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Saturday, November 30, 2013

A Peek at My Week - Earth Science

So I realized it had been a long time since I had done a Peek at My Week with Jennifer at Mrs. Laffin's Laughings, so here are next week's activities.


We are still working on changes to Earth's surface. This is a big TEKS for us because it is a readiness standard and can cover so many different types of landforms. We have to cover them all :) I can just see the influx of anchor charts that we will get to create!

WU Soil from Science Penguin's Upper Elementary Weekly Warm Ups

Monday:
WED Foldable and Activity


Tuesday:
WED Foldable and Activity (lab part today)

Wednesday:
Writing Science From 5.7D STEMScopes and sharing

Thursday:
Glacier Foldable and Activity



Friday:
Caves Foldable and Activity


Enjoy your (hopefully) 3 weeks of school until Christmas Break!

Wednesday, November 27, 2013

Thankful for time to create new activities and a sale!

It is already Wednesday, and I feel like I have gotten so much accomplished since school was out Friday.

So far, I have...

  • created 3 new foldable/activity sets for our interactive science notebooks
  • created 2 task card sets
  • created 3 holiday think tanks
  • made a Robot Researcher station for my classroom
  • baked the most delicious pumpkin cheesecake snickerdoodles
  • went to the grocery store...twice...
  • saw Santa
  • did all the kids laundry (folded and put away!)
  • did my laundry (folded, but not put away)
  • cleaned the entire playroom...twice...
  • beat LEGO Marvels (I snuck in some video game time!)
  • went to the doctor, dentist, and scheduled the eye doctor (what else are holiday breaks for?
  • painted my toes
I am sure there is more, but I cannot think of it all. Thank goodness my youngest still naps 2-3 hours a day and my 3 year old "rests" during that time. 

We are into Earth Science in our curriculum, so here are our newest activities we are using.









I really don't think I like the cover to the WED foldable. Everytime I look at it, it just makes something in my brain go crooked. What do you think?

Oh, and...................................................



TeachersPayTeachers.com is having a Cyber Monday (and Tuesday) sale! Many authors are putting their stuff up for sale, too, so you could get up to 28% off all sorts of things! My whole store will be 20% off and then the TpT code on top of that will make my whole store 28% off. Have fun shopping!

Have a happy Thanksgiving tomorrow, everyone!

Saturday, November 23, 2013

Thanksgiving Break is here!

I don't know what I am more excited about...having a week off with my kids to play or having a week off from school to create more activities for my classroom kids and Teachers Pay Teachers!

What am I thankful for this year? I am thankful for a healthy, happy family, great friends, a husband who loves me "just the way I am," and a job I love. I am thankful for a place to find and share great teacher ideas, like Teachers Pay Teachers, where I can get wonderful products for my classroom and share ones I have found or made that work great.  I am thankful for a teacher blogger community that supports one another and affirms that we are, indeed, doing the right thing in our classrooms and lives.

We had a Thanksgiving-themed day on Friday for our team (5 teachers), and I think the kids had a lot of fun. We also had career day that morning, along with the last day for kids to finish their math benchmarks, so we were busy.

In science, I had kids create a soil data disk from a soil sample from Plymouth Rock (our playground) with a brad, cardstock and a paper plate where they had to analyze a soil sample for it color, texture, ability to retain water, and it's ability to support life. Then they had to disguise the data disk to hide it from others at the First Thanksgiving. They came out really nice, and the kids had fun analyzing their samples and disguising them.

For career day, my sister, who is an Animal Behavior Analyst, got to come to my class and share with my kids how she uses data and graphs (yea! Real world graphs!) to analyze the behavior of different animals at the zoo to see how they are doing, what they prefer, and their well-being. The kids really loved seeing her presentation and playing her games and activities she prepared. I think she really is a teacher at heart :)

More bonuses, my sister stayed with us for 2 days, played with her niece and nephew while I put together a set of WED task cards, and even went with us to go see Santa. I love my sweet sister so very much! Here are the task cards I made while she was entertaining the little people.


It is a set of 20 task cards following Santa as he travels through the United States delivering presents, noticing landform changes, and getting a little side-tracked along the way. This is one of the things my kids will do the last week of school in December. Click the picture below to get to the cards.



I really hope my students like it as much as they liked Frankenstein's adventure without electricity for Halloween! I love doing themed stuff to help remind my kids that they can always have fun while learning; it does not always have to be an either/or kids of situation.

Stay tuned to see what else I get to create over the break. I am already 3/4 the way done with 2 earth science foldables and have a bunch of other ideas getting ready to roll....

Have a Happy Thanksgiving!



Monday, November 18, 2013

Just a quick update...with anchor charts!

We are done with Physical Science and have moved on to Eaarth Science! There are so many fun labs to do here, and the kids love them! I have new anchor charts to add to my collection, too. 

Formation of sedimentary rocks and 

Types of soil, which we will fill out tomorrow. It doesn't look like much, yet, but this is just the shell I made before class so we can fill it out together. 

Have a great night!

Saturday, November 9, 2013

Veteran's Day and Heroes Project



I will be holding a Veteran's Day Sale for my entire Teachers Pay Teachers store this weekend. Sunday 11-10 and Monday 11-11, my whole store will be 10% off. Also, 50% of what I make on these two days will be donated to Heroes Project, a non-profit organization that support veterans who have returned from active duty and need support. It is a great organization and has done a lot for people around me.

I hope you get a chance to honor a veteran Monday and enjoy some smiles with those in your community!




Tuesday, November 5, 2013

New Anchor Charts

How do you do anchor charts? Sometimes I make them before school so all my classes see them. Then they are nice and neat. 



Sometimes I start from scratch and make them with one of my classes. You can tell when I make them while hung up because the handwriting is all slanted 



Other times I make a shell before school...
 
...so then we can fill it in together in class and match our notes. 


How do you use anchor charts in the classroom?

Sunday, November 3, 2013

Bell Schedule and November Currently Linkys

I am joining Thank God It's First Grade for a Schedule Linky. I love seeing how everyone in different grade levels and the same grace levels have completely different schedules.



Here is what a 5th grade science teacher schedule looks like in an intermediate school in Texas.


I have 120 students between 4 classes. One is a regular education class, then I have one pre AP class and 2 co-teach science classes. We had so many SPED kids in the Gen ED setting we had to double up the Science and Social Studies co-teach classes on my team.

Panther time is a 55 minute built in intervention time. I have the kids in my classroom who do not need intervention during the 9 week session so they are doing think tanks in my room. Read more about think tanks here.

I can't wait to see what other teacher's schedules look like!

I am also linking up with Oh Boy Fourth Grade for our November Currently. I think I missed Octobers...it was so long ago :)


Click the picture for a delicious Sweet Potato Pie recipe!

Happy November!