Five for Friday - December 4

Wow! Did November fly by or what? I feel like I say this every month, but this one seemed to go so quickly with the holidays and all of the craziness that's coming with the month of December. I'm linking up with Doodle Bugs Teaching for Five for Friday.  Be sure to link up with her here.

I started Elf in the Clasroom this week.  I have to say it's actually pretty fun being creative and comign up with new ideas for our little guy Buddy. I have a separate post highlighting our first week with Buddy the elf that will be posted tomorrow, but I had to share these two cute stories.  At vocabulary station, two partners decided to work together to create a story using our weekly vocab words about our elf, Buddy.  Another student decided to create his own story about Buddy in his spare time.  Apparently Buddy fought in the Civil War

So I've mentioned in multiple posts how in love I am with project based learning. I also have said I'll fully post about our experiences and haven't done that yet. Above is a picture of our first day of research for our new project.  I love how engaged these kids are and how they're all so excited to be researching on the iPads.  For this project, students are researching about a community around the world.  I have a set launch page for them to use for each country so their research doesn't take them to crazy places.  They're loving it so far!

Number Talks...another thing I love. I have a CGI post started and also not finished, but number talks go along with Cognitively Guided Instruction (CGI).  Number talks are where you put a naked number problem up on the board - like 243+322 and students solve it using mental math. Then, students share out their strategies out loud while you document their thinking on the board. I love this because it shows there is more than one way to get the same answer. It also shows students how to put down in writing what they're doing in their head. And, for students who are stuck it provides them multiple strategies to try in the future.

I love, love, love the holiday season. Over the past weekend we decorated our tree and there is just something warm and cozy about a decorated tree and Christmas lights.

Big news for Andy and I - we bought a house! Well, we're building a house. Above you can see our lot.  This is our first house and we are super excited to get to pick everything out.  More pictures to come as the building begins!

Hope everyone has an amazing weekend!

Follow me on...

Bloglovin

 Facebook

 TPT 
Store

Instagram