Vocabulary and More Vocabulary!

Get ready! Your vocabulary word wall is about to grow big time... I have posted them before one at a time, but now I am just going to plunk them all down so that you can download them all at once. Just remember to only use them for you and don't distribute to anyone else. :)

These cards are multiplication, GCF/LCM, and beginning of fractions.

More vocabulary words for fractions!

Here are vocabulary cards for algebra concepts.

More algebra vocab cards!

Area and Perimeter:

Ratio Vocab Cards:

Probability Vocab Cards:

Click any of these to download through Google Docs. I hope you all can use these in your classroom! More to come later.  Have a good rest of your weekend!

TSW Craftiness

Feeling a little bored this weekend and want something crafty to do??
We are in the middle of an instructional audit at our school and one of the things they keep mentioning is to write your objective on the white board. I know a lot of teachers do this, but I had managed to escape the requirements of needing to do that for many years until now.  Ah the good ole days....
I found these wooden letters at Michaels, I think they were maybe like a $1 for each letter (2 in a pack, make one for a friend!).

All you need are a few cute scrapbooking papers and a little mod podge and you my friend are ready to craft!
I just painted the sides of the letters, traced the letter on to the scrapbook paper and cut it out, mod podged it on, and BAM! Done!  Don't forget to stick a magnet on the back so it can float with ease on your white board.

And now those pesky objectives are just a little easier to write now. Haha, well, you don't have to write TSW every time. 3 less letters!

 Happy crafting!

Just A Quickie

This week has been crazy! I did my student led conferences and will blog about that later this week. They went so great! I can't believe I haven't been doing them this whole time.
I am loving that it is Sunday and my house is quasi clean, my laundry is done, I have grocery shopped for the week, AND I still have today and tomorrow to just enjoy my days off.
Alright, now to get down to business here. I have a very wise instructional specialist who told me my first year of teaching that I only called on the kids whose hands were raised. I didn't even realize I was doing it!  I still do this accidentally, but to hold the kids accountable I have a few tips. 

Pick-a-Student Can:
I know a lot of us have these cans with the popsicle sticks in them. I had to label mine because I have two different classes.

Looks like these have seen better days! They get used a lot!

I also have a toilet paper tube in each one. I start off the day with all of the popsicle sticks in the center and as I call on the students I put them to the outside of the tube so I can control the probability a little bit. It works great!

Smart Board Spinner:
I am so fortunate to have a Smart Board and so I am able to use the spinner. The kids absolutely love this and it is so easy to create. I already have the tables numbered and then I number off the students according to their seats. If there aren't 4 to a table, then some students are assigned two numbers. This could easily be made into a spinner with the total number of students on it if you don't have tables.

Have a great rest of your 3 day weekend!

Student Led Conferences

Help my fellow bloggers! I am doing student led conferences for the first time and I need some good ideas. Have any of you ever done them before? Any tips or helpful hints?  Thanks!

CURRENTly FEBruary

  I love it when Farley puts out her Currently templates. I'm linking up y'all! Happy Tuesday!

Tag, You're It!

  Bonnie tagged me over at Living a Wonderful Life. Let's just jump right in, shall we?

1. You must post the rules.
2. Post 12 fun facts about yourself on the blog post.
3. Answer the questions the tagger set for you in their post, and then create 12 new questions for the people you tagged.
4. Tag 12 people and link them on your post.
5. Let them know you've tagged them!

12 Fun Facts About Me

1. A fellow teacher introduced me to her brother-in-law and 4 years later we are still dating and very happy!

2. My chihuahua is quite the little chunky monkey and she snorts and impolitely stares.

3. I got my nails done and I got a nude color. It makes my fingers look long.

4. I have short toddler like fingers so I like things that make my fingers long.

5. I snubbed Dave Matthews at my mailbox as he drove by honking.

6. My friends and I collect super gaudy rings and wear them as a competition when we get together. My most recent purchase was a spool of thread ring. 

7. My dad was a tour guide at Monticello.

8. Vegas is one of my favorite places to go. I would tell you about it, but it's kind of against code.

9. I make Paula Deen's Lemon Blossoms for pretty much any event that I go to. They are delicious and people go crazy over them. Here is the recipe. 

10. I went to the principal's office two times in my school lifetime. Once for flushing a mean boy's sandwich down the toiled and once for setting the principal's hair on fire.

11. I am a total foodie and love watching the Food Network. I watch the Barefoot Contessa every night when I am going to bed. Don't ask, something about that pleasantly plump woman soothes me to slumber.

