My Sister’s Wedding

Gah, It seems like I go from posting a bunch to like a whole month without posting! I feel so guilty and it really makes me admire the people who have WAY more going than me that post everyday and make me a better teacher!

Im going to post some pics from my sister’s wedding and our Native American totem pole projects.

shoulda got a spray tan!

Also It is Christmas in Mrs. Ledgewood’s Room!

I am going to post my morning meeting routine this week… it is something that I have struggled with since starting teaching, but I’ve got one that I LOVE now!  Thanks again to all the teachers who post on a regular basis!  Hopefully I am getting a new camera for Christmas!  So bare with the awful photographs just a few more weeks and then you will be calling me Deanna Jump!  HAHA just kidding, I just want to be her when I grow up!

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!!

A Treasure Hunt and Homework

Our spelling words this week are r-controlled ar, er, and or words.  I loved Abby’s Pirate take on teaching this skill in 1st grade and did it last year.  So I thought I would do a variation for 5th grade.  I told the kids that a trick-or-treater dressed as a Pirate came to my house and left us a map and some clues to a treasure.  Most didn’t fall for it like my firsties but let me tell you when the final clue came in they went CRAZY!  haha I kinda loved it. After I told them the background I showed them the map and told them they had to find all 25 words before they were able to find the treasure.

Then I gave them a story that I made up and it is oh! so cute!  but my computer is being silly and I can’t save it as a PDF and upload it to Google Docs for some reason.  I will try again tomorrow. The kids read the story and and highlighted all the r controlled vowel words.

The kids had found all but one of the spelling words and they were about to have a come apart! Our counselor came in and said that she found a word in the parking lot and asked the principal if he knew what it was about {he had brought us one earlier} and he said he thought that my classes needed it. She held up that final word that she had found in the parking lot all wet and asked if we needed it and there was a resounding joy of YESES!  coming from all of the kids.

So now we have all of the words and we have to find the treasure…while the kids were in library the treasure appeared:

:        

not the great treasure box ever ….but it was filled with snickers and the kids were super happy!

happy kids=happy teacher!

Okay now to the good stuff haha

2.2 Homework

Pretty easy compared to Chapter 1!  Hope they did good!  I will answer questions tomorrow.

2.1 Math Homework

Note: You Ss should do work in pencil and erase!  Im not setting a great example and that looks like an apostrophe but its just a random mark! :)

Fact and Opinion Spider Activities

I was thinking how to incorporate fun cutesy activities for Halloween into our 5th grade curriculum, so I scored the internet and past activities from first and came up with F and O Spiders.

The first thing that we did was brain storm about what we already about spiders… I didn’t give any parameters and the list was pretty good.  Here’s what the kids came up with:

then we used our schema to make a True and False T Chart

Then students broke off into groups and read a book about spiders and took statements from their books to make there own t charts:

Then I took this adorable spider from ChalkTalk: A Kindergarten blog and just added the Fact and opinion strips the kids glued to the legs before then glued them on the paper:

Very Spooktacular!

Go Math is …

please insert adjective of your choice….

I am posting the answers for our homework tonight for two reasons:

1. to help the kids and the parents

2. to get blog world’s opinion about this _______ program (again please insert adjective of your choice)

{Please remember I teach 5th grade :) }

Our objective was Order of Operations and then some Spiral Review of some of the past 11 lessons in Chapter 1… yes you may need to reread that sentence.

Below is our homework …it is 9:30 here and as I was studying for our lesson tomorrow I thought well Duh!  That’s how parents can know what’s going on silly…. BLOG ABOUT IT!  Sometimes it takes a while for the lightbulb to go off….

I took several pictures so the problems would be clear:

the brackets are a little off and l--->r means read left to right

Back of Assignment

Have a Great Week Teaching!

Fun Writing Activity

Are you like me and are looking for some fun ways to incorporate Halloween/Fall Goodness in your curriculum?  I started a bulletin board that says We’re so “Spook”tacular its Scary. Kinda had a nice ring to it, but then I was stuck!  haha I’ve done “spook”tacular work, Have a “Spook”tacular Halloween, etc. but always had lower elementary cuteness to go with it. So I brainstormed, and I pulled out a oldie, but goodie from my college creative arts class. It’s a progressive drawing. If you are not familiar with this is, it is pretty neat. The hardest part is making sure the paper is folded correctly.Group kids into threes and give each kid needs one sheet of paper. Do a trifold so that it looks like an accordion. There are three rotations. We decided to draw monsters in relation to the bulletin board.

First the kids draw their own heads:

then fold the head back and rotate papers clockwise and everybody draws the bodies next:

then fold the body back and rotate the last time and draw the feet:

Then rotate it back to the original owners and Viola!  You have a monster. The hubs and I did an example for the kids…

           

We have laughed and laughed at ourselves…go ahead laugh with us!

 

 

 

 

 

I gave the kids 5 min. on each section. After they completed the drawings they wrote silly stories using their spelling words to go along with their “Spook”tacular Monsters.

I will post pictures of the bulletin board and the kids monsters tomorrow!

Happy Teaching!