Five for Friday

HAPPY FRIDAY, FRIENDS! I'm exhausted, how about you?!?

I'm linking up to Doodle Bugs Teaching for Five for Friday!

 Last week, my students were working hard on identifying text features and explaining the purpose of the text feature. I am working on pushing them into higher levels of Depth of Knowledge, so I had them choose a text feature, explain it's purpose in two texts, and use evidence from the text to support how that text feature understood the text. Here is a freebie if you would like to do this with your class or a group. Subtitles, diagrams, captions, and a glossary worked well!

Here's a quick tip that has helped increase the richness and focus of my small group instruction. I do strategy groups frequently, so the make-up of children changes continually. I have begun starting my groups by having the students decide on two promises to each other to help everyone learn (just as adults would do working agreements/norms). They often say listen/look at the speaker, offer coaching, stay on task, etc. I write them on a whiteboard. Rarely do I have to refocus them, but if I do, I just point to that promise and they get back on track. It is a social-emotional strategy to help them monitor their behavior and have ownership in the group.

I learned a GENIUS idea today!!! Have the kids play rock, paper, scissors with their BODIES! Show them what rock paper scissors looks like, and have them practice with you. Then, have them act out rock, paper, and scissors, say shoot and show which they chose. You could use it simply as a brain break OR you could say whoever wins/loses shares something about xyz... SO fun! (Don't mind my tired Friday look here... I'm exhausted on Friday nights, but here's one way to be rock, paper, and scissors.)

Something my students love that we do whenever we have spare moment- Guess the mystery number! Now, when the student finish math work or have spare moment, they write some and we read them to the class. Other times I will invite someone up to give clues if I am resetting my smartboard and need a two minute filler or we have an extra moment. I am thinking of a number that is a 3 digit number... the tens place is half of 10, the hundreds place is 300 less than 500. The ones place is two more than 6. What number am I? Just like that! Students love the involvement of creating problems that the rest of the class will solve!

Finally, I love the freedom of the Five for Friday posts so I can end with a verse. We all go through really hard times, low valleys. This a great verse when we need to remind ourselves or others that God has blessing for us in the trails. He is always with us and when we go through trials, He will do works within us. Most of all, God is near to the broken heart!

Thanks for reading! I hope you will come back for another linky HERE on Tuesday--- Tech Tuesday! I can hardly wait! 

Enjoy the weekend!