Category: Education

Happy Thanksgiving From 4th Grade

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Happy Thanksgiving blog friends. It has been a wonderful day for my family and myself, so I really hope your day has been fantastic too. Even though we are on Thanksgiving break, and when we get back to school on Monday the holiday festivities will begin, I still wanted to share with all of you the fun things we did at school and the great resources I found.

For our school, we only had classes on Monday and Tuesday this week, so it was a quick couple of days. Because it was such a short week, I didn’t really want to start anything new in reading or math so I had 2 days to fill.

On Monday we spent our reading time working on our letter writing skills. I wanted to implement the theme of thankfulness into the week so my plan was to write thank you letters to our Scholastic book sponsors. Every month, Scholastic book clubs have $1.00 books. This past summer I was looking for anyone who would be willing to donate $9.00 so one student in my class could get a free book every month. I was fortunate enough to find 24 sponsors so each of my kiddos have the chance to get a free book every month this whole school year. The kiddos were all super excited to give their thanks and share a little about themselves to their sponsors. The writing took most of our reading time and the rest of our “down time” during the day but it was so worth it! I’ve sent out a few of the letters so far and the response from my friends and family is amazing. They think it’s super sweet that these kids wrote to them to thank them for their kindness.

For math Monday (and Tuesday) I wanted to do something fun. We finished our 2nd math unit last week so I didn’t want to start anything new when the kids won’t be back for almost a week. I decided to search TPT for Thanksgiving math activities and created 8 different Thanksgiving themed math stations for them to do throughout the 2 days. I had small groups of 3 and gave them 15 minutes at each station. They got to 4 on Monday and 4 on Tuesday. I wanted to review the skills we’ve learned so far this year so my activities ranged from multiplication to place value.

The best part about all of these activities is that they are all FREE!! The first activity I found was from Elementary Excellence’s page. The students did 2 different Thanksgiving Math Problem Solving sheets. They had calculate how much food they would need in order to serve dinner to 40 people.

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The 2nd activity was a multiplication game called Thanksgiving Multiplication 5-in-a-row I found on Teacher’s Planet‘s page.

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Activity 3 was a super fun and cute craft called the Turkey Craftivity from More Time 2 Teach. Students solved math problems that were written on turkey feathers. They then got to color a turkey and the feathers to make a math turkey!

The 4th activity was a perimeter and area problem solving sheet called the Turkey Farm made my Mr Frasier. The students were given different perimeter and area problems while they drew out the dimensions of an ideal turkey farm.

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The next activity was a multiples/skip counting activity. Students connected dots that were numbered with multiples of 3 to create a turkey. It was super cute and fun and who doesn’t love connecting dots? I found this activity called Skip Count by 3 Thanksgiving Turkey on Mister Reed’s store.

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Activity 6 was non other than missing factor Thanksgiving task cards. I LOVE task cards and use them all the time! Students worked together to solve 24 different multiplication and division problems that had missing factors. I got this activity from Renee B – City Girl in Third.

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The 7th activity was a problem solving sheet with a variety of 4th grade math problems. The fun part to this activity was that they gave 2 options for the answer for each problem. Each of the 2 answers had a different color. Based on what answer the student got, they used the color correlated on the sheet to color by number a turkey. If they got all of the answers correct the turkey would look like the picture below. If they got an answer wrong, something would be colored incorrectly. The activity was called 4th Grade Thanksgiving Math Color by Number and can be found on Mathmatic Fanatic’s page.

Finally, my last station was multiplication bingo with me, because who doesn’t love bingo?

They did super well both days on these activities and had a blast.

Tuesday morning, before our math stations, we worked on writing again. I handed out a fun writing template that had the words “I am thankful for…..” in the center of the page. I shared with the students what I’m thankful for. One of my teacher friends gave me this AMAZING idea for a poster. I hung it up for them all to read. They felt so special to see their name and I had so much fun watching them react.

