Grudgeball, Text Mapping, Keep it or Junk It and More....

Three day weekend.....yeah!!!!! I actually laid down today during my midget's nap and both of us slept for three hours. Needless to say, my new job is extremely rewarding but very tiring! I have so much to tell you I'll just jump right in....

1. Great purchases

I got this...

Because I have grand plans of doing this...

Right now, it's made me a lot more organized which is really good. I'm still trying to find myself in my new classroom and at least I'm not running all around the classroom now for a paper clip or a bandaid. I don't know if mine will ever look pretty but it's extremely functional.

I also bought these at the Dollar Tree..., for a dollar each!

Earbuds!!! They are fabulous for our MacBooks and they are better than headphones because I just wipe them off with a Clorox wipe in between kids. It made doing my colonial stations easier because the BrainPop station meant a quarter of the class was independent and silent.

2. Textmapping

I did my first text mapping with my seventh graders and they loved it!

Look at all that tape!!!!

Last year when I launched textmapping, I made the mistake of assuming that the kids knew what a text box, illustration, chart, etc. was and I was constantly fielding questions during the process. This year, we did a quick page of notes in our interactive notebooks using this awesome presentation I found. We also watched this video for a great Common Core website called Learnzillion.

On the left hand side of their notebooks we did a prereading activity titled , "I Notice...." Where the kiddos had to tell me three things they noticed about the text using all the text features they just learned. It worked so well and I'll be trying the same activity with my eighth grade this week. Cross your fingers.... They are tougher to please!

3. Keep It or Junk It

I've blogged about this activity before but finally got to use it. Weirdly enough they do it on Jamestown in the video and that is exactly what we did in class. The kids did great for the first part. I had them individually find the ten words they felt were the nonnegotiables. They then got into groups of four, shared their lists and came up with a group list.

When it came to the part where they had to vote as a class, it kind of fell apart from there. First off, the activity went to a second day. Secondly, I have 30 kids in a class. In the end I was going to have about 70 words to go through and that is just way too long for my students's attention span. I will do this again, but I might have each group only do three words and I think I might have to do more modeling. I did let them watch the video before we tried it so modeling definitely helped. I think they need me to start it and then they can jump in when they are ready.

4. Grudgeball

Grudgeball is by far my most popular post on my blog. I was really excited to us it with my new kids and it did not disappoint. They loved it and have been begging for it every day since.

All in all, I have had a couple of great weeks. I'm feeling more comfortable everyday in my new surroundings and I'm really starting to understand what my kids need. We had open house the other night and it was wonderful to hear parents tell me their kids are coming home and talking about how much fun they have in social studies. As you all now, I aim to please.

Now... Onto my wares! First off, I have created some great sticky sheets for main idea and inference. I just used them with my seventh grade and they loooooooved them!

I also made this really funearly man interactive notebook activity with a foldable and left side processing activities. Again, the kiddos had a great time with it and did an amazing job on the processing activities. So many of them went above and beyond!

Lastly, Teachers Pay Teachers hit 100,000 likes on this little old thing called Facebook.... Have you heard of it? Because of this they are offering 10% off with promo code FB100K. Head on over to my store and get all those things you have wish listed!!!

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