The One Where They Return

I survived my first day back in the classroom after a glorious two week Christmas break.

I'm not going to lie.  It was HARD to hear that alarm this morning and get out of bed.  And I mean HARD!

Once I was dressed and ready to walk out the door, I felt good to go.

Can I just say how impressed I am with all of you that posted pictures on instagram of your fabulous lesson plans and creations?

I did none of that!

I finally sat down yesterday afternoon to start thinking about today's plans only to realize I brought absolutely nothing home to plan.  

NOTHING!

I knew I wanted to ease my students back into our routine.  I wanted something hands-on that wouldn't require too much thinking, but that would get those brain waves flowing again.

I remembered something I pinned a few weeks ago that was perfect.

This fractions, decimals, and percents, packet came from Miss Giraffe.

I sat the different activities up as stations and added a review with the teacher station.  The activities were simple enough that my students didn't struggle.  They brought back some ideas that we talked about before Christmas break.

It was seriously the best way to ease back into things.

Thank you so much for creating this packet, Miss Giraffe.  

Tomorrow we dive head first into Order of Operations.  

The One with Donors Choose & Math Centers

A couple of weeks ago we received our two ipods from my Donors Choose project.  My students could not have been more excited.

(Can you tell they are identical twins?)

I knew I wanted to use them as I planned stations for last week. 

 I created some task cards to review prime factorization with my students. Because the concept of prime factorization was still fairly new to my students, I tried to create a variety of task cards - some easy and some more challenging.  This allowed students extra practice but the students who caught on right away were not bored.

Students were able to use the ipods to self check with the QR codes.  

I seriously love QR codes - maybe even more than my students.

This set of 16 task cards is now available in my TPT store.

I have been making task cards like crazy lately.  I love task cards that are self check especially as a review for an upcoming assessment.

I also created some self check task cards to help my students practice GCF and LCM.

How fun are these?  My students seem to enjoy these almost as much as using the new ipods.

These are also available in my TPT store.

We do Centers every Wednesday because I have several students out for G/T.  This allows my students to get some extra practice and my G/T students aren't missing out on new content.  This means lots of creativity on my part to come up with new centers.  I'm sure it will get old eventually but right now I'm loving.

I just created these fall themed multiplication task cards.

As you can see I still need to cut them out.  We will be using these this week.  These are also available in my TPT store.

My students also LOVED our center with Factor Football.  

This game is a FREEBIE from Dots-N-Spots.  I am so glad I found this game.  It really is a great review for students.  I can't believe it is a FREEBIE because it is such a great resource.  Jump on over there are download it for yourself.  You won't regret it.

The One With the Decimals Game

My 5th graders have been studying decimals this week.

Today's plan was to play a little review game followed by a quiz.

My first class came in and we did just that.

We played the game that came with our curriculum.

I have to admit, I had looked at the game beforehand but I had not actually played it until today.  Because we had an odd number of students, I sat down to play with one of them.  

This game was not fun.  And more importantly I didn't feel like my students were really gaining anything from the experience.  So I did what any modern day teacher would do...

I searched Pinterest before my next class came in.

Aww.  Pinterest to the rescue.

I found this little game instantly.

Thank you Nicole Shelby for having this gem in your TPT store.

My students love anything where they can roll dice so I knew this would be a hit.

And it was!!

After the students started playing one of them came up with a brilliant idea.  He and his partner happened to receive three different colored dice so they assigned each color to a place value.

For example the white dice always gave them the ones place.  The red - the tenths and the green - the hundredths.

I LOVED this idea and even more so because it was a special-ed student who came up with the idea!

I immediately went around and made sure everyone had three different colors and were using this method.

Students highlighted the winner of each round as they went.  

I loved that not only did my lower students get some extra practice right before a quiz but because of the luck factor they were able to beat their opponent - even when they thought their opponent was more advanced.  

Great game!  Will definitely be keeping this one around for station work.

The One With the Bingo

A great bingo game is one of my favorite ways to review with my students. Teaching 7th grade, I have found that some years my students are all about it and some years they are too cool for Bingo.

This year's group enjoys playing it as long as we don't play too often. We played vocabulary bingo this week in Science as a way to review for the benchmark that is approaching all too quickly.

Right now they have a deal on bingo sets on one of my favorite websites www.zulily.com They have several different themes including science, weather, Texas, dinosaurs, nature, USA, dogs, ocean, wildflower, music, and several others.

They are pretty generic and could work for several grade levels. They are 9.99 plus shipping and come with 6 cards. I purchased the science kit. I think they could be used for a center or small group activity.

You have to be a member of zulily, but that's not a big deal. It's free. All you have to do is sign up. They have new inventory every day. It is primarily children's clothing, but they do have educational things pretty often. I have found that the educational things are geared toward younger kids, but you never know what you'll find.