Five for Friday - February 24

It was a super short week, but a busy one! We had Monday off for President's Day and on Tuesday we had no class, but Student-Led/Parent Teacher Conferences all day! So for a 3 day week it was a busy one! I'm linking up with Kacey over at Doodle Bugs Teaching for another Five for Friday.

My latest Grammar Fix It is now ready!  I just completed Grammar Fix It - Verb Tense Agreements.  My class has been working on verbs a lot and it was time for a formative assessment.  You can use Grammar Fix It as an around the room activity, scoot activity, or throw it in a station.  I decided to use it as a formative assessment.  I put each sentence on the board one at a time and the kids had to re-write the sentences correctly on their recording sheet. Then, I graded it using the little page below.  We use Standards Based Grading for writing so I have a rubric for each area.  Check out my new Grammar Fix It...here...

This week we started working on asking questions in reading. We talked about the importance of asking questions while you read and why good readers do it.  I got this lesson from Reading with Meaning by Debbie Miller. Love that book!!!

All day Tuesday, I had Student-Led/Parent Teacher Conferences.  Check out  my blog post that I wrote all about it...here...

I love incorporating math games into our Morning Meeting activity. Yesterday we played the game I learned from CGI training called Race to Zero.  The goal is to be the first team to get to zero.  I broke the class into two teams.  Each team starts at the number 999 and has three dice they can use. Then, the team decides to roll one, two, or all three.  Whatever number they roll, they can make any number from it. For example, if they roll 612, they could make 612, 621, 216, 126, etc.... Part of this game is strategy and rolling the right number of dice depending on the size of your number and making the right number that will help you get to zero the quickest.  After they roll and create their number, then they subtract from the number they had left.  This game keeps going until someone or some team gets to zero! Great way to practice subtraction, place value, problem solving, and strategic thinking!

    

This week in math we continued to work on measuring area.  Yesterday I had students create a specific area to show them that there is more than one way to model most areas.  For example, 16 square units - could be 8x2, 2x8, 1x16, 2x16, 4x4....  I loved pulling out the square tiles for them to play around with. I think the concrete item helped some of them understand the concept of area better and how it is measuring the surface space.