12. I have eaten breakfast in the dining room in the White House. 

Now to Bonnie's questions...

1. What state do you live in?
   I live in Arizona, but I grew up in Virginia.
2. Do you collect anything?
   I collect Jadeite dishes (vintage jade green dishes).
3. What is your favorite color?
   Mmmm, I don't think I have a favorite! I like all colors!
4. Do you do anything work related on the weekend?
   Ummm, haha, YES! Every weekend... I totally admire teachers that make sure that doesn't happen.
5. What is your favorite food?
   I love Mexican food. I also love arugula salad with lemon vinaigrette, parmesan cheese, and pine nuts. I seriously could eat many many bowls. I go through a bag of arugula in like 2 days by myself.
6. How long is your commute to work?
   I am really lucky and it takes me about 10-15 minutes to get to work depending on traffic.
7. If you won the lottery, what would you do with the money?
   Pay off all my debt, go back to school to get my masters, and donate to Share Our Strength.
8. How do you spend your time when you're relaxing?
   Wearing stretchy pants, drinking wine, and watching a good movie on Netflix!
9. How many weddings have you been in?
   Oh my, let's see. Green dress, purple dress, blue dress, brown dress... 4? I feel like there is one more though.
10. What is your favorite place you've visited?
    I am so fortunate to have parents that gave our family opportunities to go to many amazing places. I have been to Europe, Scotland, Australia, but I have to say I think my favorite place is Disney World. :-)
11. If you weren't a teacher, what would you be?
    I would be a baker for sure. I love cooking and always am baking if I am stressed out. My co-workers always know if work is stressing me out because I will bring them goodies the next day from my night of de-stressing.
12. Kids...do you have any?  How many do you have/want?
    I don't have any kids, just 2 chihuahuas. I would love to have 2 kids one day. :-) 
    Twelve Questions for My Taggees
    1. What has been the most memorable lesson you have taught?
    2. What's a scent that triggers a memory for you?
    3. What's your favorite movie?
    4. What's do you usually bring for lunch to school?
    5. Do you prefer student led conferences or traditional parent teacher conferences?
    6. Do you drink Starbucks? What's your usual order?
    7. What's your cell phone ring tone?
    8. How often do you check your blogs that you follow?
    9. What's your favorite recipe you like to bring to parties?
    10. What's a TV show that you loved growing up?
    11. Target or Walmart?
    12. How many students do you have in your class?

Here are the 12 people who I am tagging! Sorry if you have already been tagged. 

1. Stephanie at Teaching in Room 6

2. The Polka Dot Owl

3. Janaye at Tales of Frogs and Cupcakes

4. Tales of a Fifth Grade Teacher

5. Runde's Room

6. Jennifer at Rowdy in First Grade

7. Deborah at Multi-Grade Matters

8. Sherrie at Middle School Math Rules!

9. Lisa at mrs. tilmon says...

10. Jordan at Life is Better Messy Anyway

11. Liz at Fast Times of a Middle School Math Teacher

12. Kim at Finding JOY in 6th Grade

Gee Golly, Geometry!

I haven't written on my blog in quite a while! I've missed so much!
We finally wrapped up our geometry unit so here are a few more things that we did. Here's a few entries that we made in our math notebooks. I love our math notebooks! Usually I let them create their own pages, but with geometry I felt like I had to type up a lot of the entries to speed the process up and make sure they had accurate angles and lines. 

Find electronic copy here.

OK, well these are kind of hard to see.  Not my best photographic work! Here are some 3-D castles that we built to wrap up our geometry unit. I had them plan it out first...

Then we turned our classroom into a brief construction zone. Paper everywhere! But it was totally worth it. They already had 3-D nets in their math notebooks so they traced them onto white paper and then cut and taped into the shapes. I think my pictures can represent how my classroom looked for the day. Warning, the shocking mess may result in unpleasant side effects... Haha! I just noticed all the money lying around on the tables! You can tell I was definitely giving positive reinforcement to the ones who were cutting the whole time.

 But then here's how they turned out...

SO cute! And then (whew, almost done!) they had to fill out the form because quite a few of them didn't finish their castles so they had to take them home. I had to hold them accountable although I suppose some of them could've filled this out without finishing their castles, but I like to think they all slaved over their castles and made many a teeny weeny 3-D shapes.

Hopefully you all can build the castles in your classrooms! They really were fun and a great wrap up for the unit. Have a fantastic Monday tomorrow!