Valentine Globes, Pronouns, Fractions

As mentioned in my previous post, I'm a huge fan of change. I constantly need to be moving things around at home and at school. I've always been this way. My poor Dad used to go crazy because I would move my furniture ALL the time! So we just finished lots of units and we're moving onto new things so I'm totally excited. I'm also half changing some of my room in order to prepare (hopefully) for next year. I'm going all black with bright colors, look at the way I designed my blog and you'll see how my room will be! I'm beyond excited about it! I figured I'll try a few things this year, and then if it works I'll do it next year.

In the mean time we decided we needed to make our room more festive. We still had the snowflakes hanging all over the room. I wanted to make huge Valentine's fortune cookies, but it just wasn't happening. So instead we created these:

So now our former winter wonderland, looks like this:

Now I honestly wish they were much bigger. Here's the problem. My teammate and I made these, so between the 2 of us we needed 800 circles. 200 of each color. So that's a lot of circles. The project is already difficult enough without having to worry about kiddos cutting decent circles. We have an Ellison Die Cut at school. One of our dies is a circle. My teammates TA cut out all the circles (major props to her!). I attempted to cut one globe worth on my little circle cutter, but that took long enough. So basically in order to be the most efficient we had to deal with the size we had. I still needed more patience than was available for this project. They worked though and it gives it a bit of Valentine's flair!!

We started our Pronouns unit. I would have thought pronouns would have been easy peasy for the kiddos! WRONG! They couldn't get the idea that pronouns weren't just replacing nouns with other nouns. Example:

Me: I ate a hot dog at the baseball game. What word can we say instead of hot dog?
Them: A hamburger!
Them: Pizza!
Them: Popcorn!
Me: (in my head) Oh my goodness, I wasn't thinking it was going to go like this!

We'll see how pronoun pizza's go tomorrow! I'll be sure to post pictures of our yummy pizzas once we're finished! Anyone ever have one of those days when you're thinking... oh no... one of those days? Yea that was today!

We also just started on fractions today. I'm so excited for this, because I love fractions! We drew some today using grid paper. That was another OMG moment! I have to say though, my favorite math unit is fractions. I always either do fraction sundaes or fraction gumball machines. I'm beyond excited to spice it up a bit with 3rd graders instead of firsties.

I'm also thinking of doing something Super Bowl related with fractions this Friday. We shall see. The kiddos loved this ordered pair project I gave them to do when they finished their work last week, so maybe I'll do the same kind of thing!

Has anyone done literature circles? I'm just bored with Guided Reading. I desperately need to spice it up! I think it's the fact that it's 3rd graders! Firsties are exciting, they're learning how to read. Third graders know how to read... I dunno maybe it's just a phase!

By the way, I HAVE to share about 2 assembly type things. For the past 3 years (and I think longer) my school has had a company called Historical Perspectives come to our school. They got Harriet Tubman this year. She came and pretended like she was Harriet Tubman. I loved it! We had Helen Keller last year, and someone the year before. I know they're in the Chicago area, but I don't know about anywhere else. If you're ever looking for a good historical assembly look them up, they were great.

I also am like beyond excited! When I taught first we studied Space. Well we have some colleges near by that have planetariums, but we could never get in. Or we had too many kids to go on one day, then it got expensive! We have the Adler Planetarium downtown Chicago, but that's expensive and in Chicago traffic (insert shuddering here) it would never work! So I somehow found a company with a dome that they set up at your school! They worked with me last year to set it all up within like a week. It was all such short notice. So we're doing it again this year. I planned it so 3rd and 1st get to see it. It's one of the coolest things! The best part is we don't have to worry about paying/dealing with busses! If you study Space I highly recommend it! :)