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I then had them watch a Kid President Youtube video on things to be thankful for. They then spent the next 25 minutes writing out everything they’re thankful for! I told them that I wasn’t going to collect or grade their writing. Their job would be to bring it home and share their writing with their friends and family. They worked so hard on these and were super excited to bring them home to share.

After our second day of math stations, we finished our afternoon with both Charlie Brown Thanksgiving cartoons. It was a great ending to a fun short week.

I am exhausted (and I’m really sorry if some of this doesn’t make any sense) and ready to get a nap in before the fun of Black Friday shopping begins! Happy Thanksgiving everyone, I hope you had a wonderful day. It’s this day that makes me remember how thankful I am for my life and for my job. I love being a teacher and love being able to share our class with you.

 

For more day to day action, go follow our class Instagram page @lifeoftherookieteacher

 

Turkey Trouble

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Today and yesterday we did one of my FAVORITE activities of the year (and my favorite Thanksgiving activity!)

Yesterday, I read the book Turkey Trouble by Wendi Silvano. The book is about a turkey who doesn’t want to be eaten for Thanksgiving dinner so he dresses up in different animal disguises to hide the fact that he’s a turkey. When I finished reading the story I asked them to think of what they would disguise their turkey as so it wouldn’t be eaten for dinner.

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They then took those ideas and wrote a short story about what their turkey dressed up as so they wouldn’t be eaten. They were SUPER creative! I told them they had to write at least a 5 sentence paragraph and I had kids writing 5-8 page stories! We have spent so much time working on our writing skills so it was nice to see that they were able to put our lessons to good use.

Today, we did part 2 of the project (AKA the part that I LOVE!) I gave each student a picture of a turkey on a white piece of card stock and told them to disguise their turkey just like they did in their stories. I put out construction paper, glue, and scissors and set them to work. I didn’t give any direction because I wanted to see their most creative work. They did amazing and the turkeys turned out so cute!!

These are all awesome but here are some of my favorites!

Harry Potter
A Clock
Stefon Diggs
Thing 1
Remi from Ratatouille
An iPad
Mario

These were all super fun but my top 3 favorites were Groot, a grandma, and me! Ha, yep one of my students disguised their turkey as me!! It was hilarious!

It was a fun couple days! I love this project so much because they always turn out so adorable and it puts everyone in the Thanksgiving mood. The only down side to the past few days has been the smell of my students…..my boys have begun to think that it’s fun to have farting contests throughout the day. I had to have a fun talk with them about bodily functions and self control. Oh 10 year old boys can be fun.

 

For more day to day action and lessons, go follow my teacher instagram page @lifeoftherookieteacher!! You won’t regret it!

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Tenured then Masters or Masters then Tenured?

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Recently I’ve come across a dilemma that I didn’t think I’d have to think about for at least another few years. That dilemma is when to start my Masters program.

I am currently in my 3rd year of teaching and my 2nd year at my current district. In Minnesota a public school teacher has to teach at their district for 3 full years and be contractually hired for their 4th year before they are officially tenured. Earlier this week I heard from a friend that her and another (tenured) teacher were looking into starting their Masters programs next year and wanted to create a cohort with younger teachers from our school. They reached out to me to see if I’d be interested and it ignited a series of questions and thoughts in my mind that I didn’t think I’d have to worry about or think about for awhile.

I didn’t think that starting my Masters would even be an option for me at this point in my career. Growing up as a teacher’s kid I’ve heard the stigma behind getting your Masters before your tenured in Minnesota. I always grew up with the notion that you don’t go for your Masters in Education until your tenured. In the past, it has been known that if you do have your Masters, or are in the process of taking classes towards it, school districts will let you go because you might cost them more money. My mom is in her 24th year of teaching and said that she wasn’t able to think about her Masters until she was tenured because she knew she would not have a job if she did.

Currently, at least in Minnesota, a lot of schools are now offering a 5 year program that gives students the opportunity to graduate after those 5 years with their Bachelors and Masters in education. Many of my classmates (from high school) have recently graduated from some of these schools and have gotten jobs without a problem. My college did not have this program, so I didn’t even know this was a thing until after I graduated and had my first teaching job.

