 

My kiddos love Life in Fifth Grade's differentiated reading bookmarks. They pick the level they feel comfortable with, and answer the questions to demonstrate their understanding. These work great with evidence based scales!

 

 

 

 

We have been finishing up our last unit of the year, Fractions! I love teaching primary fractions.

 

We used task cards in a different way last week. We had the cards at desks, and moved around the room to answer them. While the awesome Disney music was playing, children worked on solving the problem in front of them... once the music stopped, they had to quickly move to the next card before the music began again. They loved it!

 

The kids of course did tons of sorts and group activities to help them understand how to partition shapes to show fractions, and that in order for it to be a fraction it must show EQUAL parts. They rocked this for sure!

 

Last week we also disucssed adverbs. After a few days of practice, we had to demonstrate our understanding. The kids completed a Kagan Jot Thought. For those of you who don't know what that is, you place a large piece of paper or stack or smaller papers in the middle of the table. In a pre-determined amount of time (usually just 1-3 minutes) the students list off as many examples of a topic they can think of. In this case, they listed off examples of adverbs. It was the first time this new group has done this activtity and they did great!

 

After that, the students worked in small groups to create anchor charts to explain adverbs to 1st graders. HOW STINKING CUTE!!!

#4thQuarterStruggles

Monday marked a very sad end to spring break. My alarm went off way too early and I drug myself back to school happily returned to my smiling 1st grade friends! As we all know, after spring break there are only a few short months left before the end of the school year. This means lots of things... #somuchtoteach #notenoughtimetodoitall #crazychildren #toomuchenergy #4thquarterstruggles

So how exactly do I plan to fight these feelings of exhaustion and keep my wonderful children focused and engaged throughout the last 9 weeks?

Hands down this is my addiction! Living in Florida, it's way too hot for coffee most of the year. So when I found this secret menu refresher recipe last spring I had to try it and I WAS HOOKED! I have tried starting my morning without it, and it never fails... each day without this delicious beverage is horrid! 

Every year so far I have implemented countdowns and rewards to encourage good behavior. I have used both balloons like in the Pinterest pic above and envelopes. I will definitely do this again this year! 

Routines and structure for as long as possible! Things like our amazing literacy block everyday will not change. Thanks to Deanna and DeeDee my kids will be rocking it out for a little while longer! 

Silly time and lots of brain breaks! GoNoodle will be on point the next 43 days as we will need it so we don't lose our sanity! 

How do you survive the last quarter? 

Five for Friday: Life with us lately!

Link Up

Last week Thursday we happily ran from the building for spring break! We had big plans and a huge week ahead of us. Why you ask? Because we were once moving to Florida! It's been a very difficult few years for us trying to decide where our happily ever after would be. Are we crazy? Honestly... Absolutely insane. But I wouldn't have it any other way! 

We drove down to Florida on Sunday and spent the week running errands and getting our new place ready for us. 

I am beyond in love with our new home and can't wait for the school year to end so we can live here! 

While in Florida we had lots of fun of course! We spent time with Ryan's family, we painted, lots of walk and pool time, and attempted a beach adventure with the boys! 

Sadly our beach adventure failed! We drove there only to find jellyfish all over the shore. No thank you! 

Our crazy spring break is almost over so at this moment we are back in the car making the 1,100 mile journey back to reality. 

That's all the big things this week! Lots of masters work and planning waiting at home for me. Excited to get back in the classroom Monday and get busy! 

Six for Saturday?

It has been an awesome week in our classroom! Many amazing learning experiences and tons of fun! I'm linking up .....

but I'm a day late....so does that mean I can do six for Saturday? 

I got my hair done on Saturday, and I LOVE it!!!! Just a gloss treatment to add some shine and a nice cut but getting my hair done always gives me a huge ego nice temporary boost of confidence!

To continue with our Reading Month fun.... the Book Mobile came to our school on Tuesday. My babies BEYOND loved getting to sit in this cool library bus and read. They had a story read to them by one of the librarians and then got to find their own books and get cozy to read for a little while. 

Thanks to a Sid the Science Kid episode during Science, my friends are worm and dirt obsessed! We went outside on Thursday to investigate and observe and boy oh boy did they eat it up! And then literally on Friday, when we had dirt cups for a surprise treat!  

 

We have also mastered our way through our numbers to 40 unit! We know how to add and subtract large numbers, compare and order numbers, count and write in different ways, break apart numbers, and now add multiple numbers together! I absolutely love the virtual manipulatives site I stumbled across a few weeks ago. They are a life saver! Check them out!

On top of everything else they have been doing this week, I had to share these two pictures! Interactive anchor charts are a huge hit in my room. I love teacher created anchor charts, they are super cute.... but I also think interactive anchor charts give the students some ownership of their learning and they love getting to add to them and then see their additions hang on the walls. Here is one we did this week and another favorite I have shared before. 

 

And then because I said six for Saturday (and because I know your sad I haven't added a single puppy picture yet) here are some cute shots of my babies from this week! Seriously look at that snuggle action.... it's too cute for words! 

Literacy Activities for Easter Time Fun!

I know you all have seen all the adorable activities on pinterest that teachers created to use those bright colorful plastic eggs this time of year! 
Like this one....

or this one?

We are teaching blends for the next few weeks and I figured how PERFECT! So I went out to the dollar store and picked up a few packs of eggs and some cute buckets to put them in and got started creating! 

              

 * see the puppy in the picture- he was pretty excited to find out what was in the eggs :) 

The kids loved it and were more than happy to dive into their word work station today. Here are pictures of two of the activities in the pack....

Word Hunt requires the students to find two parts of the egg that go together to make a word. I made a couple different sets of eggs for my different leveled groups. My higher students had beginning and ending blends and digraphs added in their bucket. While my lower group were practicing just a few digraphs and cvc words in their bucket.

My firsties absolutely love real vs. nonsense sorts, so I just knew I had to add one in the pack. Here the students make a word and decide if it is a real word or if it doesn't make any sense. His word "lanch" is going into the nonsense column because it isn't a real word. 

If you're interested in checking out the easter time literacy centers click here. 

Hope you enjoy! And have an "Egg"cellent Tuesday! :)