Snow Day! (Almost)

Well, halfway. There is no snow to be seen as of yet. We had an early release at 1 o'clock, yippie! Now I'm getting all cozy and building a fire before settling down to pay it forward in a way....

"Pay it forward?" you may ask. Yes, pay it forward. The internet has provided me with so much inspiration on my newest school project this year, math journaling, that I thought I would share what I have done to maybe help someone else out.  Last year we used power points and cloze notes which was all fine and dandy but just didn't feel like me. Some people said I was crazy when I mentioned journaling and sometimes with the cutting and pasting it can seem a bit crazy but after a few go arounds and getting organized it has defiantly paid off. My students enjoy journaling because they have a book that they have created. I also find that they actually use it as a reference where as before the notes ended up in the trash or lost in their binder. If they are smart they will take it to 6th grade with them; I won't hold my breath on that one though. So, here is everything I have done so far. Feel free to use anything you like :-)

I have 2 journals. One for my homeroom one for my second period. Some people have one that they plan their journal out in. I tried that and decided that it's just too much work. I like letting it flow and adding what is needed as we go. Plus in my mind if you are typing out pages you already have a guideline for how everything is going to play out. 

 My title page. One the first day of school we set up our notebooks. Each student was able to decorate their own title page however they wished; it just had to include their name. We then set up our table of contents, there are 2 pages front and back of this, and finally the math journal contract. I found this online and apologize to the person who I owe credit to because I have lost the link.

Place Value- Sometimes things were fill in the blank and we filled them in together. 

 I am flipbook obsessed and love making them for some odd reason. Luckily my kiddos love them too.

 Decimals

 We paused decimals to hit on multiplication for a bit that way we could continue with the multiplication of decimals. I am thankful to have a great teammate who comes up with journaling pages too.

 Notice the lattice multiplication at the bottom. Oh my gee, I LOVE LATTICE MULTIPLICATION! If you have not used it before you need to seriously check it out. It makes life so much easier.

 Distributive Property

 Word Problems

 Ordered Pairs

 Graphing

 Stem and Leaf

 Mean Median Mode and Range

 For this page I handed out different objects to different groups IE frogs, coins, beans, etc. Then we found the mean, median, mode or range for each so that they would have a worked out example.

 Circles

 This one didn't turn out quite like I had plan because I got lazy. Originally I planned to use a brad and two pieces of laminated paper on the top half of the page to create a space where they could make the different types of angles. I took too long debating whether or not the brads were going to pull through or mess up the rest of the pages. Instead we just drew pictures of each of the types of angles and left it at that.

 Triangles

 Isosceles is my favorite, my little ice cream cone

 Variables

 Order of Operations

And that leaves us off to where we are now, order of operations land whose page came off of pinterest land somewhere. If I can figure out how to add downloadable worksheets so that you could print them off. If anyone could explain this to me that would be grand! My students math journals are a lot more colorful. They have time to color and add drawings while I am often running around helping my students who need help cutting or writing. 

This is how I store all of my things for journaling. During the back to school sales I picked up these pencil cases for 10 cent each. Inside of each there are scissors, colored pencils, crayons and a glue stick; everything they could possibly need for journaling. Each box is numbered for a reason. Originally they were unnumbered and each period would just grab a box. This ended in disaster and boxes being super messy and missing materials on a daily basis. Nothing is more annoying than someone complaining of a messy box or missing material when they were just as guilty of creating a mess themselves. Now boxes are numbered so they grab their according box (each student has a number based on their place in the alphabet). This makes them responsible for the box. If the next period finds a messy box it is easy to pinpoint who it was and their task is to then come in at the end of the day and straighten up all of the boxes to make sure they have all of the needed supplies. No one wants to do this so it has yet to be a problem. 

