The One with Neon Decor: Monday Made It

Monday Made Its are one of my most favorite things about summer.  I look forward to them each week.  The teachers who participate share some amazing ideas.  I will confess that I don't get much done on Mondays because I spend hours and hours looking at everyone's posts.

Here are a few of my Monday Made Its for the week.

Our new curriculum for 6th grade focuses on team work.  I found this little acrostic in the curriculum and decided to create a poster to hang in my room as a constant reminder.  

I think the acrostic would work in any classroom, not just math.  It is available in my TPT store, if you would like to snatch it up.

I also painted these canvases to hang in my classroom.  They are 10x10

Please excuse the messy background.  

I followed this tutorial to make paper fans.  I then added my table number signs that I created on my computer.  I plan to hang these above each table.  

Leave a comment with your email address before 7PM on Tuesday and I will send you the table signs for FREE.

The One with the Long Class

I received my schedule last week for the upcoming year.  I will be teaching two sections of 5th grade math and two sections of 6th grade math.  With the current schedule no two classes are the same length of time.

Class One: 1 hour 40 minutes

Class Two: 1 hour 15 minutes

Class Three: 1 hour 20 minutes

Class Four: 1 hour 35 minutes

Because of the way students rotate I will have 6th grade during Class One and Class Four.  I will have 5th grade during Class Two and Class Three.  That will make my planning a little easier because at least my 6th grade classes are almost the same length.  Other teachers won't be so lucky.  Can you imagine having one 5th grade class for 1 hour 40 minutes and your other 5th grade class for 1 hour 15 minutes.

How do you plan for that?

Speaking of planning...1 hour 40 minutes.  That is completely overwhelming to me.  How do you plan for that much time.

I'm sure some of you would love to have that much time to teach math.

I came up with an idea this week that I'm pretty excited about it.

The 6th grade students that I will have next year have room for growth when it comes to Math.  I have gotten really excited to have them again and help them become better mathematicians.  We are going to track data and improve test scores and reach the stars.

I have pretty high expectations for this group of kiddos.

Because of that my current plan is to take the first thirty minutes of class to "play" games that will help improve their basic math skills.  I spent today looking for games online.  I found a several good ones on this site that I printed and laminated today.

And then I made one of my own and have plans for a few more.  This one is multiplication match.  It's now available in my TPT store.  The next one of my to do list is a division match.

I'm going to need a lot more games and activities to make it through the year.  What are your  favorite math games that you use in your classroom?  Any TPT sellers that have some great resources for this?

The One with the Website: Monday Made It

Happy Monday!

I had high hopes for today's Monday Made It.  The plan was to spend the day working in my classroom and have several cute projects to share with you.  I did spend six hours working in my classroom, but sadly most of my little projects did not go as planned.  

I was a little bummed, but I figure I got today out of the way and the next time I am there I can make some real progress.  

I did get one pretty big thing accomplished.

I updated my class website and have it ready to go for the new year.  

It's a very simple website.  I'm hoping that simple means I might actually keep it up to date all year.

The web address is www.weaversclass.weebly.com

I love weebly.  It is user friendly and free.

Do you have a class website? 

The One That Was Late: Monday Made It

On a  Tuesday.  

I had my post all ready to go and then completely forgot to publish it yesterday.

Oops!

I am happy to say that this past week has been a productive one for me.  Seeing how many days I have left until everything needs to be ready was just the kick in the pants I needed.

Most of the things I've been working on are lesson plans. I'm hoping to share some of the project and assessments I've created soon.

I did a few "fun" things.

Last year I made posters to display the 8 Standards for Mathematical Practices.  I found myself referring to these often throughout the school year.  My students even learned to recognize when they were putting them into action.  They would say "I really persevered today." or "He did that with accuracy."

It made my teacher heart happy.

I recreated them this year to match my new theme.  I also changed them up a bit to make them student friendly "I can" statements.

If you like what you see, you can check them out in my TPT store.

I finally got my hands on my class list last week so I made part of my door decorations.

This pin is my inspiration and sort of what I'm going for.

Esther G. has a fabulous number line in her TPT store for FREE.  I printed them off and cut them out.  Now I just need to laminate them and hang them up.  I love that they include negative numbers since I teach integers on the number line.  

And last but not least I made it by my classroom yesterday.  I wasn't there long, but I felt like I need to stop by and see my space again.  I made myself a short to do list of things that jumped out at me.  I'm hoping to spend a full day in there later this week because I have a pretty big painting project I want to tackle.

The One with the New Curriculum

My school uses Investigations for K-5 Math.  It has is pros and cons with one of the pros being that it is a set curriculum.  That is something I didn't have for 6th grade last year.  We purchased Mathalicious for 6-8 which is a great program, but it is not in itself a curriculum.  We found very quickly that it wasn't enough.  By the end of the first quarter we had abandoned that program and were putting our units together as we went.  

Not the idea situation.

Because of that I was thrilled when we adopted a new curriculum for the upcoming year.  We have decided to adopt College Preparatory Mathematics.

I haven't had a chance to dive into it as much as I would like, but so far I like what I see.

I really like the order in which it covers concepts.

It also seems to do an excellent job of tying several concepts together instead of isolating them.

I'm curious if any of you use this curriculum.  What do you like and dislike about it?

The One in July

It's time for another Currently with Farley. Jump over to her blog to play along with this fun linky party.