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I'm loving my job. But I will admit, I can't let go of the other subjects so easily. I decided to try out stations in Social Studies. I mean if you can have them for Reading, Science, and Math then why not Social Studies right?!?!? Also, for the last four years my Fridays have always been laid back. We always assessed for each subject on Friday at my other school. I taught 2nd grade and it was the way we made sure we actually had paper pencil grades. I want my laid back Fridays back. :) So we've tried stations out twice and it went well both times. Well...it went well with 4 out of 5 blocks. So one unlucky group has only done stations one time. We have 4 stations and we spend about 7-8 minutes at each station. I set the timer and when it beeps they rotate. I split the desk into 4 groups and lay all the materials at for each group on the desk. The only thing they take around with them is a pencil and a dry erase marker. I'll walk you through each station.
Station 1: Vocabulary Review
I create a vocabulary crossword. I use words we've covered throughout the week. The clues are the definitions. That's it! Easy enough and the kids like to do it.
Station 2: Social Studies Problem Solving
I use vocabulary that we've covered to review math skills. I've heard the math teacher say they need practice with subtracting. I place four problems out on the table and white boards. The markers travel with them. They divide the board into a four square and show their work. That way whenever I get to that station I can look over all their work.
Station 3: Making Words
This is probably my favorite station. I'm just a ELA girl at heart. I take a word that we've covered and they have to make as many words with it as they can. The word has to have at least 3 letters and can't be a proper noun. The only reason I made that rule is b/c originally they just kept trying to spell each others names. It's fun to watch them problem solve and try trail and error. The writing teacher has said spelling sight words is an issue so hopefully this will help a little...eventually.
Station 4: Number of the Day
This really has nothing to do with Social Studies. Before my I start my lesson with each block every day I have to do a math review warm up. So this is just a little added math practice. I found these for free here. Well that's all I have for now. I am sharing these ideas with other teachers here and here.
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**I'm editing this post a little to link up with Farley at Oh Boy 4th Grade.
Sorry y'all, long time no post. I can't really say I have an excuse. I've been oober tired and for good reason but just TMI for blog land. Anywho, I thought I'd post a random post of the things currently flowing through my mind. This is super long and makes up for the recent neglect. :)
Currently, I'm loving the little kid Ragu commercials. Mr. Spouse pointed them out to me and honestly at first I was a little shocked. But, I got over it and now it makes me chuckle big time. This is my favorite one.
Currently, I'm loving me some Maroon 5. Mr. Spouse did not know who they were and I about fell over. I had to make him listen to their Pandora station. I'm so loving the beat of this song. So catchy. Sorry about the ad but trust me the song is awesome and Adam is pretty good eye candy too. It's worth the wait. :)
Currently, loving my friends so much! About 2 years ago when I got engaged I thought my world was over. My "friends" were just being not supportive at all. It was like the wedding was a chore. I didn't even have a single bridal party person at my bachelorette. This was oober hard for me. If you know me well, you know I give 1000% trying to please others and keep everyone happy. I never ask for anything in return. But then... my "co-workers" came along and reassured me and showed me what real friendship was all about. This summer I actually thought to myself I can't believe I'm almost 30 and just experiencing the bliss of true friendship.People that give just as much as me and w/o thinking about it. I love these gals. :) The only thing that blows is that we all took new jobs so we don't get to see each other every day.
Currently, I'm loving my new school. It is so laid back. Totally, the polar opposite of my old school. I mean the principal has really high expectations. But, he has such a genuine passion for children that it softens the blow. Y'all he called working with kids his ministry. I'm in love...
