Five for Friday/Friday Flashback and a Friday Freebie

(How many times can we say Friday?!? )

Happy Friday of a 3-day weekend!!

We are back with a review of the week.  We are joining two linky parties!

We are linking up with Amanda at Teaching Maddeness for

and with Kacey at Doodle Bugs Teaching  for

for our week in review. So, here we go!!  (Don't worry- no projectile poop this week!  And if you don't know what that means, check our last Friday's post!)  ;O)

1)  The weather has wreaked havoc on the kids (and me!!).  It has rained pretty much non-stop all week.  We went from the 70s on Monday to the 30s on Thursday.  Ugh.  No outside recess means the kids are acting like caged animals.  BUT I saw several people pin indoor recess ideas on Pinterest and Gina from Beach Sand and Lesson Plans blogged about this Wednesday, so we tried one out on Thursday and it was great!!  It's a website called Adventure to Fitness.  It's a 30 minute show where the kids have to move the entire time, copying the guy on the show at whatever he's doing!  They loved it!  Here are some photos of the fun they were having!!

If you have to have indoor recess, try it!  I think your students will love it!

2)  We are working with fractions.  Now, I realize that I teach 4th grade and fractions have been taught basically since kindergarten (whether the students realize this or not).  But, my group this year really struggles in math.  So, I needed to make it as concrete and hands-on as possible.  Normally, we use fraction bars, but I decided this group really needed to make their own.  While we were folding and cutting, we had a lot of discussion about what we were doing and how we were making the fractions.  I think they were really able to GET it.  I took a picture of the strips that we cut and then some of the things that they noticed about fractions, without any prompting from me.

(My favorite comment was:  "Sharing is caring but we don't want to have to share with THAT many people..."- they are so funny!)

Here they are making their fraction strips.  It's amazing what you can learn about a student by something as simple as how they organize their fraction strips.  You have the ones that have each one neatly lined up (I'd be that kid!), the ones that stacked them, and then there are the students who just mixed them altogether in a pile (my OCD self was having heart palpitations at that).  But, I guess that shows what was going on in their little brains...

3)  We had our 100th day on Wednesday, and you can click here to see how it went!! We had a GREAT time!

4)  My classroom theme is owls.  One of my students came in and brought me a bag and said, "I saw this and I just HAD to get it for you!"  Soooooo sweet!!  Melt my heart!  I LOVE it!!

She knows I love coffee and I love owls, so she put them together!! A perfect, unexpected gift!!

5)  Last, but not least, our freebie!!

We had some staff development on Thursday about writing in math.  We had a lot of discussion on how to get the students writing about their thinking.  This could be writing about how they solved a problem, why a problem was solved incorrectly, or tips to another student about a strategy.  One of my and Stacia's favorite ideas was to use an acrostic poem of math words for students to describe strategies or what they know about a math term.  Sooooooo, we have made a few for YOU to use along with us!!  Just click one of the pictures and it will take you to the download!

If you download it, please let us know what you think!!  How do you incorporate writing in math?
*Amanda*