Five for Friday comes to you on a Saturday

This week went extremely fast! It was my first week that I attempted visual plans and I love it!!!  So happy we have a 3 day weekend!!! Woo Hoo!  

I am so excited to link up with 

Enjoy your peek into our week!

When I started 2015, I knew it would be a BIG year for me personally, but I also wanted it to be a BIG year for my professionally.  I wanted to start doing the things, I was reading about and actually make my classroom a place where I could not just educate but engage my students.  I have realized that my planning hasn't been strong or detailed enough, so I finally did it...VISUAL PLANS!!  They helped me really focus my teaching and though, I didn't get to everything...I feel it was a successful first try!

We have been using Class Dojo in Room 105 for quite sometime.  Our school follows PBIS, so each dojo received, equaled a blue ticket (our school wide incentive).  It was working for most, but some of my friends just weren't getting the incentive they needed.  Insert, my wonderful and awesome co-worker/friend and her wonderful Pinterest find!

She showed me something similar to the picture above that she did for her fourth graders.  I tweaked it to meet the needs of my firsties and WOW!  What a time saver to not have to redeem dojo's for blue tickets daily.  This week we had students reach all the way to lunch with a pal.  I will continue to monitor this and see if I need to change the incentives down the road, but I really like the way we are headed.

Work is always better when you can sit with a pal!

This year Math has been a challenge!  Our district switched to Engage NY.  Initially, we thought it was our only option.  Then the focus went back to we just needed to be teaching Common Core and Engage could be one of our guides.  We were lucky enough to "try" Go Math, which has been a hit with my kiddos.  I love it and the way it explains things to me, so I can better explain to my firsties!  This week we started Place Value.  Since this was my week to over plan and add details, I scoured Pinterest.  Thanks to Pinterest, Math really came ALIVE!

We started off with making Place Value Monsters, courtesy of Smiling and Shining in Second Grade I have realized that this group really needs to see the finished product, so now I create one of everything we do before we do an activity.

For the monster templates, click here.

One of my teaching buddies, who teaches 4th grade at my school (who obviously is amazing, as this is the 2nd mention of her in this post) and I decided to "buddy" up our kiddos this year.  We started back in September and my kids LOVE it!!!  They always tell me when there was a buddy sighting, whether in the hall, on the bus, or at breakfast!  So of course we had to celebrate our love on Valentine's Day.  My teaching buddy found 3 awesome Minute to Win It games to play!  We had three groups and the buddies worked together.  I have to say it might have been our best visit yet!!

Candy Heart Towers, Marshmallow Toss, and not pictured Candy Heart Relay.

Friday was filled with love (and craziness as I will definitely plan differently next year because we were very rushed!!!)  I got each of my kiddos a goodie bag and left them a message at their table spot.  Nothing too exciting but I think they loved it!!!

 

Thanks for checking out our week!  Happy Valentine's Day!!!!