Happy Birthday to me! :)

So, last week, we celebrated my 26th birthday in room 9. There is no other place in the world that I would rather be on my birthday than in my classroom with students who love me unconditionally. I was so surprised and shocked to receive the extra love and attention from my kiddos. I have to share and brag about some of the goodies I received. We ate cake, and cookies, drank juice, and had a great day! I am so lucky!! 

Before my birthday though, we did have some fun in room 9. We were focusing a lot on inverse relationships and the properties of multiplication. I am very proud of how well the kiddos did on the assessment on Friday, and am excited to see how they continue to grow and learn to be fluent in their multiplication and division facts. We did a scavenger hunt to practice division and using the inverse to help us solve multiplication and division problems. This helped us to prepare for our test on Friday of last week! :)

 

This week, we had Monday off of school for Veteran's day. We have been busy already during this short week. We are playing a lot of math games including bingo, I have, who has, Top it, and Tic-Tac-Toe. We are using this week to practice our fluency of multiplication facts. We have also been watching the old School House Rock movie, "Multiplication Rock". I have to share some pictures of our games and fun, but I also want to share this picture of Kevin. Kevin missed all of last week because he was in Mexico with his family. He has come back gracefully but Multiplication Rock was very new to him (I introduced it last week) He did not know what to think of it --- and this face shows it all! :) 

Here are some pictures of our writing time, daily five time, hang man during daily five to practice spelling words, and math games and practice! :) 

They are convinced that Clay Matthews would fall in love with me if he ever met me. My students are so sweet, and I wish they were right. They also are very concerned that he would be too rough with me, and would be mean to me because he is scary and hits people so hard! :) These kids seriously crack me up! It amazes me how much they truly pick up about you when you build relationships with them. I received 3 bouquets of flowers for my birthday, including a dozen roses. I have NEVER told them that flowers are my favorite gift to receive but somehow, they knew that I would love those the most! :) 

We did a Mystery Skype today with a class in Iowa. I am so proud of these kids and how much they have grown and continue to grow. I am also so excited to share with them that we have a Skype set up next week for 2 days where we will be skyping with 6th graders from my hometown in Michigan, and we will be trying to guess Mystery Numbers. The kiddos are going to be so excited to know that we are skyping with 6th graders, AND That they will be kids from my hometown. I can't wait to see some of the kiddos that I have been blessed to teach in the past. It will be very heartwarming for me, and I am looking forward to the challenge of solving the puzzles. :) 

We are also hoping to set up another Mystery number Skype next week with another classroom. Learning globally is so fun, and engaging! :) 

I also wanted to share one more new thing that I am doing in my classroom after seeing Harry Wong speak ... We have a morning warm up and an afternoon warm up. We have eliminated some wasted time, and the kids can see their schedule broken down by the morning and the afternoon. The warm up is short and sweet, but gives them something to work on and get started on right away to engage themselves and their brains. :) 

14 days until Thanksgiving break, and I can not wait for the surprises I have in store during that break!! :)

~Ms. Niehaus 

Building arrays, state report projects, and more ...

This week was a crazy week, as you can see from the previous posts I've already made. My brain has been going so crazy with ideas, reflections, thoughts, and concerns. We have so many things going on in room 9, and we are learning so much. We are having fun, and we are also ready to "start over" on Monday. We will spend a significant amount of time re-learning procedures and policies and practicing them over and over again. I think it's always a good idea to revisit these procedures and to practice again, but I think now is a perfect time for us. We are comfortable with who we are, our classroom community is fabulous, and we love each other, BUT, we are also wasting time because we have forgotten about some of the procedures and I have not done a great job of reinforcing, so hence ... Monday - we start over! :) 

This week, we finished our "day in the life of" books which focused on writing a schedule. We had to write a rough draft schedule of our day, it could be real, or made up. We, then turned our schedule into a book titled "A day in my life". They turned out super cute, and for the most part, the majority of students grasped the concept of the functional text - schedules. 

We also spent some time learning about the specific multiplication properties. We have touched on these as we have been learning multiplication and division, but we haven't really broken the properties down until this week. I have to share this picture of the board. I am NOT an artist, but I was pretty proud of my art work to display and show the connections between properties this week! :) 

Next up --- Multiplication by arrays. We have been doing a lot with arrays and equal groups and I think the kiddos are finally starting to really reach that mastery point. (hopefully --- we get there for fluency eventually too!) We built arrays with marshmallows this week, and had a lot of fun doing so! Some kiddos really challenged themselves with some BIG numbers! :) 

Most of all -- they LOVED seeing them on the wall, and finding their own array, and pointing them out to their friends. This made my heart happy. I LOVE when they take and show pride in their work and their learning. It's something truly special when a child LOVES what they are learning, how they are showing what they are learning, AND can explain it to their peers. Happy Teaching moment! 

