Owl Reports

My students gave their owl reports today and did a great job!!! They learned so much about owls and had such a great time. Each student got an owl pop as a reward for completion. I just love doing this unit with my students. Available on TpT. Click here.

Something to Hoot About!

We've been studying owls. I have a great three day SMARTboard lesson. Full of links and craft projects. This is one of the projects that we do during the week. The students also prepare owl reports for me with basic information about their assigned owl. Did you know some owls are only 6" tall? The kids just live this unit. Check out my owl SMARTboard unit and report on TpT.

Hands on Hundreds Place

This week we have been working on understanding just how many is a hundred. Our flipped lesson this week was a video on place value and the hundreds place. Today in class the kids had to make rows of ten of whatever object I gave them. Then once they had ten tens, they were to put the objects in the hundreds place of their sorting mat and keep on making rows of ten. I could see by the twinkle in their little eyes that they were beginning to understand the concept of the hundreds place. They were so excited when they arrived at the number to correspond with the amount of objects they had.
You can get my flipped lesson video and sorting may by clicking here.

 

 This is how a completed sorting mat looks. And, yes, the kids did this one themselves.

 

These boys were just fixing to move their stack of ten tens over to the hundreds place.  

 

 

 This group used pennies.  They were on their way to a successful sort.

  

 

This group had a more difficult time because their objects were four different sizes.

VOTE 2012!

Our school held their own elections today. Our 6th grade class set up the poll complete with voting booths. It was so cute. My first graders made driver licenses so that they could get voter registration cards since they had never voted before. And those 6th graders were very careful to check every driver license and voter registration card. It was a great activity after watching my Presidential Election SMARTboard lesson.

We each got a sticker that said "I VOTED" and a "VOTE" bookmark. It was a fun day!!

Fall Leaves Have Arrived

We sent off our pecans Friday and today we got our fall leaves from first graders in Waterville, Maine!! Also, my sweet son and daughter in law from Quantico, Varginia sent us fall leaves. It was interesting to see the difference in the two.

Our friends in Maine sent us apples from one o the local orchards. They are just the right size for my "little people". You know, everything is bigger in Texas and apples are no exception. Here in Texas our apples are four times this big. But, these little jewels are really juicy and sweet. Thank you, so much, to our friends in Maine at Temple Academy!! We will hang our leaves in our classroom window and pretend we live in the northeast.

Flipped Lessons, flipped pecans, and flipping out over balloons

Wow! What a busy week we have had!! We had our second "flipped" lesson and follow-up activity in class the next day. The kids got to sort different kinds of crackers according to shape and then draw some shapes of their own. They worked busily and quietly. They all understood the difference between a square and a rectangle after the flipped lesson that they viewed at home. And, they enjoyed eating the manipulative afterwards! :-)

Then, we pulled in all our gathered pecans and packaged them to be sent to our friends in Waterville, Maine. We are looking forward to receiving our leaves and Maine apples. We can't wait to get a class picture from them so we can see what kids look like in Waterville, Maine.

Finally, we ended our week with a "balloon stomp" to reinforce addition and subtraction skills. I have NEVER had so much fun listening to my students practice their addition and subtraction facts. Thank you to Ron Clark from the Ron Clark Academy for the inspiration. Definitely worth it. I think this was more fun than Halloween for the kids.  Everyone cheered for everyone else and EVERYONE had fun.  The kids just kept thanking me and hugging me.

 

I had the parents blow up balloons and write one addition or subtraction problem on each balloons.  The students had to find a balloon that they knew the answer to and give me the whole equation out loud before they could pop their balloon.  Just Fun!

First Flipped Lesson

All the elementary teachers from my school went to a technology conference this summer where I learned about "flipped" lessons. The idea is that the student views the lesson at home from their computer, then the teacher has more time to help students with their work on a one to one basis. Well, it's true. I recorded a lesson introducing the use of a ruler. The students were completely informed of how to use a ruler. Then the next day at school we measured all sorts of objects and recorded them. The students had to figure out what size envelope they would need to put their objects in. Our school administrative assistant (a.k.a. genius lady) gave us envelopes and we had to decide if each object would fit using our "greater than less than skills". Whew! This lesson became so much more than I ever imagined it could be. The envelopes were filled with their objects and the record sheet and was then mailed home. The kids had a ball. And, the parents were totally on board with talking about rulers and their uses at home without me even asking. I can't wait to make my next "flipped" lesson. I will post the recording sheet as a freebie this weekend, so check back.