After getting the email from my fellow teachers, I started wondering if this was even possible for me. I talked to one of my close friends (who was also part of the original email) and she suggested I talked to our principal. We have a new principal and a new superintendent so she suggested I reached out to find out the new policies on the process.

I talked to my principal and found out that he is totally for whatever I want. He talked to me and told me that the stigma I grew up learning about wasn’t true anymore. He told that me that if I think I can handle it, there’s no reason why I shouldn’t go for it.

What do all of you think? My whole blog is based on being a rookie teacher and I definitely feel like one now because I don’t know what to do. When did you get your Masters in education? Was it before or after you were tenured? What is your advice for me?

After I heard this great response from my principal, I started to get super interested and excited that this is a possibility for me at this point in my career. The only thing is, I’m kinda nervous to get this all going! I could really use some experienced advice.

 

For more day to day action and activities, go follow my teacher/class’s Instagram page @lifeoftherookieteacher!

Adjective Aliens and Nighttime Aligners

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Happy Friday!!

This year I am currently teaching grammar to my class along with 2 other classes. When I was growing up I HATED grammar so as the sole teacher teaching grammar to 75 students this year, I wanted to make it as exciting as I possibly could.

This week started the second round of grammar with my class. We are started this round by focusing on adjectives. Now these kids should have been working with adjectives since they were in kindergarten BUT for some reason adjectives, adverbs, even verbs and nouns are hard for them all to remember.

Yesterday we started by reviewing what nouns are followed by practicing describing nouns, AKA using adjectives. I then went on Youtube and played the School House Rock “Unpack your Adjectives” song. I shared with them how I listened to that song and watched that music video when I was their age and sang along with them.

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Once we finished reviewing nouns and adjectives I handed out an adjective challenge worksheet I found for free on A Classroom for All Seasons‘ TPT store. They had to fill out all the adjectives they could think of that fit certain categories.

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Today we did a quick review on what we talked about yesterday and then I handed out a fun activity I found on Pinterest when I searched “adjective activities.” They got to create their own “Adjective Alien.” They each got a sheet that had them fill in different adjectives to describe how many body parts their alien would have and what certain body parts would look like on their alien.

Once they finished filling out their sheet, they got to draw their own alien based on their information sheet. It was so fun and they were so cute! It was a nice easy way to end our Friday.

It was a long week and I’m so happy it’s the weekend. A fun cold has been going around the classroom and I finally caught it. I am ready to lay on my couch all weekend!

Sidenote: My Smile Direct Club nighttime aligners have officially come in the mail and I’m 10 months closer to my teeth being straight again!

 

For more day to day lessons and activities, go follow my school/teacher instagram account @lifeoftherookieteacher!!

Merry Halloween

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Happy post Halloween week friends. I know Halloween and teaching don’t always go hand in hand but I’ve learned that if you embrace the day for what it is, you can still have a successful day of school. I knew what standards/lessons I had to teach the day of Halloween so I did some major planning on how to make it valuable but fun. (We also had some fun activities mixed in that was just for the excitement of the day!)

Kiddos entered the room and had 2 different Halloween morning work sheets ready for them to work on. I got these 2 free morning work sheets on TPT. One sheet was a Halloween word search from Melissa Fjal – Tales of Teaching‘s store. There are a ton of free word searches to download but I thought this was the perfect one for the age of my kids. I also had a Halloween secret message sheet for them to fill out that I got from D Conway‘s store. They were both huge hits and kept my kids silent for the first 10 minutes of the day (which they’re supposed to do every other day with their morning work but it’s NEVER silent.)

 

 

We then had our daily morning meeting. We talked about the day and then went around to share what they were going to be for Halloween. I always start the day with a game so they asked if I had a Halloween game for them after they shared their costumes. I had 24 different Halloween charade cards that they got to pick from. We then played rounds of Halloween charades throughout the day. They LOVED this and it was super easy for me to set up.

