Time

Speaking of time, I feel like the day has flown by as did our weekend! We enjoyed visiting family and meeting our beautiful niece Cady this weekend, but now it's Monday and it's back to reality.

This week we decided to talk about time. More than likely you have to cover time this year to some extent. Especially if you are in Georgia (or use Common Core). For instance, my EIP math kids are almost all working on time. My first graders are learning to read and tell time to the hour and to the half-hour on analog and digital clocks. My second graders are learning to tell and write time from analog and digital clocks to the nearest five minutes, using a.m. and p.m. Then my third graders are learning to tell and write time to the nearest minute and measure time intervals in minutes. They are also learning to solve word problems involving addition and subtraction of time intervals in minutes.

What grade level do you teach and where? Are you covering time this year? How are you helping your students learn this concept?

~Steph

Writing Topics

Time for another Friend or Foe Friday. At this point in the year most teachers and students are probably feeling sick about writing another essay. We have had students write paper after paper on topic after topic. Anyone running out of good ideas for topics?

Teachers always have a few writing topics that they use year after year. Those writing topics that all your students enjoy writing about. This week I want to focus on those kind of topics. This way we can help turn those end of the year writing topics into your friend and not your foe.

I want to talk about my favorite writing topic from student teaching. We used this topic when introducing persuasive writing. In this paper students have to persuade a monster not to eat them. This topic really brought out the creativity in my students and they enjoyed writing it.
We introduced this topic with a fake news cast about a people eating monster on the loose and even showed a picture of a monster to the students. We then told the students that they were to pretend the monster came to our school and caught them. They would then write a paper about what they would say to the monster to persuasive them to not eat them. My students wrote about things like being to skinny or having a illness. I even had students trying to persuade the monster to eat the rest of the class instead. It was a fun topic that all my students loved sharing. My supervising teacher even baked a monster shaped cake at the end of the week and the students got to eat the monster instead of it eating them. It was so much fun and the students loved it.

Your turn! Tell me about some of your favorite writing topics

~Manda

Social Studies

Hello Friends! It is time for Through Time & Space Thursday! We thought we would turn the focus to Social Studies since we focused on Science last week. I usually try to focus on a certain activity but this week I just want to discuss the subject itself. 

I have really found a passion teaching Social Studies and I think that is hilarious considering it was my least favorite subject when I was going through elementary school. I always felt that Social Studies meant that it was time to take out a book, write some notes, and answer some questions. Did anyone else feel this way in school?? Although when it came time to plan lessons to teach to my students I wanted it to be fun and engaging. I feel like I learned more social studies in my college years trying to teach it than I ever did when I was in school. I had a blast teaching Social Studies to my fifth graders last year and I really feel like they had fun learning it. My class was so passionate about the topics we covered and I feel like my enthusiasm helped them want to learn what we had to go over. I feel like it was completely different when I was in 5^th grade. Instead of sitting in our seats with a book reading, writing notes, and answering questions, my students were up moving around the room. It was as if we had to act out the events in history that we were learning about. We did everything from building a “Hooverville” to recreating the Berlin Airlift. I was amazed at how much fun Social Studies could be and I can’t wait to have my own classroom to teach some of those lessons again.

How do you feel about Social Studies? Do you feel differently about it as a teacher than you did as a student? What are some lessons that you will never forget? 

~Manda

Podcasts pt.2: Tablets, iPads, and Smartphones

It's Wednesday!! We're super excited it's already Wednesday because tomorrow we leave for Pensacola, FL to see our beautiful niece Cadence (Cady-bug) who was born March 5th!

Meet Cady-bug!

Steph also started her long term subbing today!! It's a very exciting week around here! 

On to what you came for...Our Tech Wiz Wednesday this week is part 2 of our Podcast series. This week we're going to focus on tablets, iPads, and smartphones (in the classroom, of course). If you missed last week's post head on over to read about (and hear) our Podcasts.

What Steph has to say...

As I mentioned in my podcast, I feel like we could turn the whole ban against cell phones around and use them to our advantage. We used Poll Everywhere in college classes, and I think it could be very useful and engaging for students. Poll Everywhere doesn't need a smartphone just a plain cell phone with text capability. When it comes to smartphones, there are so many free apps out there for all platforms.

But like I said not all your students will have cell phones/smartphones. So for portable connectivity tablets are great!

Now of course while having a 1:1 ratio of tablets to students would be a dream come true it's just not likely. The school where I'm subbing has purchased iPads for the classrooms. In the younger grades there's one per class (for the teacher mostly) and in the older grades there's 4-5 per class. Another dream would be to have 3G/4G connectivity (with the 1:1 ratio), so that like some school districts who pass out laptops like text books, schools could pass out tablets/iPads and students could have connectivity everywhere they go. This would mean all students would have access to the internet at home! An expensive dream...

