This month, I'm participating in a blog challenge called Blaugust. To see the list of participating blogs, click on the logo above. I would encourage to you please cheer on our participants with either a tweet or a comment on their blog during this month. It can be hard to blog on a daily (or even regular) schedule! :) If you would like to join the blogging challenge, you can still sign-up anytime!
What a week!!! This was our first full week with students and I definitely had a few days where I needed multiple cups of coffee to get my through, but I'm super excited about this year!
While I definitely love the new start (and the new school supplies) that comes with teaching, I definitely forget how tiring it is to teach procedures. How to start class, how to end class, how to end the day, how to ask to use the restroom, how to clean up your area, how to check your homework, how to, how to, how to! But I also know that patiently teaching those procedures will pay off in the end :)
But now, on to the favorites of the week!
My Favorite Start to School
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posted last weekend a bit about the start of school and my usage of the YouCubed Week of Inspirational Math Videos. On Day 1 (last Friday), we did the first video, a reflection, and then started working on the 4 4s problem. This week, on Monday, I shared a summary of their 4 4s and challenged them to keep going. I also showed them the area where I keep track of their thinking each week. The 4 4s is the first time in the year that I've done this challenge that the week ended with some still being blank. However, I was pleased to see kiddos working on it in their spare time! Also on Monday, we watched video #3 and then on Tuesday/Wednesday (our block day), we watched video #5. I had *so many* students reflect on Monday about how powerful it was to be told that it's okay not to be fast in math! I shared some of my own struggles with being slow with math, specifically arithmetic and the anxiety of timed tests. Many of them nodded their heads as they remembered their own history with math anxiety...
My Favorite Number Talk
One of my goals this year is to work on number sense. In the YouCubed materials, one of the lesson plans refers to a Number Talk. Earlier in the summer, there had been talk of a book chat over Making Number Talks Matter, so with the support of a group of MTBoS teachers, I jumped in. In the picture, you can see our day to day progression from our first Number Talk on Monday through the last one on Thursday. Today, I had hoped to get one in with numbers but I needed to teach homework procedures, so the Number Talk got postponed. I love that by Thursday, they were VERY open to different ways of seeing things! One of the questions that a student last on their Video #1 reflection last week was about why they didn't always understand when the teacher explained something. I was able to use the Number Talks this week to share that each of us see things differently, so sometimes communication breaks down because people can only see things one way. Overall, Number Talks have already enriched my classroom and I can't wait to keep going!
My Favorite Forensics Lab
I haven't posted much about Forensics so far this year, mainly because I keep forgetting to take pictures! :) My co-teacher and I have really worked hard to develop some changes that will hopefully make this year run smoothly. This week, the students worked on their first "lab" where we teach them how to organize their data and how we want them to write their lab conclusions. Today we worked on making big poster-sized versions of their conclusions to walk them step by step through what we want, then on Monday, we'll do a Gallery Walk of their Claims - Evidence - Reasoning process. I'm really excited to see their finished products next week because so far, they are *rocking* it! Next week, we'll start working on observation skills and how to process a crime scene. :)
My Favorite Pretties
I know this is super silly, but for some reason, last week I got the hankering to make new labels for my binders. (You know - because I didn't have anything better to do - like, oh say, lesson plans!) Then, as we were setting up our INBs this week, I was really bummed by how blah the default composition notebook label was and decided my notebooks needed pretty labels too. :)
Maybe I'm finally at the school supply overload and have regressed back to finding happiness in the little things. I got a new lanyard with snap charms to switch out and that has made me crazy happy too. :) Hopefully I'm not the only one that goes through these phases!
And now, the weekend is here. I have a very lengthy to-do list that will be ambitious to get it all done, but for now I'm feeling really optimistic!
Happy Friday, all! :)
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