Peek at My Week

My fall break is coming to an end and I'm trying to gear myself up to get back in the classroom! October is one of my favorite months and I'm excited to get some of my Halloween goodies out when I get back to school. Here's what I've got planned for next week. 

For morning work this year I've taken the idea of Daily 5 and put them into center options. My kiddos have a schedule that they follow and they can have one of five different options for morning work. my favorite to get organized each week is word work. This week students have the option to choose from Jennifer Findley's Halloween Language Task Cards or her Pictures to Review Halloween activities. 

Reading RTI is a little different for me this year since its been incorporated into my reading workshop time block and I'm working with Tier 2 students instead of my usual Tier 3 kiddos. This year we've been using our treasures books. Since we are learning about Native Americans in social studies building their schema during reading RTI is a must. 

During reading my kiddos will continue with their book clubs within our Interpretation Book Clubs unit for Lucy Calkins. If you would like to read more about how I implement Lucy in my classroom you can do that by clicking here. 

I have a love/hate relationship with writing. I'm really looking forward to teaching dialogue on Monday. My students are knee deep in their personal narratives and one of the biggest struggle that I've found so far for my group of kids correctly using dialogue.  I did some googling and found this awesome idea for  Halloween themed dialogue activities. First I plan to have a mini-lesson on when, where and how to correctly use dialogue in writing. Then have students practice with partners writing dialogue with Halloween knock-knock jokes. Next, since its October, I knew this would be the best place for a "Said is Dead" lesson to make our writing more interesting. 

I wanted something for my students to have in their writing notebook to go back to when they were using dialogue in their writing, so made this "Said is Dead" anchor chart. You can grab this freebie by clicking here or the image above. 

The rest of the week we will be continuing our narrative writing unit with Lucy Calkins. Again, if you would like to read more about Lucy in my classroom, click here! 

Native Americans is one of my favorite units to teach in social studies. This week we will focus on the Plains Native American Tribes. I'm going to be using a website that I found called Pear Deck to make my introduction PowerPoint more interactive for students.  This will be my first time using this website and hopefully everything will go as planned. I'm also excited to use my Native American Exit Slips product as well as my Native American Task Rotations.  I find that my kiddos really love the task rotations because they can show what they know in a variety of ways! 

Math this week is an intro to multi-digit multiplication. We've spent the first 9 weeks of school working with decimals so it will be a nice change of pace to work with whole numbers. I'm going to be using Jennifer Findley's The Complete Guide to Multiplication for most of the week. This is a wonderful product for so many reasons. I have 27 students in my class and I'm the only 5th grade teacher in my school so I have a wide variety of learners. This product is differentiated in so many ways that I can easily fit the needs of all of my students. We will work this week with spinners, word problems and self checking exit slips! I'm also excited to use her Spin a Word Problem Math Centers at the end of the week! 

Finally, Math RTI. I work with Tier 2 and 3 kiddos every day of the week. For my Tier 2 kids we will work on review skills and for my Tier 3 kids we will use Number Worlds. Everyone else will rotate through 5 centers during the week. Again, I had to find a place to incorporate my Halloween centers. You can find all of my 5th grade Halloween activities by clicking here or the image of my newest Halloween addition below. 

I'm really looking forward to using this Halloween resource in my classroom next week. Anytime that I am able to engage my students in learning while providing review and problem solving skills I am a happy teacher! 

What do you have planned for this week? 

Peek at My Week: 2/22/16

 Can you believe that this is the last full week of February?! School is flying by and I can't believe I only have a few more months left with my wonderful 5th graders. I'm pretty excited to share with your some of my week! 

Since the school year is going by so fast, its time to really start thinking about the KPREP test, so this week we are going to be doing some math review with this awesome 5 -A-Day Review.  This is such an awesome product that I have the 5-A-Day Language as well. 

For RTI we will be focusing on Prefixes and Suffixes this week and I knew my prefix and suffix task cards would come in handy with my RTI group. For reading and writing we will be finishing up our Revolutionary War Non Fiction Magazines. I got this awesome idea from Mary at Teaching with a Mountain View. I made a few tweaks to make this work for my class and a Project Based Learning Experience. Keep an eye out for a blog post about this soon. My kids have LOVED this experience! 