Reading this week was all about finding the author’s purpose of stories and texts while also talking about similes and metaphors. We read one of my FAVORITE Halloween books, Creepy Carrots by Aaron Reynolds and Peter Brown and found the author’s purpose of the story (which wasn’t too difficult for them but it was fun!)

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After the story we went around the room and completed some Halloween simile and metaphor task cards (that I got for FREE on Teaching with a Mountain View‘s shop ). They thought had so much fun reading all of the different themed cards and totally grasped the different between similes and metaphors.

 

 

Math this week was all about prime numbers and multiplicative comparison stories. I searched the glorious TPT and found a FREE resource that fit BOTH of what we have been working on from I HEART 4th Grade‘s store. It was perfect.

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I am currently teaching grammar to 3 different 4th grade classes and wanted to spice up our lesson on sentence fragments. This was the 3rd time I taught this lesson and wanted to do something similar that I did with my first 2 classes. The first 2 classes did some sentence fragment task cards so I found Halloween sentence fragment task cards for $3.00 on Purple Palmetto‘s store for this group. Once they were done they did a Halloween themed mad lib to practice nouns, verbs, and adjectives.

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Finally, the day ended with the Charlie Brown classic, The Great Pumpkin. I LOVE that movie and show it every year, not just for them, but for me too!

 

 

I also got the pleasure of giving them their second sponsored Scholastic book that came in the mail. They were so excited and grateful for the free gift. Like I said last month, the dollar monthly Scholastic Book Club books are amazing and a blessing. My kids get a free book every month while learning about who their sponsor is and how they are related to me. It was so sweet to see their happy faces. It was the perfect ending to the day.

 

 

I jokingly told them if they brought me candy (specifically Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups) I would give them extra credit. Then this happened today….

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I love my job!

Don’t get me wrong after yesterday I was EXHAUSTED and am so happy it’s the weekend, but I had a blast with the day. I love my class. They make everything much more enjoyable and less stressful. With the end of Halloween means the beginning of my favorite 2 months of the year!! The next couple of months will be filled with so many fun activities and lessons that I can not wait to do and share! To get you all in the mood for the most wonderful time of the year, I’d like to share my wonderful tree that, yes, I put up last night because I love Christmas so much! Happy weekend!

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For more day to day activities and lessons, go follow my class instagram account @lifeoftherookieteacher. You won’t regret it!

 

Fall break and pumpkins – What could be better?

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It may be Wednesday but it feels like Friday to me. We are starting our fall break, which is also known as MEA break here in Minnesota (Minnesota Educator’s Association break) so I have the next 2 days off!

Kids only had 2 days this week and we, as teachers, had 2 and a half days. Because they only had 2 days, I didn’t really want to do a whole lot so I tried to make them as much fun (and low key) as possible.

On Monday we pretty much spent the day talking about letter writing and started our 1st pen pal letters of the year! If you followed me last year, you know that my class had a set of pen pals from a school up north in Minnesota (about 3 hours away from our school.) One of my friends from when I was really little teaches up there and we’ve recently reconnected when we both got into teaching. We thought it would be super fun if we had our kids connect through letter writing. Last year my kids were 3rd graders writing to her 4th graders and now this year, my 4th graders are writing to her 3rd graders. (We pretty much flopped grades!)

My kiddos LOVED it! I found a free, off of TPT, an introductory pen pal kit for them to use. Last year I learned that writing these letters were not the easiest thing for them to do. I got this kit from Primary Queen‘s store to be super helpful! It was super fun!

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Yesterday I was hoping for an even more relaxed day. The other 4th grade teachers shared the awesome idea with me about how they were going to be showing Because of Winn Dixie so I decided to copy their idea. While they were watching the movie, which pretty much took of most of the time they spent with me, they worked on a fun pumpkin/Halloween project to spice up the back of our room! I let them create their own creative pumpkin to hang on their display number. I gave them each a piece of black, orange, green, and white paper and told them to make a pumpkin. That was the only direction I gave. They then went off on their own and did awesome! There pumpkins were so cute!

