2015- 2016

Each year I set out with great intentions to blog my school year and all of the awesome things sea re doing in the classroom.  Then I realize I have a million photos and haven't done a single corresponding post!

This year I am setting myself a goal of a post a week… How do you keep your goals and discipline?!  I would love some feedback on what keeps you on target with your goals.

Ih avea great class this year and I am looking forward to trying out some new things with them.

Quote accurately from a text when making inferences.

In our classroom we are spending time working on inferences.  The kids really are enjoying it.  We talk about using clues and our schema to make inferences.  

This year we are working with interactive notebooks, which the kids LOVE doing!  I love that they have a resource book to go back to when we are discussing something.  We are just starting with a reading interactive notebook.

Here are the first few pages I created.  If you want to download them for free click here. 

I am really looking for feedback on them.  I am working on a notebook for all of the reading standards and looking for ideas to keep with me as I complete it.  I will take one of my feedback givers and give them the whole notebook for free when I finally get it done!

New school and decimal operations

I started my teaching blog with grand hopes and dreams.  Then, like everything else, it got prioritized... to the bottom of the pile.

Now I am in a new school, a new district, and a new grade!  I switched districts to be closer to home.  The transition was hard and scarey.  Nobody wants to give up their seniority and go to the bottom of the list but I also had to do what was best for my family.

In my former school I had incredible friends and mentors.  Not a day goes by where I don't miss seeing them.  However, the staff in my new school has been nothing but welcoming and kind.  I am really enjoying getting to know them.

What I love even more is teaching 5th grade!  This group is so fun!!!

We are finishing up our decimal unit now.  I had to reteach myself math the "new way."  I have learned a lot right along with my students.  I am enjoying working through strategies with the kids and watching them grow as thinkers!  

Recently I made some posters to hang on the wall in our room to remind the kids of what we do with the decimals depending on the operation.  There are so many little things for the kids to remember.  We have fun with it in class but we are asking them to keep so much up there in their brains.  I feel like I have an anchor chart for everything and my room is over crowded with anchor charts.  I don't even know what to do with all of that information anymore.  We move one chart just to write on the whiteboard and then the chart goes back up.  Does anyone else have this issue?  Have you found a solution?!  I thought I would make some 8.5x11 posters to put up in the back of the room.  They won't be huge and the kids won't see them from their seats easily but they can go back and look at them for more help.  When I introduced them I put them up on the projector so they could see it large and we discussed it.  When they are working on a concept I project it for them on the screen and they have the one they need.  At the end of the lesson they do still have one to fall back on in the room.

I started my own little TPT store.  I would love to just sell enough to support my spending habit on TPT! If you are interested in these posters click here.  I have a few other things there right now, including a free setting project.

Thanks for visiting!

Three little Pigs Week

Recently we spent a week comparing versions of the Three Little Pigs. The kids loved it. They spent time reading with friends and discussing the books. They made great charts and had lots of fun.

Then we built our own houses of straws and they all made a hypothesis about how well their house would stand up to wind (a fan).

Perimeter anchor chart

  Perimeter, my kids kept trying to make it more difficult then it was.  So I brought it down to some examples in our classroom.  We measured the perimeter of objects we can walk around to see how far around something is.  That helped.  A couple are still struggling with the concept and now we are moving onto area so I hope the comparison will give me another way to teach it.

Suffix anchor chart

  

When I started this blog I fully intended to post everything I do... Yeah, that was a bit ambitious.  So I have decided to start now and focus on one post a week :)

Last week we focused on suffixes.  My goal was for the kids to learn the rules rather then just memorize the twenty spelling words.  We did some activities with them and I gave all the rules a name.  I numbered them and for each activity they did from our phonics program I required them to provide the rule number.  Interestingly those who did well on the spelling test were not all the ones that got the rules.  However, I do feel it was good because all students walked away from these lessons realizing many words are formed in a certain way and follow a pattern. 

Open House

Oops a couple heads are falling ;)

 The photographs didn't do the cuteness of this justice.  I stole borrowed this idea from one of my kid's teachers.  I love going to their school and taking ideas for my own classroom ;). 

My students were so cute.  They thought if they hid in another room their parents would actually think that it was them in their seats.  I didn't have the heart to tell them that there parents would know better!  They LOVED this project and it was so easy!

Thanks for visiting.