Five For Friday - November 15th

Hello everyone!  This is Kim again bringing you my "Five for Friday"link up with Doodle Bugs Teaching.  So here are my 5 random things for the week:

When I picked up my nearly 3-year-old daughter from day care Friday afternoon, she asked "Will you guys play with me tonight?"  I love how she is becoming so fluent with language.  She often cracks me up with her phrases and how much she understands.  Well fast-forward a few hours to after we get home from Friday night dinner.  I was sitting down thinking of writing this post, when she asks "Will you play with me?"  How can I refuse that?  I made a very purposeful decision to stop everything and play Candy Land with her.  These days are passing all too quickly.  As teachers we tend to pour EVERYTHING we have into other people's children.  Not that doing that is bad, I just want to be more aware of being in the moment for my own children.  So, we had a competitive game of Candy Land, and let the record show that my daughter won!

This week, the other 6th grade math teachers and I reorganized our students in our "extra help" period depending on results from a recent pre- and post-test cycle.  My group ended up modeling distributive property problems such as 3(2x + 4) by either creating a Prezi or making a video using our classroom iPads.  They learned that the number outside the parentheses tells how many groups to make that contain the contents that are inside the parentheses.  For example, one group made up a story problem pretending that they worked on a boat dock.  The man in the problem wanted to sell fish.  A boat came in with cases of fresh fish that he could purchase to then re-sell.  In the problem above, x would represent "cases of fish" in each group.  The 4 would represent how many individual fish were in each group.  So, the fisherman made 3 groups containing 2 cases of fish and 4 individual fish to sell.  In total, he had 6 cases of fish and 12 individual fish, which ultimately models the distributive property.  For 6th graders that level of understanding is awesome!  As a former high school math teacher, I can tell you I had honors students that may not be able to model and explain what the distributive property really is doing!  

I had 3 goals that I was hoping to focus on starting this week:  eating better, working out, and starting a TpT store.  I find that I will sacrifice and go overboard in relation to my teaching job, but I have little drive to do the same in eating better and working out.  In different phases of my life, I have been a healthy eater.  I just had my 2nd child, but was diagnosed with gestational diabetes in spite of being "normal" weight for my height.  It forced me to really evaluate what I was putting into my body.  As a result, I ate well and felt REALLY good.  I gained less than 15 pounds during pregnancy, which for a 120 pound girl starting out, that was pretty good!  Growing up I was always playing sports or involved in physical activities.  But now that I have 2 kids and a demanding teaching job, I just can't find the motivation to eat well or work out after getting home after 5:00 each night.  I am also wanting to start a TpT store to share resources that I am creating.  Thanks to Robyn, I now know what to do to start my store, I just again can't find the time to do it!  I know that seems like a lot of excuses, but I really just want to make my goals somewhat public in hopes that it will inspire me to get going.  I am currently watching Biggest Loser for inspiration as well!

Before leaving school on a Friday afternoon, I took the time to start a data wall.  The purpose is to show class statistics on pre-tests, formative assessments, and post-tests.  It does not show individual student results but does allow for students to set classroom and individual goals.  It may also serve to motivate some students to achieve at higher levels.  As a school, we are going through a data transformation so most of this is required.  I do hope that it helps put the spark into some of my students!

Ok, so my 5 is short and sweet...We only have 5 more school days before Thanksgiving break!  I cannot wait to spend time with my 2 precious children, my amazing husband, and the rest of my family and friends!

TGIF,

Kim