Sale, Peek, and Ta-Da!

Thanks Confessions of a Teaching Junkie for the button! 

Before we get this party started, I wanted to share about the sale going on at TPT today.  I'm sure you probably have heard that they are celebrating reaching 100,000 likes over on FB, so they have a promo code "FB100K" that will give an automatic 10% discount.  I'm joining a bunch of sellers, and put my store on sale for 20% off for today and tomorrow.  

Then, if you are on a "real" computer (not a mobile device) you might notice that things look slightly different around here.  Christy helped me out again to get some more buttons on here that MATCH! Instagram, Email, and a Bloglovin' Button - it's the little things that mean so much.  Thanks Christy!!   

   

Linking up with Mrs. Laffin's Laughings to share.  :)

This week we are reading a biography of the history of Wells and Fargo. 

 

To make connections to banking, I'm having my students use this Economy Checkbook from I Heart Recess to practice writing checks and understanding the workings of banks in general.

We made it to Multiplication - multi digits by 1 digit this coming week.  I'm using some task cards this week from Math Mojo.  Love the Halloween themed task cards that are perfect to add to my morning meeting and centers.  

 This week my mentor sentence book is I Need My Monster by Amanda Noll.  

I'm planning on using this activity from Copeland's Got Class in 3rd to have my kids brainstorm adjectives and to create their own monster story.  It is free!    

Last Friday my class painted their tissue boxes with the "setting" of their ecosystem diorama.  This week we are adding more detail with 3D animals and plants.  After they are done with creating, they will be labeling the predators, prey, consumer, and producers in their boxes.  

Have a wonderful week!    

Student Motivation: Using the Seasons

It's Saturday already?  It's been a crazy busy week.  Nothing like starting 2nd trimester off with a bang. 

This week has been a ton of fun - but the fun was also academic.  That's my student motivation today as I link up with Joanne over at Head Over Heels for Teaching.  

For example, yesterday my students completed Candy Corn Math to change it up a bit.  

We used Fifth in the Middle's math activity.  I highly recommend it!  It got them working in groups - having that "Math Talk" while they estimated, measured, compared, graphed, surveyed, and created patterns.  It was so much fun!  It took my 4th graders about an hour to tackle the entire thing.  

The prep was pretty easy - I just picked up a big bag of candy corn - and put 1/3 of a cup into a snack size plastic bag.  It easily made 8 bags.  Then the class formed groups of 4, and went to it.  I realized that my kiddos completely had forgot about how to set up a graph, so we had to do that part together... channelling the primary teacher in me.

I love to incorporate the seasons into my classroom.  I hope you have a great day!    

Morning Meeting and a Football Freebie

Hi everyone!  Hope you had a good day.  :)  

My class has been working on switching into "big" numbers when we are multiplying.  I made up 12 task cards to add to my morning math meeting.  They are free over on TPT.  

Side note - I love morning math meeting!  It's like "calendar" or "number of the day" when I taught primary.  It doesn't involve any copies to pass out - LOVE IT.  Anyhow, I use Tara's morning meeting pack as a daily review over key concepts, and I add other task cards of specific things that we are learning at that moment.  

The kids come in, get out their homework and put it on their desks, and then they head to the carpet with their whiteboards to solve the problems.  They get a head start going through the problems while I'm going desk to desk checking in homework.  I don't collect homework because we correct it together after morning meeting.  

During morning math meeting we go over the problems together, it's a mixture of the kids talking to each other to compare answers, and them doing the problems with me.    

I hope this freebie helps someone!