My Top favorites were these two cuties!

But these two were my ABSOLUTE favorites!! “The Green Lantern Pumpkin” and “Colonel Sanders the Pumpkin.”

This was such a fun project and their ideas were amazing.

The reason I wanted relaxed days was because I had to prep for conferences. We had our first round of conferences for the year which are always goal setting conferences. They were after school both Monday and Tuesday and then also this morning. Because of that, I was exhausted by the end of Monday night. Luckily my families are supportive so they were pretty easy. I can’t lie though, I’m glad they’re over.

 

This is also super random but I wanted to share something that I’ve decided to try. When I was 11 I got braces, you know like most preteens. The funny thing about my mouth, however was that they were on until I was 16. It was rough. Even after 5+ years of braces, my mouth is already starting to go back to the way they were before my years of teenage torture.

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Because of that, I decided I was going to try one of the Invisalign knock off companies. I looked into Smile Direct Club and decided to get molded for nighttime wearing aligners and a set of retainers when I’m done with the journey. The molding kits were easy to use and the whole process took me about 20 minutes. I will now be sending the whole kit back and my aligners should be back to me in 2 weeks. My fingers are crossed that my teeth FINALLY straighten up and stay that way!

 

 

For more day to day action and more detailed lessons and project examples, go follow my teachers instagram account @lifeoftherookieteacher!

Book Clubs, Tug-a-War, and M&M’s

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I went into this week thinking it’d be a normal week, but I forgot, normal weeks don’t exist as a teacher. We did some fun activities that I thought would be fun to share!

Tuesday our first Scholastic book orders came in the mail. I’m trying something new this year. The Scholastic Book Club has a book a month for specific grade levels that are only $1.00. Last year, a bunch of teachers in my area were asking for donations from friends and family on Facebook to sponsor a child in their class. They were asking for individuals to donate $9.00 so they could buy a student in their class 1 $1.00 book a month for the whole year. I was apprehensive because I HATE asking anyone for money so I didn’t participate. I saw how much of a success it was for the classes that participated last year and thought I would give it a try this year to see what would happen. My friends and family were AMAZING. I got a full class worth of donations within a day.

This past Tuesday our first $1.00 book set came in. Each student got the book Frindle by Andrew Clements with a note inside saying who their sponsor is for the year and how they are connected to me. It was so adorable to see how grateful they were when they found out a stranger donated enough money for them to each receive a free book every month. It was also super cute to hear, “My sponsor is Miss Nygaard’s mom!” or “My sponsor is Miss Nygaard’s favorite cousin!” It made my day! My friends and family LOVED to see this picture and LOVED to hear how excited they were!

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Just look at how cute they are!

Last week we had our annual grade level race (that is usually a Homecoming Friday activity but was postponed due to poor weather.) The sad part was that by the time we ran (on the makeup day), it was cold and raining so we had to cut the afternoon fun short. What we usually do as a grade level after the race is have a grade level class tug-a-war tournament. Each class plays tug-a-war against every other class in their grade. Last year, when I taught 3rd grade, my class literally lost EVERY round but one, (and they only won that round because the PE teachers joined their team) it was tragic. This year, my class DOMINATED! We won every round except for 1. We only lost to the class that got 1st place who won every round. I went from having a class that was dead last, to a class that ended up being the runners up! It was awesome! They were so into it and I LOVED it! It was just as much fun for me as it was for them!

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Today I wanted to end the week with something fun. It’s Friday, who doesn’t want to do something fun? For math, we had to end our first unit reviewing bar graphs. They’ve been working with bar graphs since kindergarten so I wanted to make it fun for them. I pulled an activity I did with my 3rd graders last year (when I also taught bar graphs) that was all about graphing M&M colors. They were so excited when they found out we were working with M&M’s. You’ve probably either heard of this activity, or have done this activity before but it’s fun nonetheless. Some even said they have done this activity before with M&M’s or Skittles but they were hyped to do it again!

Yep, this kid is eating his M&M’s with no hands…..

