My Top 5 Crazy Things this Week(end)!

I just love those Top 10 lists that go around!  I can’t stay up late enough, ever, to watch the late night guy who does them.  But I have seen them on lots of blogs lately.  So, here is my Top 5 for the week(end) !

5.  In classic formation, this first long weekend of the year resulted in sickness!  First my younger son, then I, ended up with the stomach bug that has been going around.  It is characterized by cramping and it wasn’t any fun!

4.  Since doing anything fun was out, I worked on a new product.  It has really been bugging me that I can’t assess kids understanding the way that I used too, by simply observing.  I am now thinking like an RTIer!  How can I see who really needs help?  The packet that I created is called Nonfiction Formative Assessments for Text Features.  Since I am investing so much time in teaching them, I want to be able to understand the students’ knowledge gain and correct any misconceptions.  I created two-one for the Common Core Standards and one for FCAT 2.0-and you can find them on TPT. I’m covering my bases! 

3.  I think my great idea for Words their Way is going to work!  I borrowed the Flip Video recorder from school and tried out recording a sort!  It came out rather nice!  So, here’s what I want to do.  Instead of trying to meet with every group, every week, I thought I would record the sorts and let them watch them in small groups.  The other benefit to this is that kids who struggle with the sort can watch it multiple times.  What happened the first day is that I had kids not even knowing what the patterns meant!  This way, I can be in more places at once.  I also figured some things out trying out this first one.  I need to be sure I know what I am going to say!  Some of the bloopers are funny!  And, if I do them at home, I have to be sure the dogs and kids are quiet!!!

2.  Some interesting changes in our grade level are coming.  That’s all I can say about that right now!

1. The Cut-a-Thon occurred!  On Friday, we spent our Social Studies time cutting and cutting!  This is the prep work for our Florida Government Project!  

We had some bloopers, which is good, because then I can share some recovery ideas from these bloopers!  Check out the trash!

What I had them do is put them in baggies to keep them safe.  The rule was that they needed to keep the baggie flat so it could hang from the wall.  This year I put clothes pins under the board with their number attached under it. I will use this for a variety of things.  The first thing we used it for was to hang their flags. 

Now they are holding their cutout shapes for the project. 

So, that’s my Top 5!  What does your Top 5 for this week look like?!