Five for Friday..ish

Linking up with Doodle Bugs Teaching and doing Five for Friday!  I know it's technically not Friday.. but let's just pretend I linked up on time!

 Well if you have visited me before, you can see that my blog has had a MAKEOVER!  I absolutely LOVE it!  Tenille over at Designs by Tenille did an AMAZING job!  I just answered a few questions, made some requests, and she did the rest.  It was such an a quick and easy process (2 week turn around time) if you are looking for a new look, make sure to check her out.

 In Social Studies, we are learning about location.  Many of my students have never had the opportunity to leave their neighborhoods so location can be sort of a difficult concept for them to understand.  I used the books "Where I Live" and "Me on the Map" to help explain that we can be in multiple places at once and they immedielty got it (a lot faster than previous years). I gave them a little book of their own to fill in as we read the book "Where I Live".  It took about 4 days to complete.   Click the picture for the FREEBIE!  Next week, we will focus on the names of all the continents and oceans.  We will also complete a circle map where they will independently identify their street name, city, state, and continent.  Look for a freebie in that upcoming post!)

 I spent Tuesday at a training.  I'm never happy to leave my kids, but this training was actually... really good and beneficial!  It was all about creating valid commen assessments.  I never find the perfect weekly formal assessments for math that align with what we teach every week so I'll usually cut and paste or make my own.  This training was about which questions should be on an assessment, how formatting makes a difference, the benefits (increase of 36% in student mastery) of students tracking their own progress (even at the Pre-K level), and how to differentiate on a test.   I definitely will post in more detail.  For right now, here is another freebie!  My kids are using  this as a DRA Tracker for the year.   Click the pic to download!  I made mine with a 1st grader in mine, but added a couple of blank pages that you can write in.  I also plan to test my kids 4 times this year because I have a smaller class size for EIP, I really think it's important they see their progress as much as possible.  I plan on creating a kid-friendly tracker  for the other subjects soon!

So this is completely not school related BUT I have to say I am in love my spin class. Sometimes its hard to get there after a LONG day, but I always have so much fun and burn so many calories, I don't have a lot of good excuses not to go.  During the school year, it's so easy for me to fall off my workout regime, but I'm determined to not let that happen this year.  I've been getting my co-workers to come with me so on the days I am "too tired", I have someone else holding me accountable.  Check out his class below.. and yes every class is like this!

 

KTX Fitness Instructor: Keith Thomspon

 And on another non-school related note.... I randomly picked a show to start watching on Netflix and now I'm hooked on "Army Wives." LOL yes, I might have picked it because I am an Army wife, but it's actually pretty good.  It will also fill that void until my usual Fall TV line up comes back... (Scandal, Grey's, Revenge, AHS...)

There's my five!  Enjoy the rest of your weekend!