Five for Friday: Happy October!

Linking up with Doodlebugs for 5 for Friday!

My week started off with a Whole Brain Teaching Workshop that I hosted for any teachers in my district who were interested. Two amazing techies at school got my mac hooked up to my promethean so I wouldn't have to stress about technology snafus like I had at our parent night... It went surprisingly well... around 25 teachers showed up!!! And the thank you emails, stops in the hall to tell me what they've tried, requests to pick my brain, my kiddos from last year excited to be doing WBT again have made me excited for part 2 of the session later in October!!!

One of the excited first grade teachers in my building even got me make a frog themed super improver wall! Check it out - it's free!

This week we read If You Were a Compound Word and made compound word foldables - super easy, all you need is blank paper fold the sides in, draw lines on the folds then copy so the kiddos don't have to figure out where to make the fold. Some of the compound words my kiddos came up with were so cute!

I was so proud of my kiddos and their gestures this week. They are remembering our story gestures with ease & are able to identify character, setting, problem and solution in the stories we are reading together.

Character - walking our fingers along with both hands

Setting - Place - spreading hands out in front of body & Time - tapping wrist (where a watch would be)

Problem - arms crossed in front of body, angry face (sorry for the poor quality of this photo!

Solution - hands up, shrug shoulders

I've started using A LOT of sticky notes, especially during read alouds and strategy mini-lessons. We now have a sticky note parking lot in our class. I'm also working on a way to use these stickies as an assessment. Currently I have a simple template with the objective/standard at the top and a page for approaching, on and at target. If it becomes at all more complicated or awesome I will certainly share!

Addition (and subtraction when we start it) lends itself SO well to game after game after game... so that's pretty much been math for us this whole week... quick minilesson followed by addition game rotations and a little XtraMath too!

Double Facts - Double Trouble! - from The Bubblegum Tree's freebie

Doubles Plus One - Add One for Fun! - also from The Bubblegum Tree's freebie.

Addition Sentence Match Up  - from Amy Lemon's addition & subtraction stations.

10 Facts! - freebie from Tunstall's Teaching Tidbits here.


Hope you have a great weekend :)