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Solar System and Halloween Five For Friday… and Mentor Sentence Freebie!

October 25, 2013

Happy Friday! I’m linking up today to share some random things from my week! 🙂

We have started our solar system unit and, to make it even more fun, we have some songs that we listen to and sing along! My kids love the songs by Mr. Parr! Here is the Solar System Song. And here are my kiddos singing along with it! :o)

Of course, you know me. I have to tie in my science to all of my content areas! We are learning about non-fiction text features so, as a way to get them to tell me what they already knew before I really “taught” the features, I made this poster, and they came up with all the features they knew about and their purpose. They did a great job actually! I won’t have much work in that arena, thank goodness.

Sooooo of course, we have to write about the solar system too! I’m using Joanne’s (from Head Over Heels for Teaching) Important Book Template and this will become their introduction paragraph of a bigger piece later, as well as a class book!

Students used their Science textbooks to find details about a planet of their choice. Come back next week to see their final published pieces! :o)

It took me a while this year for some reason, but I’m finally all decorated for Halloween! Here are some of my favorite decorative pieces:

And since I’m finally in the Halloween spirit, I’m planning some fun activities for next week in the classroom- all PC of course. 😉 One of the books we’ll read next week is The Widow’s Broom by Chris Van Allsburg.

It is a suspenseful story that’ll have the kids on the edge of their seats! Here is a lesson guide I found online with some ideas if you’re interested, as well as a great summary of the book.

And HERE is a mentor sentence FREEBIE to go along with the book, too! I’ll be using this next week with my kiddos. :o)

This freebie is offered as part of the Friday Fall Freebie Blog Hop!

Click here to go to the next blog for another freebie!

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Workshop Wednesday: Math Games Revisited

October 16, 2013

Welcome to Workshop Wednesday! Today, we are sharing our favorite math games we use in the classroom. Math games are so great because the kids WANT to do math when it’s fun!

The game I’m going to share with you today can be found as a freebie in my store! Click below to download it!

We are working on division strategies now, so I taught them this game this week. It’s great to teach them to understand remainders, as well as work on divisibility rules! We played as a class first – me against the class.

The students are given a starting number, then the goal is to choose a divisor that is NOT going to divide evenly. They want to have leftovers, or remainders, because those are their points. So, for example, you see I chose to divide 42 by 4 because I knew 4×10 was 40, so there would be a remainder of 2.

In past years when I’ve played this, my kids have done great playing it with just what they know… but my class this year is very different than other years, so I decided to change it up a little this year. This year, I had my students use unifix cubes to make their “groups” so they could actually see what they were dividing, as well as see what their “leftovers” were. Those leftover cubes became how they counted points instead of keeping a running tally, as I suggested on the directions page.

I encouraged the students to make “groups of” the number they were dividing by and then counting the number of equal groups they made.

If you are interested in more activities for teaching division, check out my Common Core Aligned 4th Grade Division Unit!

What games do you love to teach your students for math? Please share! Remember, when you link up, please link to blog posts- not direct store links please! Feel free to share about how you use your products in the classroom in your post though, and link to those products in your post if you’d like! :o)

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Five For Friday: Friends, Fall, and Freebies!

October 4, 2013

Happy Friday!! This Five For Friday will be short and quick, so fasten your seat belt! 😛

I know I already shared this in my Sunday post, but I just have to say it again… I absolutely LOVED my visit with my BBB Joanne, and can’t wait until we can see each other again! Thank you to Joanne and her family for showing me such a WONDERFUL time! :o) I really wish I lived closer to so many of my BBBs. I have no doubt that we would hang out all the time!

And on top of a wonderful trip, as if staying at her house wasn’t enough, look at all the goodies Joanne loaded me up with! WOOT!!!

Did you catch yesterday’s post? My SECOND Interactive Notebook for Mentor Sentences is up, and it’s on sale through the end of today! :o)

There is also a freebie offered in yesterday’s post (and my TPT store) of a foldable included in the second unit, if you want to “test drive” before you buy. 😉

And how about another freebie… or a few? :o) I’m participating in a blog hop for freebies!

Grab this freebie to have students write a narrative as a member of the crew on an expedition with Columbus!

Click the button above or HERE to go to the next stop on the blog hop! :o)

I had to order some {more} books… ya know, for the FALL!! Amazon Prime is so awesome, but it is totally my downfall too- get my books in two days for free? I need to order MORE!

My name is Jessica, and I am a TOTAL book junkie.

