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 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.