Currently, I'm into watching Iyanla: Fix My Life. It comes on OWN. I told Mr. Spouse I should probably sign my family up for that show. We would triple her ratings. I know everyone says that about their family. But really once again if you know me well you know I always win this category hands down. I decided I didn't care enough at the moment to fix it so I won't contact her just yet. :)
Currently, hating mosquitoes with a passion. I know hate is a strong word but seriously they are pissing me off! They keep getting into my house. I think me and baby girl have at least 10 bites b/t the two of us. I'm praying they are good bites. There have been lots of cases of West Nile in our metroplex. I told Mr. Spouse if I see the mosquito camping out here I'm going to kill the shit crap out of it. He pointed out there was only one way to kill them. HA!
Currently, I'm noticing my husband is a hoarder. He brings home all kinds of things his well off clients don't want anymore. I have 2 jet skis in my garage, a golf cart behind my back house in the back yard, about 2 grill things, and a box of Christmas lights in the foyer. Oh and the furniture in our master bedroom is way to big for our house but came from someones storage and was brand new. Oh and how could I forget my super eye sore TV. I have a 70 inch TV sitting in my living room. I hate that too. It takes up SO much space. Someone wanted a new one so my hubs happily snatched up their one. I told him one day I'm going to call the mission and it will all be gone when he gets home.
Now, with that said I will say every once in a while he brings home something I like. I noticed this little baby in the corner one day last week.
It's super awesome! It's so maneuvers greatly! Also, it's cordless. You just keep it on the charger until you're ready for it. It also has a little detachable handheld mini vacuum too. It is so light! I grabbed it to clean up little princess' dinner mess. But, I got all carried away and couldn't stop vacuuming.
Currently, I'm laughing every time I see this floating around pinterest. It is totally my life. Now all my friends have kids or are trying to have kids. I tried shoppings at Charolette Russe and had to go up to sizes than my normal size b/c I have birthing hips now. And..I don't know about the hangover part. I don't drink enough to know if it's true. I think at this point if I did drink that much I would be in big trouble w/Mr. Hubs. He did his time with those days. :)
Well, that's all folks. I promise I'll post again soon. This weekend to be exact. :)
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I remember going to see The Bucket List at the movies. My only uncle had just passed away from cancer. I BALLED like a baby in the theatre at the end of the movie. My sweet friend that I went with had no idea what to do. It took a couple of minutes but I was alright.
Anywho, I've seen the Summer Bucket list and Back to School Bucket list that were floating around blog land. I decided to take a stab at it and make a Fall Bucket list.
Oh oh, before I do that how could I forget. I'm super excited that less than 2mos into blogging my page hit over 1,000 views. I don't know what normal stats are but that makes me very excited. .HOLLA.... I said that this morning and little princess repeated after me. It was hilarious. :) Just wanted to say thanks and keep on reading.
Ok, back to my bucket list. This is a family friendly type bucket list. I've posted before about the lack of family traditions for my hubs or myself. So I am big on starting them. I know little princess is to little to know the difference but ya gotta make it a habit right??? Here is a picture of our list and I'll explain a few things on it.
If you live in Texas like I do you know that Fall is the best time to go to the zoo and the aquarium is just an added play date for little princess. I want to try and get those in once a month.
Take a hayride goes along with a tradition I want to start. The Sunday after Thanksgiving I want to go to a tree farm and pick out a Christmas tree. I stole that tradition from a friend. Hopefully, I can find a farm that does hayrides too. :)
We have a fire station right around the corner from the house. I saw this really cute picture of little acorn donuts. I'm totally making those. I don't remember where I saw it first. But here is where I stole it. See aren't they cute. :)
And another recipe that I found that looked worthy of trying was this pumpkin one. I'm going to try it with a Spice cake mix though instead of Butter Pecan. The bonus is they are only 97 calories. And for that reason alone I am for sure dusting with powder sugar!
If you would like a copy of my bucket list you can download it here.
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I'm linking up with Kelly at Teaching Fourth and Tara at Fourth Grade Frolics to show some things we've done in class this week. I have to admit right now is not the most exciting unit. We are doing a map packet. I'm new to the team and I was told this is what has always been done the first 6wks. I could think of about 50 other ways to teach it but ehhh why rock the boat. I prefer just going with the flow.
