Snow Day!!

The weather outside is frightful... but the electric fireplace is so delightful! Lol.

Ahh... Tennessee winter weather. You do love to surprise even the best of weathermen, don't you.

I love this picture from one of the local news sites.

I also love that, since my husband is also a teacher, my whole family got out of school early today! Thank goodness that we both had a safe drive and the two of us and our little one are all piled up in the warmth of our living room.

And what's better than early dismissal? A snow day? Or even better, two?! Don't mind if we do!

So I'm taking the time off to work on a few major projects for school that have been halfway done for weeks now. The last couple of projects I've started have been major ones that I've been doing a little bit at a time as I needed them, but hopefully these snow days will let me get them finished up. My favorite (and the one I'm spending a chunk of time on today) is a weekly spiral math review homework set. I'm super excited about this one because I'm hoping it'll let me squeeze in some extra review of some skills from earlier this year that we've forgotten. Here's a sneak peek:

 And rumor has it that we're going to be out the rest of the week! I should be able to finish up these reviews while my little one is napping so that they're ready for the rest of the year!

Division with Unit Fractions Task Card Mini-Kit

Ah, January... You have this weird way of making teachers wish time would both speed up and slow down at the same time. Summer seems so far away, but those tests... they're so close now.

We have our first big assessment early next month. We're all a little bit worried this year about this year's writing test because this will be the first year our students have taken it on a computer. That brings a whole new element of stress with it. At the same time, we're scrambling to be ready in all of the other subjects.

How are your kids doing with division with fractions?

Mine have struggled. They're doing great with just working a problem. They're able to divide a whole number by a unit fraction or reverse it, but if I give them a word problem and ask them to write the problem themselves, that's a whole other issue. And number lines? Forget it!

Before our test last week, I decided to take a day to do some reteaching over these two skills. I created a task card mini-kit that we used to help review and practice after the lesson. Overall, it went well. I know I'm a little bit behind here, but I am loving the task cards, and so are my kiddos!

Since this is a mini-kit, there are only 8 cards, which meant that every kid solved every problem during the class period before we checked them. Below you can see one page of the cards.

I also created an answer sheet for this. I've found that if I tell my students to show their work on notebook paper, it's either very disorganized (we're working on this one!) or missing steps or an explanation. An answer sheet with places designated for these parts seems to solve that problem every time.

We took the test the day after this review, and I think it really helped some of my friends who were struggline quite a bit. To download this mini-kit from my TpT store, click on the cover photo above.

Monday Made It

This week's Monday Made It is a freebie. Trying to get ready for the new semester, I wanted to have my kids revisit the ideas of goal setting. Somehow, everything always seems to go so much smoother with a graphic organizer, don't you think? 

This is nothing fancy, but it did seem to help my kiddos organize their thoughts and think of reaching their goals in terms of steps along the way that would help them get there. 

You can download this freebie from my TPT store at http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Aim-for-the-Stars-Goal-Setting-Freebie-1052282.

And if you have any suggestions for creating links from an iPad, and especially for creating them from images, I'd be your best friend if you share :-)

Monday Made It!

SNOW DAY!!!

Well, not exactly. More like "really cold and wet day." Temperatures here will be down to around 5 degrees for the next couple of days, and since the roads are wet, everyone is flipping out, cancelling school, and buying out all the milk and bread the stores can stock.

Sigh. Winter in the South.

For the new year, I'd like to challenge myself.

One of my blogging buddies introduced me to an idea a few years ago that has stuck with me: Instead of creating a New Year's resolution (or even several resolutions) she creates one. Well, I guess she doesn't really create it. She chooses one. One word. That word becomes her theme for the year.

My word for the year: share.

Share more. Share more of my creations. Share more of my time. Share more of my self. Share credit (and blame... tee hee.) Share my thoughts. Just to share.

I think that too often we, and I mean human beings, forget to look outside of ourselves. No? Well, I know I do. My hope is that as I share, it will force me to think about others - how I can help, how I can connect, and how I can sometimes even advocate for those that need someone to share a voice.

