I've been through a roller coaster the last few months! I had my beautiful and super smiley little girl, Baby L. I love her to death and her older sister loves her as well. The transition has been pretty smooth for K actually. We have visitors for quite a bit of my maternity leave, but I'm very thankful to have had the help around. Just before I was to go back to school, my precious grandpa passed away. I have not had to deal with death in my side of the family and it was, and still is at times, very difficult. Because of that, I extended my leave for a week.
The week I went back was a fabulous week *sarcasm* to go back. It was Halloween week, Red Ribbon Week with dress up days, full moon, and Parent/Teacher conferences. Let's just say I was exhausted by the time Friday came around.
This week I did my best to get the kids used to me and what our now normal routines are going to be. I also wanted to put into practice some of the things I've thought about while I've been away.
My social studies topic for this quarter is explorers. I had planned on doing a different project that we did last year. We were to begin this the my extra week off, so I wasn't quite ready when I had to go take care of family things. My wonderful sub and I were able to quickly put together this and I'm loving it! I still need to tweak a few things, but I'm glad we did it.
I came up with a list of required facts the kids had to find and at least 3 extra facts of their choice. I also gave them the freedom to decide how they wanted to present their information. Most students did choose to make a poster, but a few ventured into making iMovies. Today we watched the iMovies using Reflector. Tomorrow we will do a gallery walk with the other posters.
To help our staff become more comfortable with Kagan structures and not overwhelmed, we are doing a Kagan structure each month. In my intervention reading class, we used "Stand Up, Hand Up, Pair Up" to share their responses about things they collect. (We just started reading Donavan's Word Jar, and are using Mrs. Jones's book study.) They paired up three different times with someone who was not their neighbor, then sat back down.
I pulled out some partner plays from Deb Hanson to practice fluency. They loved the fun little stories! They also rolled their eyes at me when they had to read whatever part they were handed. That meant that a few of the boys had to be "Mom." They got over it and had fun it.
Here they were reading the plays from her Fall/Halloween plays.
In math, we have ventured back into using Gaggle to watch my lesson videos. I can now include exit ticket questions directly in the Gaggle assignment! I'm excited to see how it works out when we get to a lesson that doesn't need drawings in the answer. However, my workshop for when they are finished with the video needs some work. To help with it, I decided to whip up a basic "Number of the Day" to review basic things. After more decimal lessons, we'll move into using Teaching to Inspire with Jennifer Findley's "Of the Day" resources
Click to download my Free Number of the Day packet.
My sweet family at our school Halloween Safe Night Carnival
We have Rapunzel and a sweet strawberry.
My husband just wore his fire duty clothes, I was a last minute witch.
Linking up with Doodlebugs!
Thanks for stopping by! I will try to stop in myself a little more often with more things to share!
Keep Smiling!
*Steph*
