Closing of my Classroom!

Wow has time flown! I can't believe my last entry was in April!....well actually I can because EOG's were right around the corner and boy do those last two months of school go by quick. The end of the school year goes quick but it comes with a TON of work and stress! I think I came home every day for the last three weeks of school and went straight to bed. ( I don't have any kids so I can do that! :) ).

Although I gladly welcomed my summer break, it was sad to leave my students. They were probably one of my sweetest groups of students I've had in my 4 years of teaching. They were hard workers too and eager to learn, I will truly miss them. I thought I'd put a couple pictures up on here that I took towards the end of the school year but never made it to the blog! I've also been wanting to add some new teacher pay teacher stuff on here and in my store but I've been so busy so far this summer. I am getting married in 8 days!!! So I've done little work on TpT compared to last summer! I'm trying to get back on track since I know some followers have asked for more bundles of my task cards! I'm working on them I promise!!! :)

Ok so this picture is when my students and I were going over comparing and ordering decimals. This is after a week of working on this skill. I had the students write a number with a decimal in it...any number they wanted. They were not allowed to show their neighbors. (Kids love hiding things from their peers!). Then I had them stand up and order themselves from least to greatest. First I had them order themselves as a table group...then as a whole class. The trick though is to let them put themselves in order as a class without helping them, which is hard for me! You can really tell which kids have a total understanding decimals and which need more help. After the students completed this task, I checked their work. THEN I had them trade papers with people. The next task they did was to get in order again...but WITHOUT TALKING to one another! Wow is this hard for some students but super fun and such a great team building exercise! 

 On the last day of school! My classroom is all packed up, desks are moved and carpet is ready to be cleaned! I'm already in the "nesting" mood to get back in there and start cleaning and putting things together for my next batch of kids! I actually went back to school couple weeks later and moved my desks back down! Once the wedding is over it is full blown nesting and coming up with new ideas and procedures for the 2015-2016 school year!!

I had an arm FULL of stuff to take home but managed to get this last picture before I closed my door and locked it! I made sure to get my "Ms. Talbert" sign since it will no longer be used when I get back to school in August! 

 I even put up the calendar already for August! I do it every year on the last day of school! A little tradition of mine!

Oh boy...my desk. I hardly ever sit there except to do attendance and check e-mail, other than that I'm on my feet all day running around the room! So my desk drawers get neglected a bit towards the end of the year. I have my desk super clean and organized when school first starts and I promise myself it will stay that way. But that promise is usually broken mid way through the year! HA! So I went ahead and cleaned out my desk and have it organized and ready to go in August...maybe this year I'll hold up my "New Years" resolution. :)

 A sweet student of mine last year gave me this sign with "Ms. Talbert" written on it. My team teacher across the hall has the same style so I didn't want to get a new one! So since I won't be Ms. Talbert anymore...I flipped it over and created it again with my new last name! The writing is not as pretty...but it will do! :) I love it! Right now my new last name sounds funny to me...but I'm sure I'll get used to it once a classroom full of children start calling me by it!

So as you know (if you've read my past entries) I was proposed to in my classroom in October. After James proposed we hung out for a while in my classroom, (My kids were in specials). I was so busy talking to co-workers and texting my family I did not notice that James wrote this sweet note to me and left it in my desk. I found it a couple days later and stuck it to my filing cabinet...and it will stay there as long as I'm in that classroom. It reminds me how fun and exciting that day was! I am a lucky lady to be marring my best friend!

Well this will probably be my last post until after my wedding and honeymoon! I'll work on some TpT stuff and hopefully get it on here for y'all to look at and get some ideas from! Hope everyone has a wonderful summer! Enjoy every day of it and get some rest! We are going to need it!!

Student Fluency Check

At my school we are trying to help our students increase their fluency. I taught my students how to do fluency checks using fluency cards that list how many words are on each line. The students choose their own partners and are given a timer and every morning read two fluency pages each. They then pick their best words per minute and record it on on their fluency chart that I taped on their desk!

It has been great to see the kids get so involved in improving their fluency and seeing them get excited about improving on their fluency! It is part of our daily morning routine and I feel is really helping the kids improve! Thought I'd share with others so they could start teaching their kids how to do fluency checks too!

Math Journal

I created something that I LOVE!!!

At the beginning of the year I buy composition notebooks and have my dad saw them in half so they are mini notebooks. My students LOVE them because they are cute and little! So every year I always want to have a math journal my students write in, I'm just never consistent with it! Well...I created 5 journal prompts for every 4th grade Common Core math standard!  It took a while to make and is 164 pages but man is it worth it!