I found this awesome (free) TPT worksheet from Thomas Teachable Moments‘ shop that guides them through everything! Once they finished the activity, they made their own bar graphs (as their assignment.)

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Yesterday we talked about frequency tables. Students went around and found data on a question of their choosing to create their own frequency table. Today, they took that data to make their own bar graph. They thought it was awesome. It was a little chaotic but my kiddos are resilient and did a phenomenal job. Seriously, these kids are awesome.

It was a fun week but I’m exhausted. To make it even more exhausting, it’s been raining and cloudy the past few days and then today, we saw our first snow flakes of the season. I’m now sitting on my couch (drinking some wine) with candles lit and the snow falling. It feels like it’s the middle of the winter but it’s only October….only in Minnesota.

 

For more day to day action and live videos (which got featured in the #teacherlife’s story on Instagram today) go follow my teacher Instagram page @lifeoftherookieteacher! Today I posted on my story an ADORABLE writing response one of my kiddos wrote about when the prompt was “What do you want to be when you grow up?” and he wrote he wanted to be a teacher. His response will make you smile! Go check it out!!

Crazy Scheduled Week

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I’m a day late but I’m here to share so many different things that happened this week. This is a week that was fast but long at the same time. The week itself went by fast but the days themselves seemed like they lasted forever.

Monday and Tuesday were normal days and went by relatively fast. Wednesday was insane! On Wednesdays, teachers have to be in PLC meetings for an hour, which ends up going 15 minutes past when school starts. For those 15 minutes, students go to the gym and have a mini assembly with our school counselors. It’s a great thing in theory but students leave this assembly hyped and it usually takes another 15 minutes to get them settled in for the day. That right there takes up 30 minutes of our Wednesdays. This past Wednesday I was stressed because I was supposed to be having my 1st observation of the year with my new principal. Luckily, my class was awesome and calmed down right away (I also may have put the fear of behaving in them ahead of time but that’s beside the point.) I had this great lesson for my observation but my principal warned me he might be a little late. I waited as long as I could for him but eventually had to start teaching without him there. He ended up walking in as soon as my lesson was over and my students were doing the activity that went with the lesson.

Later that day we had our make up race that we had to postpone from last Friday due to weather. We had our races scheduled for the afternoon. The morning was beautiful but, of course, it started to rain when we went out for our race. After the running, we have a grade level tug-a-war tournament. Each class goes against every other class until we have the tug-a-war champions. This and the race take about an hour and a half. Because of this, I obviously didn’t have our afternoon planned. Because of the weather, we were only outside for the race and had to cancel the tug-a-war. That meant that when we went back inside, we had an hour to kill that wasn’t planned. We had a snack and did some cleaning. I then read to them for the remainder of our day.

**Side note: If you are a teacher, or have kiddos around the age of 10, I have the PERFECT read aloud suggestion for you!! The book series is called The Land of Stories written by Chris Colfer. It’s about these 11 year old twins who fall into their grandma’s fairy tale book (called the land of stories) and have to find their way home. They go through this crazy journey while also meeting their favorite fairy tale characters. The best part is this is a 6 book series. The past few years I’ve read the first 3 books to my classes and they have LOVED it. They get so hooked they want to read the second half of the series to themselves. Seriously, go look it up! It’s also super funny and has a lot of adult humor hidden inside so it makes it entertaining to the adult reader as well.**

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Thursday was a semi-normal day. The only change was that in the afternoon we had our annual walkathon during our kids’ specialist time. Our walkathon is our fundraiser for school activities, playground equipment, app subscriptions, etc. Students are asked to ask 5 different people to donate $5.00 to help their school (we call this “Strive for 5.”) They then spend one hour on our walkathon day walking around the track at our local high school (which is the backyard of our elementary school) as their way to make the most of the money the donated. In my opinion, it’s a fun fundraiser and gives the kids a chance to do something to help their school. They aren’t required to donate any money (which I like because I hate asking anyone for money) but they all get to participate in the walk. It’s a great class bonding activity and a great way to get everyone in the school active for a day. Teachers are asked to walk for half of the hour their students are out there. I love that part. It’s so fun to just talk to your students without worrying about teaching or meeting any standards. At the very end of the grade’s time, our phy ed teachers lead them through a couple different dances to do all together. We did the Cupid Shuffle and the Hokie Pokie. It was so fun!