Our school district is actually allowing students to bring technology devices from home (with a contract signed by teacher, parent, and student). Having any access to tablets/iPads is great in the classroom for so many reasons though. There are so many free apps you can use. These devices open so many doors in the classroom!

What Manda has to say...

In my podcast I talked about iPads and how useful they could be in a Science class. I also want to discuss how they can be used in any content area. iPads are a great classroom tool for students at any age. The greatest thing is their portability. Students can use them at their desk, in the floor, or even outside the classroom. If you were able to have one for each student you would not be confined to a classroom. I also discussed how great it would be to have a classroom blog. This would be great to have discussions with other people. A classroom blog could help with your students working together or it could allow them to work with people that are far away. I think that these would be an excellent technology advancement in any classroom. 

~Steph & Manda

Routines and Procedures

Happy Tuesday friends! Let's talk...

Are your littles still following the daily routines and procedures? Do you believe it's important to have routines and procedures at all grade levels?

I know this time of year it can start getting wonky (Is that a word?) when it comes to students following procedures and behavior management. There's just so much going on. I've subbed in one class regularly that just doesn't seem to have procedures/routines. It's a first grade class, and they are a very diverse little group. I love them to death, but sometimes they make me want to pull my hair out! They come in and act like they have no idea what to do. They are the same way much throughout the day with different daily routines (exploratory, lunch, recess, etc). The first couple of times I subbed for this class, I thought it was just because I was a sub and they wanted to test me. However, I have subbed as the Special Ed teacher that goes in that class, and they behave the same way with their teacher in the room! I just don't get it!

How do you feel about routines and procedures? Have you found something that works year after year? Or do you find yourself changing things up part way through the year?

~Steph

Math Challenge Review Pack

 Hey everyone it is the start of a new week and time for our second Maniac Math Monday! We have been working really hard on a project we would like to share with everyone this week. As we all know the end of the year can be very stressful for students and teachers with all the end of the year assessments. We have made a packet that serves as a way to review with your students and also allows teachers to see what areas the students are struggling with. We even used it in the place of weekly homework. It is a very useful tool to alleviate some of that end of the year stress.

We call this math packet the “Math Challenge” and it is aligned with the Georgia 5^th grade Math Common Core Standards. It covers many of the topics that are covered throughout the year. It includes daily practice as well as weekly projects. It is designed to take 4 weeks to complete but can be graded weekly in order to assess how students are doing. 

We have posted the full "Math Challenge" in our TpT store and we also have a free preview for everyone to check out. Lets us know what you think!

What are some ways you like to prepare your students for their end of the year assessments? Do you think a challenge like this could be beneficial for your students? 

~Steph & Manda

Figurative Language

Time for Friend of Foe Friday! This weeks topic is figurative language. Is this your friend or foe when it comes to teaching it in a classroom full of students? The 5^th grade class that I student taught in last year found it confusing and frustrating. My supervising teacher and I decided to make a figurative language unit that would teach figurative language and poetry but also be fun for the students. We decided to cover different kinds of poetry for two weeks. We chose types of poetry that the students could enjoy and were easy to follow. We would discuss the type of poem and the figurative language that was associated with that type of poetry for a few days. Then the students would write their own poem like the one we talked about. At the end of the two weeks the students would have several types of poems that they had written. Students that worked hard on their poems would be able to participate in a “Poetry Café”. This would be a time for each student to share their poems to the class. We even made a stage and plugged up a microphone. The students really enjoyed sharing their poems as well as hearing the other student’s poems. I found that students understood poetry and figurative language more by writing their own and also by hearing how their classmates used the figurative language in their poems.  

Our focuses during this unit were:

Onomatopoeia – Onomatopoeia Poems

Rhyme Scheme – “My Favorite Things” Poems

Imagery – “Color of Love” Poems

For more information on these activities please view my resources at our TpT store.

           

During this week we also discussed metaphors, similes, refrains, and stanzas. Even though we did not have a poem that focused on these figurative language elements this unit is a great place to discuss these other elements of figurative language. We also used a PowerPoint as the beginning of the unit. We used movie clips, commercials, and song lyrics that the students were familiar with that included different figurative language elements that we would be discussing. A PowerPoint with examples is a great way to introduce these elements to your students. What have you used to introduce these elements? Have you ever done an activity similar to the “Poetry café”? Let us know if figurative language has been your friend or foe?

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~Manda