Volume? I Want YOUR Ideas!

Hey everyone! Hope y'all had a great week and your weekend is off to a great start!

As I mentioned in a previous post, I am taking a big leap next year and moving from 3rd grade to 5th grade! We are semi-departmentalizing next year, so I get to teach all the 5th grade math!

So of course I have ZERO self control and am already freaking out about next year, so I ran to school the other night and searched through all my packed things looking for some of the common core book resources.

I've been looking through Buckle Down, Crosswalk Coach and Ready Common Core. Also, my goodness. See that book right there, Two for the Dough. It's book #2 in the Stephani Plum series by Janet Evanovich. Please tell me WHY I haven't read these books until now. SO GOOD.



Anyways, back on track here. I'm looking at the standards, the books and the unit outline for my first unit and it's volume. And I'm a little bit freaking out. I have taught area to my 3rd graders before, but volume is a completely different story.

So I need your help. If you have had some experience teaching the 5th grade volume standards or volume in general, what were some fun lessons you taught? Were there any resources, websites, games, etc that were extremely helpful in teaching volume? Hands on way or real world experience type stuff/explorations with volume?

Leave me the ideas in the comments and I will choose one person on Wednesday July 2nd @ 12:00pm and for the winner: I will personally create one thing just for YOU for your room next year! Desk nameplates, labels for tubs, book tub labels, schedule signs, ANYTHING you want! I will make it for you! You pick the design, clip art, anything!

Thanks! I know the best ideas come from other teachers so help a girl out!

Brit :)

Giveaway Time! :)

Hello there everyone!

So after my post the other day I realized that I was getting super close to 1,000 hits on my blog which is exciting! :) I'm really trying to be a better blogger and I'm working on some posts about stuff that I did towards the end of the year and never got around to posting buuuuuuuttttt I thought it would be fun to do a GIVEAWAY!

So here's the deal:
You have two ways to enter. One: Leave a comment below telling me one fun thing you have done so far this summer (and your email would help as well!). Two: Share this blog post to Facebook.

That's it. Simple. In the words of my students, "Easy Peasy Lemon Squeezy". The winner will get to pick one thing from my TpT store! Your choice- whatever you want! :)

Do both and double your chances to win. Be sure to use the Rafflecopter to add your entries!

a Rafflecopter giveaway I will choose a winner tomorrow night at midnight, so technically 12 am on June 27th!

Good Luck!

Brit :)

Summer Fun

Happy Tuesday everyone!

I don't know about you guys but I am having a *GREAT* start to summer vacation. After a few days of training, packing up the room and cleaning it up, I was officially on SUMMER BREAK! Wahoo!

But, back up: We had to do some training at the end of the year, which turned out to be awesome! I work at seriously the best school and our administrative team had such a great idea. We had a lot of new teams next year, myself included on a new team, so they decided to do one morning of team building. Which *insert eye rolls and groans here* but seriously, it was a-ma-zing. I won't go into too many details or give incriminating information, but we did a variety of things which included an obstacle course in the gym with blindfolded people and an Amazing Race style challenge around our town. It was so much fun and I know my team laughed so hard! What a great day! Here is a picture of our team pyramid in a park by our school:

So much fun. AH! It made me really jazzed for the upcoming school year!

So then I headed home to the parent's house and spent a few days relaxing with them! I celebrated Father's Day! I took my Dad golfing- it was my first time ever- and it was alot ofun! I also made these bad boys for my Dad- I like to call them a Reese Peanut Butter Cup Cupcake! My dad is a sucker for anything Reese so these were perfect and he loved them!

I worked a couple of days at my serving job and spent yesterday dealing with a busted hot water heater and now that leaves me to today. I'm currently watching Vikings reruns on my DVR and drinking coffee. Spiced Pumpkin coffee to be exact. I hoard that stuff in fall and then my mom gave me a box that she had hoarded for my birthday in April because I was out! So so good. I like ration it. But it's so good. So good.

I have been working on a little summer reading- I started the Stephanie Plum series and read the first book in like 2 days. I'm waiting for the 2nd one in the mail so I've been tackling the summer reading for school, which is "The Leader in Me". If you haven't read this book, do it now. It's an easy read and so good.

 
We are implementing this program in my school next and I am really looking forward to it. We are needing  little extra "something" and I think/hope this will be it. I am excited to teach my new students about leadership and great skills in order to be a leader. I have been thinking about my room and how I want to set things up, reinforce those qualities, etc and I thought about a simple reminder on the desks. And then I was like "OH! I'll just put the 7 habits on their NAMEPLATES."

So this was born:

I can't wait to put these on my desks. And what a better way then to have the 7 habits right there on the student's desks to remind them constantly. The 7 Habits are: 

The 7 Habits

1 Be Proactive

2 Begin with the end in mind

3 Put first things first

4 Think Win Win

5 Seek first to understand

6 Synergize

7 Sharpen the Saw

The 7 Habits are explained in more detail in the book so I completely recommend that you check them out! If you want to purchase these nameplates for your classroom, head over to my TPT store by clicking here!

They are chevron (duh, I love me some chevron) with coordinating labels, black with multiple colored labels and grey with multiple colored labels as well. There are 15 pages of nameplates in all so you can mix, match, and use them however you want! They work best when you print them on cardstock first. Then using a white-out pen, silver shaprie, chalk, or neon sharpies, write the names on them. Then laminate them and you are good to go! If you need additional colors for labels or backgrounds, feel free to e-mail me and I will see what I can do! 

Now, back to the coffee and putting together some of the things I got from IKEA last week. This item for sure has been "cat tested, mother approved". :) 

Have a great day! 

Brit :) 

 

Hey You Guys!!!!!!!! (Yeah, it's me. I'm alive.)

So I may just be the worst blogger on the planet.

I took a little *break* from the blogging/TPT world the past couple months. I had a lot going on with my family, friends, school, testing, ETC. This just fell to the back burner. And now that it is summer, *ta-da* I have returned. Technically we are not on summer break yet, well I mean,  today was our last day of trainings.  So TOMORROW is the first official day of summer for us here! I do have to go clean out my fridge at school, but other than that, I'm FINISHED! I've decided to treat myself to a nice mani/pedi tomorrow after that- I think I deserve it after all this packing.....

I will say that even thought I wasn't blogging, I was taking pictures and jotting down post ideas in a notebook as I finished the year. I can't wait to share some of those ideas with you. Also, BIG NEWS, I'm moving to 5th grade next year. I have taught 3rd grade for my entire teaching career (except that one year in second, but I knew I was looping and going back to third....) so this is big for me. It's a huge jump and I will  be teaching my own class reading/writing and then I will be teaching math to all the 5th graders. This was something along the lines of what I probably looked like when my admin team approached me about the idea....

I am excited though and I LOVE teaching math, so look forward to a TON of math posts in the coming months because my summer is going to be spent learning all this 5th grade math content and figuring out how to teach math in one hour. And do it 3 times.... HOORAY!

I do have lots to do this summer: reading, gardening, painting, visiting some places around here, and re-organizing the house. I hope to spend a lot of time blogging and uploading stuff to my TPT store that I created this Spring. I also have to take the GRE so I can start Grad School AGAIN in the fall. It'll be a busy summer and go by QUICK since we only have 8 weeks. 8 weeks. MEH.

I'll leave you with this. :D