Last but not least is my RI creation. I decided to make a "math quilt" type of assignment. Students have an assignment list that goes with the quilt page. They have 5 weeks during RI time to complete the assignments. As each assignment is completed they color in the corresponding number on the quilt page. I am hoping this cuts down on the "Ms. Jenkins, what do I do nowwwww?!?!?!" questions that seem to happen every day during this time even though there is a list on the board. When I am working in small group it makes it very hard to re-direct someone and keep my groups attention. You all know how it goes, or perhaps I'm the only one with that problem! There are 23 assignments that are all kept in a crate (pictured below) and numbered as to what assignment it is. Smaller tiles blocks equal smaller assignments and larger blocks equal larger more difficult assignments. I anticipate this to last 5 weeks or so (hopefully) which is great because that means I do not have to plan for RI for the next 5 weeks! Go me! The other big bonus to this is that I used leftover worksheets from this year and last year so that I did not have to create anything new. 

Back to School

I seriously cannot believe it is time to head back to school tomorrow! The good news is that my classroom is all set up and ready to go. This year was SO much easier compared to last year. It is amazing the difference a year makes. I feel like I spent most of last year getting down my own personal routines and finding the perfect spot for things. At first I had so many things spread out and eventually everything found a "home" that was more useful. I believe I blogged a bit last year about organization and boy did it help. I spent most of the summer on Pinterest. I am more than slightly obsessed to say the least. This year my classroom is Pinterest based. It has been so wonderful to virtually peek into classrooms and see how other teachers do things. This year in my room the good things stayed and I improved (or tried to) others. Here's a little peek into my classroom :-)

The "Smart Cookies" board is the same as last year. You can find better pics in my organization post. It is my "What can I do, I'm all through" board where I put worksheets and activities that can be completed once they are done with their classwork. My Twitter/Facebook (I haven't decided what it is based on) board is new for this year. Throughout the year I will post questions for students to answer. I laminated the word bubble cards from Walmart (88 cents!) so they are dry erase. On the left is a section for birthdays and the blank spot on the bottom will be the lunch menu. The blue oval to the left is a "no name" paper holder that is conveniently above the recycle bin. I've decided this year that I am NOT hunting down the owners of no name papers and after they are up for a few days in the recycle bin they will go. After that they will just have to do it over. My thought is that after re-doing work so many times names will be put on papers! In September we are supposed to be getting tables, hip-hip-hooray! Bye bye desks, I cannot wait to see you gone :-)

 

This bowl is on my bookshelf, I think you can barely make it out in the last picture. I decided this year to really try to reward positive behavior so I am trying a ticket system. Students can earn tickets for good behavior and they go in the bowl. I plan to pull 5 tickets each Friday for my reward earners. Rewards this year are coming in the form of coupons that I found on, you guessed it, Pinterest! They are everything from homework passes, lunch passes, stinky feet passes (no shoes) and basically other things that cost me nothing.

Luckily from my summer job I had a million plastic containers like you get out of candy/toy machines so that is what they went in.

I managed to bum the bookshelf from another teacher who no longer had use for it and I am working on turning it into my math game station. The small bags will hold card games and the bottom will be other file folder games. Around my window I added some signs from http://www.technologyrocksseriously.com The website is AMAZING and I wish I had room for each and every one of them. My TV cart also houses my inside recess goodies. Seeing this picture reminds me that I have yet to go through it to see what's left. Let's just hope it doesn't rain tomorrow and we don't need to use it. My clip chart I also talked about in a previous blog and is now set up for both classes.

 

I finally made curtains for my windows. Once they were up and suspended by fishing line I realized one panel was put on backwards so the pattern is wrong. It is not worth the hassle to take it all down and switch it. I am pretty happy with them for the 15 dollars worth of fabric and 10 minutes worth of sewing they took.

 

OH OH OHHHHH! I almost forgot to tell you about my amazing FREEBIE! Our school bought us electric pencil sharpeners that are AMAZING and soooo QUIET. It doesn't take much to make me happy. Haha.

 

One last thing... I updated my mailboxes to make them more fun and colorful.

I have a few more things to share but didn't think to get pictures of. I seriously cannot believe that tomorrow is the first day of school. Hopefully this year will go just as well, if not better, than last. I look forward to meeting and getting to know each of my 43 (10 less than last year!) students tomorrow.

To everyone else who is about to or has started the 2012-2013 school year I wish you the best!

Ms. J