Anywho, the packet covered the basic features of a map this week. We talked about the symbols on a map and how to read them. I've tried to throw a little note booking in with the packet when I could. On this first activity below they had to read the map to find certain cities. Once they found the cities on the map they had to use the legend to read the towns symbol. The symbol told the population of the town. Now, as a disclosure this data is not current. I'm not exactly sure how old it is. I've been told that in the textbook George W. is still governor of this great state of Texas. I explained to them the numbers weren't accurate but they still got the idea of how to read the symbols and legends. In their journal they had to record the city name, draw the symbol next to it, and record the population according to the legend. We are using giant dry erase desk maps. You can see it a little under the notebook.
Today we did a little vocab review. They chose a vocab word we used this week. In the journal they had to design the word, draw a picture, use it in a sentence, write the definition in their own words.
This one below was my favorite and it made me chuckle. He did the word population. His picture shows the welcome sign when you enter a town. "entering middle of nowhere population 100 graves" Ha! I'm so loving fourth grade and their humor :)
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This past week was the first week of school for our kiddos. I am in a new grade, in a new school, and a new style of teaching. I'm teaching 4th grade for the first time. My school rotates the kiddos just like junior high. I am in charge of Social Studies. In Texas 4th grade Social Studies is Texas history. The first two days we kept our own homeroom. Once the kiddos started rotating we spent 2 days setting up our notebooks. It didn't cross my mind to grab pictures of the set up. I planned to spend the week on procedures and routines. We did one lesson on listening and practiced using our journal. Then I decided that this group did not need any more behavior lessons.
Overall, they are all pretty good. My first block is A-M-A-Z-I-N-G I wish I could keep them all day. So quiet and such hard thoughtful workers. I have 5 blocks total and really only 1 makes me work extra. I'll take that!
Since they were so well behaved I knew I wanted to do something fun on Friday. But it wasn't in my plans so and I was drawing a blank. I went to bed thinking and thinking. Then BAM in the middle of the night in my sleep I dreamt of what to do in class. I got to work a little early and printed out what I needed. I had some super sweet girls (love them already) in my homeroom help me cut before the tardy bell rang.
We did a lesson on our Texas BK(background knowledge). We had a discussion on what we already knew about Texas. I listed the topics as they named them. I left them up just in case they needed a reminder while they were working. They had to write four things they had in their Texas BK and then draw pictures of things that had to do with Texas and label them. I took a picture of my example and then I started to notice the kiddos notebooks. They did such a great job. Their artwork was so cute! I totally didn't need mine. So then I took pictures of some examples from block 1 and block 2. I asked their permission to blog them and the agreed. :) I just printed out 10 copies of the state outline and they traced and passed and began to work. The kids had so much fun with this! One of my sweet girls even asked me if this idea came from pinterest. HA! I told her nope but I will definitely pin it. This would work with any state! I hope this helps someone out there in blog land. Happy Teaching. :)
I'm going to link the post with Tara at 4th grade Frolics and Kelly at Teaching Fourth to share with lots of teacher friends.
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The once of a month grocery shop last month was totally awesome and cheap. Although, I did find myself going back to the grocery store for things like fruit and bread.The hardest part was doing it with a toddler. She was definitely a trooper! The best part about the menu was that I didn't make anything the same the whole month. So this month I just took things we really liked and added them to the menu for this month. My favorite were the Italian Breaded Pork chops. Micah liked the Knock You Naked Brownies. We eat a lot of brownies in this house and these were his all time favorite. I had to make myself share with 2 other families so we wouldn't eat them all in 2 days. I'm pretty sure we demolished the half I didn't share in 2 days. Y'all I seriously made my menu list for the whole month in like 5 minutes or less. This storing all your meal ideas in one place was one of my best ideas. I'll share my ideas for this month with you guys and hyperlink the recipes. Bon appetit!
