Snow Day!

After being out all last week for weather, it's another snow day in Tennessee!

Admittedly, this one wasn't necessary, IMO. Or maybe it's just that I'm like a lot of other teachers and beginning to panic about all that I have to teach my kids in this short time that we have left together. There's so much content that we have left to cover, of course, but there's a lot more than that this year. This group of students has challenged me in a way I've never faced before. I love them, of course, but have you ever just had one of those years where you just knew your kids needed so much more than academics, and there just isn't enough time to meet all of the needs that you see. That's been the story of this year.

I started the year with my colleagues' sympathy and disbelief that all of these personalities had been put into the same room. I cringed when I heard some of the comments because I knew these kids better than that: I knew their hearts, and I saw so much promise. As the year has gone on, I've seen some of them make tremendous progress in ways that no state test will measure, whether that progress is academic, behavioral, or emotional. I'm proud of my kiddos, and I wish that everyone could see what I see in them.

Moving on, I'm trying to find ways to help my students practice their math skills in a way that is both efficient and interesting. In my school, we have a 45 minute intervention block 4 days a week. I am a math, science, and social studies teacher, but for that 45 minutes, I am also a reading teacher. We weren't given any real guidance on what the students who are not in intervention groups should be doing, other than being told that they could not be covering new material. I decided that the best use of this time is review centers. I'll explain my center organization system and how I keep track for grading purposes another time, but for now, I'd like to share a task card set that I just made for my task card center. These have been a great way for my students to review or practice skills that they need a little bit more work on. This new task card set that are available in my TpT store.

We just started working on this topic and our district pacing guide has us only spending a week on it! What?! I know my students are going to need more practice, so I created this task card set with that in mind. I can't wait to start using it later this week when we FINALLY get to go back!

The set includes 20 question cards, a recording sheet, and an answer key to make it self checking and perfect for center use or other games and activities.

   

Just an FYI about this set: I have chosen to focus on just the order of operations and using parentheses and brackets in this task card set. I am working on another activity for working with variables and am hoping to have that completed over the coming weekend. 

I hope you find this set helpful! I know that my class struggled last year with the short amount of time that we had in our pacing guide for this skill, so I'm hoping that it helps my class this year. How do your students do with the order of operations and learning to use parentheses and why? Are you feeling an unusual amount of pressure to get everything in due to snow days this year?

Google Drive, part 2

Remember when I mentioned using google drive this year to share some of my forms and updates with parents? Well, guess what! I've found another awesome use for it, and I'm super excited about this one!

I set up separate folders on my website for our charts that we make and use in class, so those are now shared to my website. I've also added a "student work" section to the site. I'll use that folder to share examples that we have discussed in class so that my students have those to look back at while they are doing their homework. Below is a screenshot from my iPad where I have a few examples from our recent multiplication lessons. 

I love how easy this was to do! I used the google drive app on my iPad, so it was literally just a few clicks to set everything up. From there, I just had to tell it to go into my photos and then choose the pictures I wanted to upload. It could not have been easier, and now my kids have a reference from home AND they all want their work to be good enough to make it to the website! I can definitely see how this could motivate them to realize that neatness matters. It's a win-win for everybody!

Do you share student work online? How?

Happy Birthday to me!

Maybe I'm a little bit early on that one! Regardless, I'm just popping in from an extremely busy and stressful week to leave a quick note about some things that are going on this month.

1. My birthday is the 22nd of this month, so in celebration, I'm going to have a one-day-only 10% off sale on everything in my TpT store! My task card sets are my best-selling items, and I've got a couple of new sets that MIGHT be going up before then, so be sure to check those out.

2. I'm positively smitten with Jamberry nails. Have you tried them? They're not one of those things that I would have ever seen myself liking, but I'm on day 5 with this set still going strong. Where have these been all my life?! I'm loving all of the cute designs, and can't wait to put on my next set whenever these decide to finally give out. 

Here's the story of nail polish with me:

1. Apply first coat. Let dry.
2. Decide first coat is dry enough for a much-needed second coat. 
3. Apply second coat, but get it all over my skin.
4. Dab skin with polish remover. Mess up 3 still-wet nails in the process.
5. Remove polish from botched nails and repaint those.
6. Notice bubbles in other nails. Remove polish. (Note: at this point, I've generally ended up redoing at least 5 nails.)
7. Decide I'm over it and just repaint, whether they look good or not.
8. Repaint second coat.
9. Declare myself finished and watch TV while they finish drying.
10. Go to bed, thinking my nails are dry.
11. Wake up to nails with imprints from sheet, clothes, and my hair.
12. Chip nail polish on the one remaining perfect nail while hitting snooze button.

These, obviously, were much easier. And I got great results, despite how terrible I am at DIY manicures :-)

This was taken on day 2. I would post a new picture from day 5 (today) but they seriously look EXACTLY the same unless you look at the very tip of my right index finger. It's got just the tiniest bit of a rough edge, but it's not noticeable to anyone else.

So have you tried Jamberry? What do you think?

I'm considering selling them, just to get the discount because I think this may be my new addiction!

Back to school!

Whew! Today was our first day back and I had forgotten how early 6:00 was. Farewell lazy summer mornings. Til we meet again!

I'd like to take just a second and share some ways that I'm using Google Drive this year to help my students and their families. I love google drive, but in the past, my school system has filtered out most of google's handy apps, so this is the first time I've been able to really use it.

