Beanie Baby Strategies

Firstly, thank you to my son for typing this post for me, saying that, I apologise for any mistakes since spelling and grammar are not really his thing!

Sorry that I haven't blogged much lately. I had eye surgery about a week ago and am still recovering. First it was really hard to look at any type of screen because of the light coming off it, now that is less, but my nose basically needs to be on the screen to read the text - and even then it is blurry! I return to school in 5 days so hopefully I'll be right by then. 

This is just a quick post to let you know that I was able to upload my beanie baby strategy cards. Since I posted about them a little whiles ago, I've had a few emails asking if I was going to post them. Well, it's taken 6 months (we start school at the end of January here) but I finally was able to make up the last 2 cards this past week and get it posted. And I tell ya, those last 2 cards took me aaaagggggeeesss since I couldn't see the screen properly and had to keep taking breaks! Luckily I had my sweet boy available to help me convert it to pdf and get it posted! (I had to add that in, he wouldn't type it :D)

Here are examples of two of the cards. It's 20% off for the first few days.

 

I use the beanie babies in conjunction with CAFE, however I know that many teachers use the beanie baby strategies on their own. I've uploaded my CAFE headings as a free product on TpT (and since I've been using them since January, I don't know why I haven't posted them earlier!). I've already had someone ask for a chevron version, so once I can see a little better I'll make them up. I'm hoping by Sunday I'll be able to work on the computer so I can plan for Monday!

Ok, that's it. Time to rest my eyes, they're straining just from reading over this post. I tell ya, it gets very boring not being able to watch TV, spend a lot of time on the computer or read. It's also depressing being in a dark house for a week! Short term pain for long term gain I guess! Oh, I did join Instagram as something to do when I got my new Samsung Note 8 delivered. I haven't posted much at all being stuck at home, but I'd love it if you followed me! I think it will be easier to keep up to date with what's going on in my class because it doesn't take as long to write as a blog post. I'll get a button soon, but I think you can just search for downunderteacher. Thank you!

Non-Standard Measurement Freebies

This week in math we were working on non-standard measurement, focusing mostly on length. I was only able to snap a couple of photos of one of our whole class activities this week. For this activity, we had a box (I grabbed 3 blue and 3 pink kitty litter boxes from the dollar shop) of different supplies in our groups and we had to choose an appropriate unit to measure each object on our sheet with. We did a similar activity on another day but we measured real objects in the classroom.

When finished, we underlined the shortest and circled the longest object. We then had to explain how we knew which object was the longest and shortest. During the I Do and We Do parts of the lessons during the week, we had worked on writing 3 sentences to explain how we worked it out: 

First sentence:      Say what you did and what you measured with. 

Second sentence:  Say what the measurements are. 

Third sentence:     Say which object was longest.

This helped most kids get past the "I looked at it and just knew" explanation!

This week we only did one rotation over four days using my T.I.M.E. rotations. 

For T: Teacher's Choice we rolled cars labelled A-F down a ramp (made from a Really Good Stuff portable desktop pocket chart propped on a tub!) and measured the length each car travelled. I have groups of 6 so 3 students sat on each side of the ramp. One measured the length with unifix cubes by laying out trains of ten and then extra ones (great counting practice!) and the other side measured with paddle pock sticks. After 3 cars, they swapped what they measured with. Because this was the first week back after our Winter break, I had mixed ability groupings and did the same activity with all the groups. Most of the time, I do homogenous groups and tailor the Teacher's Choice center to what each group needs.

For I: Independent Work, I put out a tub of classroom objects that each student estimated the length of in unifix cubes and then measured. When we reviewed estimating whole class, I had to reiterate that the estimate didn't have to be perfect, it just had to be sensible! Earlier, I had students wanting to change their estimate to make it the ACTUAL measurement. This saying, which they could finish saying for me (!) really made them think and write down a sensible estimate.

For M: Math Facts I put out some review games from Lory Evans and Donna Boucher. The links take you to their TpT stores. I always put in a 100 chart and flash cards. The 100 chart they use for working out equations they don't know. 

For E: Essential Review (which I call Easy Review with my firsties this year) we reviewed 3D shapes. I love this tub because we get to review topics that may not show up again in our math units for a little while. Sometimes I put in activities that we did during whole class lessons a few weeks earlier for independent practice or I put in new activities that covers concepts that I want them to reinforce (like this week with Natalie Lamont's C3PO's 3D shapes booklet).

You can pick up just the four sheets that I made this week on Google Drive by clicking here and here. Visit the TpT links above to grab the other great centers. 

You can read more about my T.I.M.E Math set-up here and here.

Let's Get Acquainted

Today I am linking up with Mrs Reed and her fabulous Tic Tac Toe Let's Get Acquainted Linky.

I'm going with the middle row. 

First Year Teaching
I LOVED my first year of teaching mainly because I had my friend Liz (of Bayside Math Teacher) teaching right along beside me! It was all very unexpected. I got a job teaching 6th grade at the school I did my internship at. I was having a new male teacher teach beside me but 2 or 3 days before school started he pulled out as he was moving. 

So my deputy asked if I knew any new teachers who would want to interview. Well, I recommended Liz and she must have blown them away at her interview because she got the job!

Besides teaching next to an awesome teacher like Liz, I had a wonderful class (even though in the first 15 minutes of having my own class I had a student vomit all over their desk....). They all got along really well and I rarely had any behaviour issues. Being a K-12 school, I still get visits from some of my first class of kids even though they're in Grade 10 now!

Favourite School Memory
I don't have any one favourite school memory as the school I was at for grades 1-7 was so great. In hindsight, our whole cohort were really great. We all got along and it was 'cool' to get an A - even in Grade 7! I remember Tanya crying once because she thought people wouldn't like her because she got a C! There was one group of kids though, a girl and two boys, and looking back I think they had a bit of a hard life. The girl held hands with another boy in grade 7 and we were all so shocked! One of my friends and I whispered to each other that she was such a 'tart' and then giggled because we used a swear word and because we were being so bad to say it!

If I had to narrow it down to one memory though it would be our Christmas Under the Stars performances. We don't do this at my school, or even my son's school, but they were so much fun to do growing up! Even though I was quite quiet and shy, I got chosen for some key parts over the years. My favourite was playing the kookaburra in The Kookaburra's Christmas Cake. I was dressed as a kookaburra and I had this HUGE cauldron that I was adding ingredients to throughout the performance and I had to stir it with this huge rowing oar. So. Much. Fun.!

Books I'm Reading
My son had to read The Enemy by Charlie Higson as an English novel study last term. He kept on talking to me about it so I read it so I could discuss it with him back. It takes place in London after a worldwide sickness has infected everyone over the age of 14. Most died, but some turned into something like zombies. The book tracks a group of kids who are trying to survive in this post-apocalyptic world. He liked the book so I ordered The Dead, The Fear and The Sacrifice which we are starting to read now. 

(Talking about zombies, or walkers as I prefer to call them now, who else LOVES The Walking Dead?? There's something about Daryl Dixon that just does it for me!)

My sister has given me the Hush Hush series to read, but I'm just not feeling it at the moment. That being said, I haven't even read the blurb or one page for that matter, it's just looking at the covers that doesn't do it for me!

Remember to go and link up with Flying into First Grade!