 Trucking right along we will be continuing our government unit in Social Studies. One of my favorite rescues for Social Studies are the level reading passages from The Sweetest Thing. I have them for almost every Social Studies topic. I find that they are awesome for when I have a sub or need some review. I recently purchased an interactive notebook from Ashleigh and I can't wait to start using it. 

In Math we are beginning one of my favorite topics, fractions! My kiddos will begin with reviewing fractions and working on the "fractions as division" skill. I have fallen in love with the interactive notebooks from Jennifer Findley (I might have all of them) as well as her 5th grade game boards. We will also be using my Valentines Riddles to practice this math skill.

Finally, for Math RTI we will be practicing some new skills as well as reviewing old skills and setting up foundations to learn some new skills! For Math RTI I work with a small group while the rest of my class rotates through centers. This week they will be practicing fractions as divisions with one of my top selling products as well as reviewing volume with my very first digital math resource. Then, Jennifer Findley comes to the rescue with her spoons game for converting mixed numbers and improper fractions and another one of my favorites, her Just Print resource (I might have all of those too!)

What are you up to on this last full week of February? I can't wait to find out. 

Peek at My Week

This year seems to be flying by! I can't believe its already November and I'm in full swing of using my November resources! I am linking up with Mrs. Willis Kindergarten to show you a peek at my week! 

This week we are using my Thanksgiving Spinners for morning work. My kids really love this for morning work because they get to use their phones, tablets or iPads to use the QR self checking sheet and I love this resource because it hits so many 5th grade writing standards, its a win-win for everyone! 
In reading we are working on idioms, proverbs and adages. We will have our unit test on Thursday and I LOVE this  Close Reading Passage resource from the ever so talented Jennifer Findley. I just these passages as open responses for my unit assessments. Writing we are working on the dreaded on demand writing and conferencing with our pieces. 

 In social studies we are working on exploration and we will begin to look into the first official colonies in the New World. My students have a wide variety of background knowledge on this topic so these differentiated passages really come in handy for me.  

Math is my FAVORITE subject to teach and I find that adding and subtracting decimals is one of the most important skills that I teach because students will need to have this skill for the 'real world'. I recently found a new teacher blogger that I LOVE. She has some awesome ideas on how to keep students engaged during math which I love. I will be using her Game of Life resource on Tuesday to have my students practice their decimal skills. Also, I will be assessing my students on Friday with an oldie but goodie from my store. This workshop model resource challenges my students thinking and I love it.

In my math RTI I actually have two groups. One of them we will be working on multi-digit multiplication with my Fall Themed Multiplication product. These are some of my more struggling students who need continual review. I am also going to be working with another group on decimal skills with my Fallin' for Decimals resource.


I hope you have a great week and can't wait to see what you are up to this week.


Update: I have made changes to my workshop model resource for adding and subtracting decimals. I have added it as a freebie in my store until 10:00 p.m. when Castle comes on! Hope you enjoy!

Peek at My Week

Let me just start off by saying that my life has been crazy for the past two weeks. My husband and I went on a quick weekend trip to Gatlinburg last weekend and I haven't caught up since! I figured that I could quickly give you a Peek at My Week and do my first ever link up with Mrs. Will's from Mrs. Will's Kindergarten. 

I have been out of my room at least once a week for the past two week and this week makes week three! Its so hard getting back into the grove with my kiddos when I know I'm going to have to leave again. 

This week is repetitive since we are working on two Project Based Learning experiences. If you haven't tried this in your room, you need to, like now. We began the year with a plant based PBL where the kids are now working on their student deliverable which is presenting to the 1st grade class what plants would be best for their garden this year. Through helping the 1st graders at our school my kids learned a lot about how plans grow and exactly what plants NEED to grow (air and water). 
We are also beginning this week to work on a PBL in social studies that is based on Native Americans and how we as 5th graders can help them overcome the obstacles they have in life due to their past. Since PBL is so student driven, its hard to make weekly plans because I'm not sure where the students are going to lead me each day. Yes, I know what I want to teach them so I try to lead them where I want them to go but some days they get so caught up in their own learning that we have to move away from the plan. Which is why my S.S. plans look to be the same every day. 
What do you have going on this week?