 

I have 10 of the same prompts on each page, this save me on copies. I copied them on colored paper so they stood out more and I thought is more fun than just white paper. I usually have 15-20 minutes at the end of the day for the kids to work on independent work. So I take this time for the students to respond to the prompt I give them! They glue the prompt in their journal, date the page and then respond. All of the prompts require either the students to explain their thinking, show their work, explain steps they used to solve the problem and how they knew they needed those steps or to  draw out models to represent their answers.

My students LOVED them and did a great job too!! The journal writing does not take long, which is great for those reviewing times, independent times or checking for understanding times!

I REALLY hope other teachers check these out and let me know how they like them!!!

Snowed In!!!

So we do not usually get much winter weather in Raleigh, NC...but these past two weeks we have had ice, sleet and snow! It is always so exciting know that snow is in the forecast, it is the talk of the week before the sky drops one snow flake! Needless to say that when we get snow or worse, ice, North Carolina does in fact shut down a bit! I think it is a great honestly, we do not get much winter weather and when we do it is usually ice and there is just no sense driving out on the roads. And we all get to enjoy it! It is so beautiful! Of course school is always canceled so I get peace and quiet working on school stuff in my pajamas watching TV and hanging out with my cats! It is just wonderful! :)

The past two weeks I have work three days! Presidents day was a required work day and Tuesday we had ice and missed the rest of the week except for Friday which was an optional workday...and I went in. Monday we had school and I stressed to my kids that we were a week behind so get ready to work! Little did I know we were going to get snow again Tuesday morning. Weather forecast called for a dusting but at 6:30am, while getting ready for school, I got a call from the county saying we had a 2 hour delay and then we closed! Wednesday was an optional workday (of course I went in)...and Thursday we got about 4.5 inches of snow!! So now...I am really behind in my lessons...but fully rested! Hope my kids are too!!!! We are going to be working hard to get caught up!

While I've been home I've been planning my wedding and working on a LOT of school stuff! I've taken a couple pictures and thought I'd share with you! I took two of the task cards I've made for 4.MD.2, not the best pictures but I spent a couple hours during my work day cutting and laminating my task cards! Check out my TpT store to see them! They really are great!! Can't wait to use them! There are 20 task cards, worksheets and coloring pages for this skill. 50 different questions total!! I've made them for all the OA strands, NBT strands 4.NF.1, 4.NF.2 and 4.NF.3a&b and 4.MD.1, 4.MD.2 and 4.MD.3. I am working on 4.NF.c&d right now and hope to finish soon! I will eventually get task cards, worksheets and coloring sheets made for all the strands. It takes a lot longer to make them when school is in...but I'm working on them! Follow me on TpT so you can keep up with the new things I've added!

I have been meaning to take a picture of this new system that I put in place! I saw it on pinterest and tried it...and fell in love with it!! I got the plastic dividers and hot glued them to the wall. Each folder has a number on it that matches my kids number. In the folders I have the students put unfinished work or work that I want them to do! It is a great way to use for differentiation too! I love that at the end of centers I can say, "Any unfinished work needs to go in your pocket and finished for morning work!" It is great! My kids have gotten in to a great routine to put any work in their pocket that isn't done and to finish it for morning work or if they have spare time (which is rare! haha) In all I spent about $15 on all the pockets...I know some teachers do not want to spend that much, but I assure you that it is worth it! It is so much better than having finished and unfinished work on my desk! It is also MUCH better than the kids shoving unfinished work in their desk!

Area and Perimeter

Area and Perimeter is something my students struggle with every year, especially when that have to solve for a missing side when given the area or perimeter. This skill takes a lot of repetition which can get boring for the kids...and ME! Here are a couple things I do to help teach this skill.

First I really discuss the difference between the area and perimeter. I always say that you need to know the area to put carpet or tile in room, and perimeter is like a fence to keep your dog in. When I am teaching how to find a missing side when given the perimeter, I tell them to think of the perimeter as pieces of wood for a fence. For examples, if the perimeter is 20 feet and the length is 7 feet, its like the have 20 pieces of wood and 7 of them are on the lengths of the rectangle. I ask the students to tell me how many pieces of wood are left. They know that if the length of the rectangle is 7 then his congruent side has to be 7 too, and when you had those two together you get 14, so they've used 14 pieces of wood. Then I ask the students to tell me how much wood is left, the know that they are to subtract to do this so...20-14 is 6. I have to explain many times that 6 is not the width! If 6 was the width then there would not be enough "wood" left over to close the fence and your dog would run out! So in order to enclose the fence all the way around you have to divide the 6 by 2 since you have two missing sides, and you'd get 3! Length is 7 feet and width is 3 feet, which makes a perimeter of 20 feet!  I find that my students will say out loud a lot, "Have to divide by two otherwise the dog will run out!" It is the cutest thing to see that they use what I say and that they grasp what we are doing when trying to find the missing side!
Finding the missing side when given the area my students find pretty easy, they just to the inverse operation. A=LxW so if they are given the area, just divide by the side that is given!