Friday was an early release for the students so we could have an afternoon of staff development (focusing on our individual growth plans for the year….so much fun) so it was another crazy day. I wanted to do something fun since we didn’t have as much time for things as normal. I decided that we were going to do some major multiplication facts review.

Last year in 3rd grade, they learned all about multiplication. The only problem was that after the summer, some don’t remember their facts. We needed to review these so I thought a half day would be the perfect day to do this.

I set up 4 different multiplication stations for us to do instead of our usual new math lesson. Before we did any stations we played a multiplication “I have, who has” game (I bought the game for $2.25 from TchrBrowne’s store.) I timed them so we could have a starting point on how fast they could get through the game with their basic facts. I then split them into 4 different groups to switch between 4 15 minute stations. The stations included; multiplication bingo with me, an October multiplication packet (First Tries and Sunny Skies store), a choice between 2 different multiplication games (Multiplication Squares from Flying through Fourth‘s store and Multiplication Connect 4, also from Flying through Fourth ‘s store), and 2 different multiplication IXL assignments done on their iPad.

Once we finished the stations we played “I have, “who has” again and they dropped their time by a whole minute. They did awesome! My plan is to continue this game throughout the year so they become experts at their facts.

This week was fast but slow. The crazy days Wednesday-Friday threw it all off. It’s weird because days when the schedule is different, it should seem faster, but in reality the day is so much slower.

I am exhausted and ready to sleep in tomorrow as late as possible. I honestly can’t wait, however to be back on Monday. I love this class. They are so amazing and sweet. I have had 2 hard classes (each hard in their own way) the past 2 years, so this year, compared to that, these kids are a piece of cake. Happy weekend friends!

 

For more day to day action, pictures, and videos, go follow my teacher instagram page @lifeoftherookieteacher!

Task Cards for the Win!

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Happy Friday! It’s been a fun and crazy filled week! This week was Homecoming, so that added an extra crazy twist on the week.

Monday I started a “review” of multidigit subtraction with regrouping. This is something that I taught last year to them when they were in 3rd grade. Of course I assumed that this would be an easy review math lesson and that they would be bored out of their minds because they would remember everything they learned last year. Ha. I’m laughing at my naiveté just thinking about it.

I went through correcting their assignment and wow…..they BOMBED. During my “review” lesson, they acted just how I thought they would. They were looking at me like they could fall asleep any second. I honestly thought they were so bored that they would go home and tell their parents about how math is too easy and they aren’t being challenged. I felt comfortable doing only a few practice problems together before setting them off to work alone.

When I saw how poorly they did, and how overly confident they were acting, I figured I needed to do some major and serious review. Monday after school I bought a set of multidigit subtraction with regrouping task cards on TPT (from Little Achiever‘s account) and had them spend the entire math time Tuesday going through every card.

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There were 24 total cards so, for some of my students, this took them the entire math time. I had the answer key posted (backwards on a magnet) on my board, so students who were finished ahead of time, could check their own work, followed by doing some more challenging problems on IXL (BTW if you don’t know what IXL is GO CHECK IT OUT!!! This is a teacher’s dream for math and language arts review!!)

This worked wonders!!! They thought it was super fun to spend their math time moving around the room doing problems on their mini whiteboards. It was amazing! After this small (but fun) activity, they seemed to have better memories on how to regroup when subtracting.

I was able to see how well this worked today when I had them take an adding and subtracting quiz. All but one student passed!!! That is insane when you think about a class of 25 students. If your students are struggling with anything in math as a class, go and take an extra couple days of review, it WILL pay off!! It’s okay if you fall behind your teammates or your scope and sequence. If your kiddos need more practice, give it to them!

