Not Quite Ready for Summer to End... but Starting to Gear up for the Next School Year!

Even though it is always a little sad to see the summer come to an end and leave the days of having all day to do things with my girls, the fact is that the summer is coming to an end in the next few weeks. Since it is inevitable, I have decided to try to be positive about this fact and begin thinking about how I want to start out the school year. As of right now, I will be teaching only 6th Grade. This excites me because I love teaching 6th Graders, they are so much fun!

Pine Cone Bees for my classroom decor.

My husband and I have started raising bees and since I have always been fascinated with bugs and other animals, I have decided to make my room into a nature theme this year. I have some ideas and have even made some bees out of pine cones and have plans to sew some butterflies. I plan to get some fake leaves/flowers also to put around my room. (See some of my later blog posts to see the finished decor.) I think I will make a materials basket for each row and will be focusing on really establishing student jobs. I have downloaded Laura Candler's Freebie entitled FREE CLASSROOM ECONOMY PACK that I will be adapting for my own classroom. She has some really great resources and offers a lot of FREEBIES. You can also check back at some posts later on in the school year to see how these ideas pan out.

To establish my norms and also to introduce students to the Common Core Curriculum, I am planning to start out with some ideas that will reinforce the basic skills students will need to be successful. I will be focusing on Multiplication Facts and Long Division first. Surprizingly, 6th Graders still tend to struggle with these topics. I am going to break down the process and help students understand why it is important to know their Multiplication Facts and how to successfully be able to use Long Division. Please preview the lesson I plan to use below. It is also available at my TpT store. If you like this lesson I would appreciate you clicking the "Follow" star as I will be adding products that I feel are concept based and of high quality and you will be notified of new products on a regular basis.

I am currently working on a Unit for The 6th Grade Number System Common Core State Standard and it will be finished soon! Good luck in the new year.

Common Core Student Sample Write-ups

In an effort to help students transistion into the Common Core Curriculum, I have started working with them on how to organize their thoughts and expand upon the answers to various math problems. Here are some examples that were graded on a scale on 1-10. Students were asked to create a math write-up answering the following problem

Using the Math Practice Flipbook to Write about Math Tasks

My students completed their Math Practice Flipbooks yesterday. Here are some images of them creating their flipbooks.





 

They used them today as a resource for writing the reasoning behind the math tasks they will be working on. I created a easy level task for students to begin using this resource and the kids did so well I decided to put this on my blog :o). I will also be putting some examples once I have finished grading them. The Flipbook Template and the math task below can be downloaded at http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Common-Core-Math-Practices-Flipbook

The students did a really nice job with this activity and came up with some really great answers. Here are some images of them working on this math task.

The students were able to use their Math Practice Flipbooks to help them write the reasoning behind these math tasks.

Kid-friendly Explanation of Common Core Math Practices

As I have been waiting to implement the Common Core in my Classroom, I am realizing that my students are going to need a lot of help transitioning into these new expectations. After Easter Break, I plan to start out doing this by first having students gain a deeper understanding of the Math Practices they will be conscientously using to solve problems. If I simply gave them a copy of the online practices, they would be confused and frustrated. I have created a Flipbook for their notes that will be an easy resource to refer to when using these practices. It includes kid-friendly descriptions of each standard and will also be used as an activity to have students think about 8 different situations and decide which math practice was used in each scenario. Once we have discussed each scenario and where it fits in as a class, they will glue it on the appropriate flipbook page to serve as an example when they refer back to this resource. I will be uploading pictures of the finished products as well as some of our class discussion points once I complete this lesson with my kids next Tuesday, so please visit frequently!

Comparing Fractions, Decimals and Percentages Flipbook

Here is a video showing how to put together the "Relating Fractions, Decimals and Percentages Flipbook. This is a great way for students to review these relationships and serves as a great resource for their notes.

Please view this video to see this Flipbook as a finished product. (My students love making these and since they have time invested in creating them they refer to them more quickly than traditional notes.)

Don't Get Zapped - Integer Operations

This is a really neat idea that I saw on an elementary school teacher's blog at http://swampfrogfirstgraders.blogspot.com/2011/01/dont-get-zapped-addition-version.html
and I think it could be adapted for my middle school students.



I thought it would be a great way to practice integer operations, fraction operations or any other operational skill and could be used for an independent game idea. I would like to plan to work in a 3 station group next year. As I am planning for the Common Core Curriculum, I am taking a tip from the reading teachers and creating a three groups (Red, Green and Blue). They will be working through rotating stations. One station will always be a skill self-check station... so I believe this game would work perfectly!

Basically, you put problems on popscicle sticks and place 30 of them in a container along with two "Take another Turn" sticks, two "Give Another Player a Stick" sticks and one "Zapped" stick which means you have to put all the sticks you collected back into the container. You keep a stick if you get the problem correct. I think I will number each problem and have an answer key handy so kids can check each others' responses. The student that wins is the student who has the most sticks when their time is up at that station.

I am very excited to start working on these games, but plan to use a PRINGLES container instead since my family devours these on a regular basis.

Megalodon Investigation: Work Samples

Student Work Samples: Megalodon Investigation

Even though this is a 6th Grade Unit, I had some time between State Testing and the students going on Spring Break, so I decided to try this investgation out with my 7th graders. They really did a good job so I decided to display a few of my Top Notch Groups' work with you. You can find this investigation in my Common Core Ratios and Proportions Unit or you can download just the Megalodon Investigation.