I set up a TPT store a while back, and I started this blog, but I never add anything to either. Honestly, I love teaching and I love writing and creating. The thing is, I am still trying to get over a little bit of a fear I have of not creating quality "stuff." I am a little bit of a perfectionist, and I'm always afraid of not measuring up. As a result, when I have tried blogging in the past, I have published, deleted, revised, republished, and then deleted again sooooo many posts. I always end up with nothing to show for my efforts. Even this blog has 10 unpublished drafts right now. But this blog is the perfect place to share so many of my thoughts and creations, so it will be my starting point. I'd also like to share my time, but I'll get to how I plan to do that later. I don't have details quite fleshed out on that one yet.

My goal for this blog is to share at least one "something" a week that I have made or used with my kids. And to get started, I'm going to kick it off by sharing two things: 2 sets of task cards that I've made over Christmas Break and can't wait to use with my kids this week!

My school district has a very rigid structured pacing guide, which says that we will be doing some fraction review the first few days back. I decided to add some pizzazz to their lesson by making these task cards. As a bonus, when we're finished with the lesson, they'll go into our task card math station! I love when all that hard work leads to something that you can use multiple times! :-)

Many of these task cards are set up as word problems to reinforce the concept of fractions as division. There are also several cards included that are simple problems to solve or various ways of writing division.

I set up one of the recording sheets so that students would only solve six problems. I've also included a recording sheet that has room for all 24 cards. I don't want to overwhelm my ESOL or Special Needs students, so I may give them the 6 problem sheet copied front and back.

I also included an answer key so that whether we use this set in a group or at a center, it can be self-checking.

The other set of task cards (addition and subtraction of unlike fractions) is set up the same way, but includes 20 word problem cards so that not only are students practicing addition and subtraction with fractions, they're also having to apply critical thinking to reason through the word problems.

To purchase either of these task card sets, just click on the cover photo to visit my TPT store.

Did you make any New Resolutions that you'd like to share?

And they're off!

Wow! Between the beginning of a new school year, moving to a new school and setting up my classroom, and oh yeah, did I mention having an 8 month old daughter? My head is constantly swimming in all that I have to do and keep up with.

Breathe. This too shall pass.

With regards to my new digs, I love it! My students face a completely different set of challenges than my students have for the past 7 years, but their challenges are every bit as real and as difficult. I know this may sound odd, but that is one of my favorite parts of teaching - getting to know my kids and seeing what challenges they have that I can try to help them learn to overcome.

The administration is wonderful and very supportive, and I feel like their goal truly is to help their teachers grow to be equipped with the tools to face those challenges.

But my main challenge... well, they can't put more hours in the day, can they?

Sigh. I was afraid that would be a no..

New Year, New School, New Blog

My entire seven years of teaching has all been in one school, and as much as I loved my students and coworkers there, when I had my daughter in January, it brought about some major changes in my life. One of those changes was that I no longer found the 40 minute drive to and from work to be my mental preparation/unwinding time, and started to feel like it was another barrier to being with my precious baby. So I left.

It was a very emotional decision, but through the tears, I knew it was what was best for me and for my family at this time. I prayed over it, my husband and I talked about it, but there were no offers from other school districts. There weren't even any calls to schedule interviews.

But I knew.

Somehow, I knew that I was not supposed to return this year.

And then contracts came out, and I was faced with a very big decision.

On the one hand, signing my contract guaranteed me a job, and that security sure did seem important with a sweet baby to care for. And I did love my students. And I did have wonderful coworkers, who I would miss if I left. So maybe this was Heavenly Father's way of showing me that I needed to stay. Maybe the lack of response to my application was my sign that I had misunderstood.

Or maybe not. Maybe this was a test. Or maybe the timing wasn't right. Or maybe I just needed to learn to trust that nagging feeling that kept telling me over and over "Don't sign. This is not where I want you." And the feeling got stronger and stronger, and the voice came to a fever pitch the day contracts were due.

But security won out. Well, security and my husband's rational explanation that not only would signing give me that security, but if I did find something, I could get out of my contract.

So I signed, but still, I knew.

Every time I thought about being back, it just felt wrong. And every time I thought about being somewhere else, I felt a peace that just told me something was on the horizon and to wait a little bit longer.

So a few weeks ago, I was offered a position in the county where I live at a school 15 minutes away with an on-site daycare. It's about 5-10 minutes from where I grew up, and it's my absolute dream position: teaching math and science in 5th grade!

But the strangest part: when I started looking, I just knew this would be the school, regardless of the fact that there are probably 30 elementary schools in the district and 5 of them are closer to me.

Clearly, this is where I'm supposed to be, even if I'm not 100% sure why yet. :-)