One of the things that I'm using google drives for is to share forms on my class website. I share our weekly newsletter, weekly homework calendars, classroom forms, and sometimes extra copies of our homework pages.

One of the things that I'd like to explore this year is how to use google drive to share my students' work. Do you use Google Drive? What are some things that you've used it for?

Conference form

As I'm starting to think about the start of school, I'm revisiting some of my classroom forms that I use with students and their parents. I have forms my students use to request test retakes, "think sheets" for behavior, and of course, several beginning of the year forms to send and receive information from parents. I also LOVE my parent conference planning form that I started using a few years ago.

I remember my parent conferences during my first few years of teaching, and I'd like to think I've come a long way from those days. I remember sitting blankly across from parents, not always completely sure what I wanted to say to them about their child. There were the standard reminders about my homework policies and reporting to them what their child's current grades were in my class, but I never really felt like I had it "together," if you know what I mean.

When I started using this form to plan what I wanted to communicate to each parent, I immediately felt like my conferences became much more intentional and meaningful. It's such a simple thing, but it's one that nobody told me about in college, and as I sat unprepared in that first round or two of conferences, I really wished they had.

I've made a few changes to last year's version of the form, along with adding a couple of other planning/organizing pages that I'll be using this year. Last year I had other teachers walk into 3 of my conferences, so this year I will be using a "conference in progress" sign on the door to keep that from being an issue again. It's nothing fancy, but hopefully it'll be enough to give us some privacy. :-)

I'm also trying something new this year. I always find that some of my conferences run over because of parent concerns that I didn't anticipate. Every year, the other parents who are waiting are so patient, but I always feel bad that their appointments get pushed back. To prevent this (hopefully) this year, I'm going to ask parents to fill out and return a form before the conference so that I can plan accordingly. I'm hoping this cuts down on their wait time.

This packet is available in my TpT store, and it includes the pages shown above, parent letters and reminders, and my sign for the door. You can click on the cover page picture above to go directly to this packet, if you would like. While you're there, don't forget to check out my 1st nine weeks's spiral math review set. These will be a part of my homework for the first 9 weeks, and it feels GREAT to already have that planned!

Another year over and a new one just begun

Well, not quite yet. Soon, though, we will be going back. AAHHHH! Where do the summers go?!

I've spent this one at home working on some projects around the house. I've been trying to learn to play the piano, doing lots of cleaning, and trying to get organized so that (hopefully) I don't feel so frantic this coming school year. I would have never guessed that one little person who weighs less than 25 lbs. can SO COMPLETELY turn your world upside down. Sigh. I know I'll miss these days, though, so I'm just trying to soak in all the toddler hugs and sticky fingerprints while they last.

Anyway, school... I'm just finishing up my postcards to my students and hoping to get those mailed out by the weekend.

Do you do postcards or a welcome letter to your kids? This is the first time I've done them, but I really like the idea, even if it is a little bit time consuming. I would have loved getting something from my teachers-to-be when I was growing up.

I've also been working a little bit on some new task card sets to use with my students this year. I'm sharing one today that I actually used last year with my kids, but I didn't have it ready to post until this summer. (Remember how I said that toddler was keeping me busy?)

This set is a mixed multiplication and division review with word problems. I've found that one of our struggles every year seems to be actually reading and thinking about what the word problem is asking for. My students see two numbers and either multiply or divide, but don't always read to find out whether the operation they're using makes sense. Do yours do that too? Please tell me I'm not alone!

This task card set is all word problems, and the division problems may or may not have remainders. I did this because I teach my students to think about what to do with the remainder. We have a discussion and make a chart as a class to help remind them that sometimes the remainder can be ignored, but sometimes we have to round up, even if the remainder is less than 1/2. We talk about problems where they have to split numbers of people into groups, and we have a discussion over how you can't cut a person up.

As always, there are two versions of the cards included - one with a background and one without (to save ink) - and a recording sheet and answer key. Click on the picture above to see it in my TpT store. And while you're there, check out my 1st nine weeks math reviews, which are 50% off until August 1!

I'm Back!

The test is over. Unfortunately, after all of that, I didn't even get to take it! I had to reschedule because I didn't realize that our system was doing benchmark testing the same days that I was signed up for the test. Boo!

I did get some studying in for it, though, so I do feel better about taking it sometime this summer. Since I will be back in my same position next year, though, I don't feel like it's really worth it to take any more time to get ready for the test until after school is out for the summer. Instead, I'm going to spend my time on three great hobbies. Well, 2 hobbies (making resources for my students and bead making) and the loves of my life :-)

Since I had some time to post tonight, I wanted to share my latest upload to my TpT store. The first set of the math reviews is finished and available in my store. I'm splitting it into 4 sets, and I've posted the first one this afternoon. I'll be adding the others soon. You can click the image below to find the set in my TpT store.

Each set will include 9 weeks of review, with one week on a single sheet of paper to conserve copies. These are designed so that you can make a single copy per student for the entire week OR display one day worth of problems as a starter when your class enters the room. They would also make great homework. Students will need to work the problems on notebook paper, but depending on how you've given the assignment, they may need to circle their answer in their work or record it on the worksheet for easy grading.

There is also a blank sheet included, which could be used as a recording sheet or as a template to create your own weekly reviews.

As I said, this is the set for the first nine weeks, but my students will be doing it as a review from the first part of the year. Other sets will follow soon, and those will follow the same format. I hope you find these useful!

I'm off to get some sleep now!