Five for Friday: 11-15-13

Wow, has it been a week!  I've been waiting for Friday all week, but the unfortunately the weekend isn't going to bring much rest.  One of my teammates lost her son tragically this week and we have all been in mourning.  The funeral is tomorrow and it will probably be one of the hardest things I have ever had to be a part of.  Please keep their family in your thoughts and prayers.

Now, Praise the Lord that it's Friday and time for Five for Friday with Doodle Bugs Teaching!

I gave my little girl her first haircut this week!  She's not even one yet, but it was looking rough. She was born with a ton of hair that stuck straight up and has always had a little mullet action going on in the back.  Well I cut off the "rattail" and trimmed her bangs!  She's looks like such a big girl now!

My kids tackled long multiplication this week like champions!  I'm so proud of all of their strategies and how much their persevered through each problem I gave them!  Here they are doing a gallery walk analyzing their peers' strategies for the problem 15 x 8.

I love all the cocked heads as they are looking at the problems!

We did our first science experiment of the year this week!  It went great and the kids loved it! Skittles and science... who wouldn't love it???!!!!

 I wrote more about it here.

Kidblog is my new favorite tool to use in the classroom!

We have been blogging in class for the last three weeks and the kids are so engaged with it!  They get to practice their typing skills, writing skills, share their work with a broader audience, and they love to comment on each other's posts!  I wrote about Educreations on Tuesday, and we have been using Kidblog to share links to our problem solving solutions in Educreations!  They work great together and the kids love watching each other solve the same problem.

Wednesday I got to participate in a writing group with some other teachers.  My husband was part of the National Writing Project 4 years ago and still gets together with some of the other participants to write.  Over the past 2 years or so, I have joined him on occasion for the socialization and the chance to improve my writing.  I'm not a great writer, but blogging is really helping me find my voice.  My hubby came up with the prompt where we had to brainstorm 3 roads that had significance in our life and give a short discription of each.  Then we had to pick two of the roads and make them into one minor character and one major character in whatever piece you chose to write.  This was hard for me, but I got something down on paper.  It's nice to feel like a real person doing something fun with other educators that doesn't involve talking about standards or testing.