New Years Resolution

In my dreams... or maybe... hopefully {crossing fingers} my New Years goal is to Blog everyday, or at least twice a week. I have good intentions, although it may not seem like it. I think about it everyday, it's just I get home and I'm so exhausted. I've recently gotten re-acquainted with Pinterest, after spending 3 months of my summers permanently attached to the screen. My time would be spent much better sharing and blogging with my teacher bloggy people. I'm not even sure the last time I looked at a Blog. I'm horrible. I did however get a few things done for my Teacher's Notebook, as well as I took some pictures of my revamped classroom. I'm here to prove to you that a small room can MOST DEFINITELY become not-so-small anymore!! Hopefully I can give at least 1 of you out there hope that you can rearrange successfully and create an awesome space!! Anyway here's the "new" room:

 {view from door}

{to the right, view from door}

{cubbies - my cubby, center work, homework assignments, content word wall}

{word wall (or lack of) student work table}

{calendar, schedule, half of library, homeworkopoly}

{back focus wall - boggle, reading strategies, words their way, math}

{back corner - words their way sort, writing stages, colored paper, etc.}

{drawers to turn in work along with the containers for binders and homework/papers to go home}

{my area - supply drawers, everyday papers, weekly sorters}

{view from behind my desk}

{view from my desk, along with my little friend who needs to be there}

{small group table, beahvior chart, job chart, attendance, computer, front of room}

{front board - language focus skill, area to write (rarely use), and science area}

 {front corner by door - other half of library, common core (we don't use it yet though, but i do!)}

{library bins, money/notes/math fact collections, brain bubbles, copy bin, dictionaries, word work games}

 

{view from door to front of room}

I'll have to update my section at the top with 2011-2012 room :) If you look, I promise you it looks a BILLION times better!! I actually LOVE it now! We do so much work in groups and partners in works perfectly! I also adore my class. They are really an amazing group of kids.

One last thing, I'm not sure if I posted anything when I did the space unit... this is proof of how exhausted I am. I'm too lazy to open a new window to look at my last few posts. But I have a space unit in my TN store, and I've done a few more things to go with it. I also have a different version of the space project that I will post later or this weekend. The one in the unit is a longer, more in depth project. This is an easier/quicker one, more focused on the actual presentation. One of my teammates also has done this AMAZING paper bag project with the science units. You basically cut the bag and paste information in the most awesome way! I'm not sure where she got it, but I have NEVER seen it anywhere before! I've made the pieces for it, and the kids love it. I don't want to post it and infringe on her teach-y ideas so I'll talk to her first, if she approves I'll post away because I PROMISE, you will AB-SO-LUTE-LY love it!!

Last night I posted a literacy/math unit. It's got some poetry stuff (similes, metaphors, idioms), dictionary work, a glyph, holiday multiplication/addition top it, another multiplication game. I'll post pictures of the projects soon. I have to get them up in the hallway first though! I also have to post updated pictures with my kids snowflakes... they did SO GREAT :) The room looks AWESOME!! Here's a quick look at the holiday unit.

So there it is... step one to my {before} new years resolution!! I hope everyone in bloggy land is doing awesome and is counting down the days like me :)

Huh... Hey... Remember Me?!?!

I am alive... I never would have thought I would have abandoned my precious little Blog. I haven't even updated my own classroom blog. I'm so ashamed! Well I officially survived my 1st Quarter in 3rd Grade. Conferences went amazing, and things are going great! I feel like I'm finally at a good place, and now I'm trying to create things to make my life, and hopefully other's lives easier. I also would like to start actually sharing things that I've implemented. It's so funny to me how you have this idea of what you're going to do, and then things don't work out! I've done so much tweeking on things in my room! Even my room looks COMPLETELY different than when I posted last! I'll try to take new pictures and post them soon! In the mean time I just spent the entire weekend creating my huge space unit! I'm so picky about worksheets and stuff, and I'm not liking anything I have right now, so I created away! I just listed it on Teacher's Notebook. I'm horrified to look at my e-mail. If you've e-mailed me, say in the last... 2 months, I probably haven't responded. I apologize now, I've had so much going on! Anyway, I hope I'm back... thanks to anyone who still is out there in Bloggy world that stuck with me!! Off to get those creative juices flowing...

Science Unit