Friday Link up and My Very FIRST Freebies!

So I am linking up again with TEACHING MADDENESS and DOODLEBUGS TEACHING for their Friday linky parties. Click on their names and link up with us!

1. Well the first thing I am sharing is completely not teacher related. Today is the anniversary and mine and my hubby's first date 11 years ago! We were going to go to dinner and a movie with another couple to celebrate but, like a lot of bloggers out there, today's weather was less than travel worthy ( although no early release or snow day here) and so just the two of us went. We had dinner at Ruby Tuesday's ( turkey avocado burger = SO GOOD!) and then did a little shopping before coming home. 

Kelly (aka The Hubs) is laughing in this picture. He doesn't like it, but I look best in this one so this is the one I am using. Haha!

2.  On Monday the kiddo's had no school but the teachers did. We had all day PD on math. The speaker ( David Coffey) gave us an "alien" math problem that we had to solve. He slowly gave us more pieces to it and thankfully one of my grade level partners is ridiculously smart and has a head for those sorts of things. He was able to explain it to us and it definitely made more sense. The whole point of the excersize was to put us in the shoes of our students. This made us see that we really need to give our students time to talk through problems with each other and that we needed to be more explicit in our teaching. 

 

Each grade level made a poster about what we did, what it meant, and what can we do now. I wish I had taken a picture of the 4th grade teams poster. They had this really funny narrative about their experience. Very clever. 

3. So after that math day I have been trying to give the kiddo's more opportunities to chat with each other about their math. We have been doing some whole brain teaching strategies ( mirror and teach in particular).  I am also working on coming up with a how- to writing for solving a math problem, as our speaker also talked about getting the kids to explain their thinking and also writing, writing, and more writing in math. 

The pictures I have are not of that though, it's of a few of my peanuts during math station time. 

 These are the wrap ups that come with our math curriculum. ( We use Saxon math.) We have a new fact focus every 5 lessons. We start with addition facts and then move to subtraction. When we get there we have these awesome wrap ups to help our students practice their facts. 

On one side are numbers through 0- 13 ( or higher the higher up the number you are subtracting). I call each one a key because its kind of shaped that way. They start with the first number on the key and subtract the large number in the middle from it and pull the string over to the answer. On the back side of the key are raised areas where , if done correctly, the string should match up. When they have answered each one they flip it over and self correct. 


Another thing they LOVE is to play BUMP. I think everyone knows about BUMP, but in case you don't, it involves students rolling dice and then adding ( or multiplying if you teach a higher grade) those numbers together. They use a uni-fix cube to mark their space. Its called BUMP because you can bump your opponents cube off their space if they only have one on the square. They love this game and I change the board out seasonally so it's almost like they have a new game every month. The one they are playing with is from Sunny Days. It is a free item and you can get yours HERE. One of the best things about BUMP is that a lot of them are free, including this little gem here. I get most of my BUMP games from her. 

4. Today we made our winter stained glass. We make these every year. You can check out my original post with instructions HERE. They turned out beautifully I think. 

The final product ( minus the 3 who were absent today). And yes, you can see me in the window. 

5. FINALLY! I am SUPER excited to share with you two freebies! My grade level team and I went through our common core standards during our PLC time in the fall and came up with 5 priority standards. One of them was to retell a story using the main idea and 5 key details in order. Another was to retell a story using story elements. We use Open Court for our reading comprehension program. The tests that they have are not conducive to those priority standards. So I made us some to use. Then I actually got around to putting them on Teachers Pay Teachers today and, do you know the most exciting part?! Each one has already been downloaded 5-6 times! I used a border by Krista Wallden which you can find HERE. 

NOW! I am obviously a newbie to this. SO if you see something that I should do differently PLEASE let me know. I pretty much figure out this stuff on my own through trial and error. It took me a ridiculous amount of time to figure out how to add a border in the first place and now I have forgotten so I will have to re-teach myself. *Sigh* 

These are the posters that I made to help teach these concepts. We went back and forth with our assessments for awhile so they could get the hang of them. Now we discuss both, but "surprise " them with the one we assess with. To make these I took colored chart paper and laminated it. Nothing too fancy but it gets the job done and I can reuse them. 

You can check out these freebies  HERE!!!!!!!!! 

PHWEW! What a LOOOOOOONG post. It also took me a ridiculous amount of time ( must be the theme for the day) to post this because I was looking up and listening to GLEE performances on youtube at the same time. Oh well, at least it will still really be Friday when I link up. 

Enjoy your weekend bloggy friends!