I found a game on pinterest to practice area and perimeter!! The students found a partner and I gave them grid paper and two dice. They rolled the dice and drew the dimensions on the grid paper with a crayon, each pair should each have a different color crayon. The first 10 minutes of the game I had them find the area of the figure they drew and write it in the middle of the rectangle. The second 10 minutes I had them find the perimeter of the figure and write it on the page. They drew their figures on the grid paper and the point of the "game" was to see who could fill up the grid paper the most with their color of rectangles. It was a quick and fun game to practice the skill!

I have also made task cards, worksheets and a coloring page for area and perimeter! They are GREAT! Check them out at my teachers pay teachers store! Be sure to follow me on TpT and pin the task cards on pinterest so other teachers can use them too! Hope this helps you and your students!!!

Holidays In the Classroom

I created this activity on TpT for Thanksgiving and Christmas and my students and I LOVE them! The Thanksgiving dinner activity lets the students create their own thanksgiving dinner where they invite anyone they want. I let my students walk around the room and "invite" people to their dinner and ask them what they want to eat off of the Thanksgiving menu. They record what they want to eat and how much each item is. They then have to calculate how much they spent on all of the food total...but they have to stay under a $75 budget!

The students LOVED walking around and calculating how much each persons total cost was! I let my students use a calculator, it was great practice! I found that many of my 4th graders had no idea that they had to type in the decimal point when adding with the calculator! They kept asking me if they had to type the dot in! So this lesson allowed me to teach a quick and very important mini lesson about decimal points!

The Santa's Christmas Budget is just like the Thanksgiving dinner activity but the children are to pick out gifts that they want! I again let my students walk around and let them ask their friends what they want for christmas! This time they are to stay under $650 per person and spend no more than $4,000 total.  I also created a paper that looks exactly the same as the Christmas Santa list but says donation list for those children that do not celebrate Christmas but still want to participate in the activity! I know the child I had that didn't celebrate was very happy that she was still able to join in the fun when I showed her the alternative paper!

Both the Thanksgiving and Christmas activity comes with multi-step word problems for the students to solve!

I hope that you find a use for them, they really are great to use the week before holiday breaks!! Fun and educational!

Happy Holidays!!!

Math Balloon Pop!

So I saw something like this on line and had to try it! I am trying to think of fun ways to practice double digit multiplication with my 4th graders and this activity was PERFECT!!!

I wrote answers to double digit questions on balloons and hung them up all over the classroom. I did it while my class was gone and when they came back from specials they were so excited just because of the balloons! I set out strict rules on behavior while playing this game, which I highly suggest because the kids...being kids...do get pretty excited! 

I had the students work in their table teams which is their center groups. I put a question on the projector and as a team they had to solve the problem. For example group one had the problem first and I only gave them one minute to solve the problem. They had to work together and agree on an answer, I made it very clear that they had to be a team and agree before they told me the answer. If they got the question correct TWO members from that group got up from their seats to find the balloon with that answer. Who ever found it first could pop the balloon by themselves or they could decide to pop it together somehow. It was SO COOL to see the children working together, getting along being in charge of their teams, work and feelings. After the team popped the balloon the next question went to group number 2 and they followed the same directions.

If the team got the question wrong or did not answer in the one minute time limit the same question would go to the next team and they would have a chance to answer the question. I can tell you that I had EVERY student working and solving the questions because they wanted to be ready just incase the team before them got the question wrong! It was AMAZING to see! And I am telling you I have never seen my entire class working as a team so well before! It is amazing what a few balloons can do!

My students came up with fun creative ways to pop the balloons which was so funny! Some just jumped on them, some sat on them, some squeezed them with their partner.

Just remember to set up clear rules and expectations for behavior, remind them that they are allowed to laugh and  have a great time but they also need to show self control too! It is a blast, give it a try! And it can be done with so many other lessons! Not just math!! The options are endless!!!