Are you ready for a giveaway?? My BBB Diane has 1,000 TPT Followers, and she is celebrating! The giveaway won’t be live when this gets posted, but it will be when you get off work (After 3 PM CST)! 🙂

I hope everyone has a fantastic weekend!! :o)

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I Need My Monster: Mentor Text for Halloween

September 29, 2013

I’m linking up with Collaboration Cuties this morning to share an adorable book with you! 🙂

One of my favorite books to read at Halloween time that’s still “PC” for kiddos that can’t celebrate Halloween is I Need My Monster by Amanda Knoll.

It’s an adorable book about a boy’s monster that goes on vacation, and each replacement monster just isn’t good enough. It’s a great story to look at awesome adjectives and vivid verbs in writing- each monster is described thoroughly! 🙂 Here is a freebie you can use with it if you want to grab it up!

This freebie came from my language arts unit for the book, which you can get in my store here if you’re interested! (And remember, my store is on sale 20% off through the end of today!)

The unit includes the freebie above to practice with amazing adjectives and vivacious verbs from the book that describe the monsters and their “scary” traits, as well as pages for text-to-self connections; practicing describing, following directions, and listening through drawing and describing a monster to someone else; quotations practice; distinguishing between adjectives and adverbs; and a writing prompt taken from the point of view of a monster in the story. It’s definitely at least a week’s worth of activities you can do with your kiddos! 🙂

I am so sad to leave my BBB Joanne today! 🙁 But we had a blast together, and definitely will be getting together again! And check out my adorable new minions shirt I got yesterday. 😛

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Five For Friday… FLORIDA style!!! :)

September 27, 2013

Happy Friday, friends! Guess what?? As this post goes live, I will be driving to Florida to visit my BBB Joanne for the weekend!! WHAT?! Bloggy friends can become real life friends?! You bet! I can’t even tell you how excited I am. So this Five For Friday is a special FLORIDA edition! 🙂

Obviously, number one has to be going to stay with my BBB Joanne from Head Over Heels for Teaching!!!

We decided after the Atlanta Meet-Up for bloggers (when it would be quite a drive for her just for lunch) that we HAD to meet each other…and I decided I’d be due for a long-weekend about this time (you’ll see why in #3)… and it was DONE. It will be about an 8 hour drive, but I’ll have Justin Timberlake to keep me company, and maybe an audio-book too- still trying to decide on a good one. 🙂

Since Joanne lives close to Universal Studios, that’s our plan for Saturday! I’ve never been, so I’m soooo pumped. I’ve always been a Disney World girl, but I can’t wait for Universal and the MINIONS!!! If you are a follower of my blog, you know that I absolutely ADORE them. This is the wallpaper of my phone:

…and once others started learning of my love, I began getting gifts! Yay! 😛 Just in the last couple of weeks, I’ve gotten this adorable pencil topper from Scrappy Guy Gary:

…as well as this picture and ornament from one of my students!

(I wonder if this student thinks that’s what I look like?? LOL)

And then, check out these two kiddos trying to get some A’s on the same day! 😛

When I told my students where I’d be going, they were all jealous, but told me to make sure I get a picture with the minions. 😛

This week has been a loooooong week, so this trip is going to be a great get-away. In the county where I work, we have Early Release days twice each school year to meet with all of our parents. Wednesday and Thursday of this week were Early Release… the kids are a bit crazy because the schedule is so wacky! We eat lunch and then they go home… it makes for QUITE a crazy morning. But the craziness doesn’t really begin until 12:30 or so when the first parent that is scheduled walks in, and the back-to-back conferences start. Every 20 minutes, a parent walks out and another walks in. Wednesday I didn’t leave until about 5:30, and Thursday I left at 4:45. Trust me when I say, this is a normal “leave time” for me on a normal day… but cramming 25 parent conferences into two afternoons is NOT a normal day! 😛

I created an activity for my students to do with the sub today, and I wanted to share it with you as a freebie!

The Book Fair is coming to our school this month, so I don’t want to send home Scholastic Book Orders so they will (hopefully) buy books at the Book Fair instead. But instead of trashing the book orders I received, I decided to use them to practice addition, multiplication, and subtraction!

Click on the images, or here, to download this for free. This would also be a great activity to do before you send home a book order so the kiddos can tell their parents what books they “have” to have! 😉

Wanna do some end of the month shopping?

And if you’re in a shopping mood… did you get a chance to check out the September Swap and Share? A few of my favorite BBBs swapped around some awesome products and used them in our classrooms, then shared about how awesome the products were! Make sure you check it out! 🙂

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