The rest of the week was pretty relaxed, apart from our crazy dress up days. This week we also started some switching for subjects with different teachers. My students have been with me for the past few weeks learning about some basic grammar topics, like nouns, verbs, and types of sentences. Thursday, my students finished their first grammar round with me and got to begin a few weeks of science with another teacher. Because of that, I got a new group of kiddos to teach grammar to for 40 minutes. This new class made me love my own class even more. The class that I’ll be teaching grammar to for the next few weeks, has a lot of energy. 6 of my students from last year are in that class, so I knew that having them for 40 minutes a day would be interesting….I remembered quick how exhausting my year ended up being last year with some of those kiddos. Those 40 minutes yesterday and today were the most exhausting my year has been thus far. Because of that, I realized how AMAZING my students this year are. I seriously love them. They are so sweet and so calm. I am so lucky to have such a great class this year.

One month ago I found out that I’d be moving from 3rd grade to 4th grade (only a week before school started) and I was not thrilled. I was nervous, anxious, angry, and stressed. After this month, I can honestly believe that everything happens for a reason. If I didn’t have this chance to move up a grade level, I would not have had this opportunity to have the most amazing class in the world. A class I may never have the opportunity to have again. I am honestly so blessed and lucky to get the chance to be their 4th grade teacher.

 

For more day to day posts and class activities, go follow my teacher instagram account @lifeoftherookieteacher!

Second Full Week Complete!

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Happy Friday! I think I’m officially labeling Fridays as my posting days. It’s a nice way to rethink about the week while also venting if I need it. It’s also a way for me to relax and decompress.

This week I didn’t go overboard with anything crazy like art projects or special assignments. My main goal for this week was to keep things as consistent and routined as possible. (For myself and the kids.)

Monday started the week strong. My kids came in ready to learn (which still blew my mind) so it was a nice easy way to start the week. The next few days were like that but then Thursday came.

Thursday was the day we had to take our fall reading benchmarks test. The assessment we take is about 40 questions but the poor kids have to read multiple passages (that are not exciting) so it takes up to 2 hours for them to finish. Needless to say, they were not in the learning mood after lunch.

The afternoon on Thursday was the first time this year I started to get frustrated. (Now I know what I’m about to share is literally nothing! I know, I’ve had tough classes in the past! But after having such an incredible 2 weeks of no issues, I was shocked that they weren’t listening and being a bit disrespectful.)  They came back from lunch, and usually they know my expectation is to grab a book and read to self right away (they are amazing at this) but they came back and would not stop talking! I tried to get them to settle down but for some reason it wasn’t sinking in.

For my discipline system I have a “strike” board. If their name is on the strike board by Friday,  they owe me 5 minutes (for each time their name is on the board) of their morning Friday free time. I usually only have to give a single warning for them to settle down, but Thursday it took multiple warnings and a few kids who got official “strikes” for them to calm down.

The rest of the afternoon was just like this. They were so chatty. Luckily they are such good kids that saying they had to write their name on the strike board was enough for them to stop whatever it was they were doing.

Today was very similar to yesterday. They were high energy and chatty. We had to stop and have a talk about how they had been doing such a great job the first few weeks and how my expectation of them is to continue that since they are more than capable. (I know, they’re 9, they are going to talk and have high energy but just telling them that I was disappointed in the past few days, was enough to get them to settle down.)

I do love this class. So far, I can tell it’s going to be a much easier year than it has been in the past. But they’re kids and I’m a teacher, there will be days that we both drive each other crazy. The last 2 days, were those days. I do love them with all of my heart and I am excited to go back and see them on Monday!

To make today so much better, however I was eligible for an upgrade on my phone, so last weekend I preordered the new iPhone 11 Pro Max. When I came home from work today, there it was sitting in front of my door waiting for me! (I’m a nerd who LOVES Apple and technology, so new Apple products are my toys that make me as excited as a kid on Christmas morning!) It was the best Friday surprise!

Until next week friends!

For more day to day adventures and pictures, go follow my school instagram account @lifeoftherookieteacher!