We have been working so hard at Mystery Skypes lately, and I wanted to take it to another level... we have found Mystery Number skyping and are very excited to find some classrooms to join us in this challenge and adventure. I am hoping to get a classroom from my home town in Michigan to join us! It will be a great challenge and very fun opportunity for my kiddos to use their skills and knowledge to find mystery numbers with new friends from all over the country! Thank you #MysterySkypes and #SkypeInTheClassroom Here are some pictures from our AWESOME skype with a class from Clinton, Oklahoma this week! :) 

 Going along with our Mystery Skype challenges lately, I wanted the kiddos to take their learning a lit bit farther. We have been focusing so hard on functional text the last few weeks and non-fiction functional text that provides a purpose and gives us information. We decided we would use these concepts together with our Mystery Skype projects and we would chose a state to research, and make an informational poster about our states. We had a lot of fun reading, and finding information to accomplish this task. Here are some pictures from the beginning states of the poster making, I'll have to share final results next week--- we are going to display our state posters in the library! Thanks to our fabulous librarian for the suggestion -- yet ANOTHER way for my kiddos to feel such a great sense of pride and accomplishment in their learning! Here is a link to the rubric I used for the assignment -- I gave the students complete control of their project outcome -- they had to check off each part of the assignment as they completed it. US States Project Rubric 

We will also be presenting these this week before we place them in the library, maybe we will record our presentations and make another video! :) 

Of course, as a teacher, sometimes you have GREAT days, and sometimes, you have rough days. It's not secret that I have had my fair share of rough days this year. I have a great set of students who respond so well to my rough days though. They are so caring, and honest, and can certainly turn my day around with one hug or smile. BUT, I have a few girls who are SO loving, and even when I'm having a great day, they can find a way to make the day EVEN greater! I have to share the notes they left for me Thursday! Love love love these kiddos! 

I am so so so lucky to have been blessed with this group of kiddos. They make my job, and my life so much easier.. which is weird, because it's not easy. But, I can't imagine my job, or my life if I didn't LOVE these kiddos the way I do. 

So, What's coming up next week?

Well.....

We are continuing with multiplication and division, only this week we are focusing specifically on using the inverse property to help us solve and check our answers when multiplying and dividing. We will be doing some problem solving, and work with story problems. I am hoping this will help us to distinguish when we are reading story problems if we need to multiply or divide (This was pretty confusing during our last CFA). We will also focus more on the properties of multiplication and division again, and how we can use those to help us solve problems. We take a big CFA on Friday and I am really hoping for some positive growth and learning! :) 

In reading/writing, we are moving our focus back to fiction in a sense. We are learning about plot, and how to compare and contrast plots across stories. We are also simultaneously learning about graphic organizers and how to use them to help us better understand and comprehend the text we are reading. We will be filling out graphic organizers, answering questions, re-visiting character traits, identify setting, and problem/solution in stories, and will end the week with being able to correctly sequence a story with a graphic organizer! 

Phew! Lots of learning left in Quarter 2. Welcome November, I can't wait to see what kind of fun we can have, how much learning we have ahead of us, and how much personal growth we can attain! 

Happy November!

~Ms. Niehaus 

First days of School ....

After reflecting on the Harry Wong presentation on Wednesday, I mentioned that I was ready to start over on Monday. It was going to be like a brand new first day of third grade. I shared this idea with my kiddos. We talked about how things have gotten a little crazy, we aren't following procedures completely, we've made lots of changes, and we are wasting too much time. They seemed to be receptive of this idea. We really did have a great week! :) I will be blogging later about some of the fun things we did this past week, and what's coming up. 
But, tonight, I wanted to share my NEW "First Day of School" powerpoint. This is something that I certainly see myself editing and tweaking as I become a more effective teacher. I would love to edit it so that it features my students actually doing the procedures correctly. However, this is the beginning, and we all have to start somewhere. :)

So, here it is! 

Niehaus - First Day of School

Caine's Arcade and the beginning of our Cardboard Challenge

Holy smokes! I swear I was just blogging about how it was October already, and now October is gone! Yikes! Time is flying by! :)
Welcome to November! 

I just wanted to share a few things we have done this past week.
Obviously, I was out on Wednesday and saw Dr. Wong. See my previous post reflecting on that opportunity! :) 

But, we have been doing some pretty exciting things in room 9. I shared with my students the idea of the Cardboard challenge and Caine's Arcade. Check it out here! :)

The response was Overwhelming ... especially for me. I had already watched the videos and had been inspired myself. I cried watching the videos, but I was not prepared for the response it received from the 8 and 9 year olds in my classroom. They were FULLY engaged, and interested. They were amazed, in awe, and inspired. I had several students fighting back tears, and a few who couldn't resist the tears and let them out. THIS WAS SOMETHING SPECIAL. They watched this boy build something with his creativity, and how awesome it was. I didn't tell them anything about the video or the project, I just said I had some videos I wanted to share with them. Their immediate responses to the videos were, "I wish we could go there and play", "Could we take a field trip there?" "LA isn't that far, lets go visit him", "Can we do that?" "Let's make our own arcade", "we could invite all the homeless and the poor people to come play for free- -wouldn't that make them happy?" --- WHOA, that one caught me WAY off guard. HOW COOL IS THAT? An 8 year old student in my classroom in western downtown Urban Phoenix (who lives in poverty himself) thought by himself how awesome it would be to invite less fortunate people to come play for free because play would make them happy, and we could make them feel good. WOW! As I am typing this, I am getting tears in my eyes again ... I am completely inspired by these children, these people, who 13 weeks ago, refused to even talk in front of the class because they were "scared and shy". Now, here they are, completely on their own, exploring ways to make other people feel good about themselves. I am so very proud of the people they are becoming.
Anyway, we had a discussion and decided that we did, in fact, want to make our own cardboard arcade. We wanted to participate in the Cardboard Challenge. We talked about how we were going to have to find products, cardboard, recycled materials, cheap items from the 99 cent store, or dollar store. This again, has blown my mind. Here is a picture of boxes and items they have ALREADY brought in. They are so excited.

What you can't see is that most of the boxes have things in them. They are making and buying tickets to give out when people play their games, they are brining in their own old toys that they don't want anymore as prizes, or to use for their games (Notice the bag of army soldiers --- they're going to be playing soccer pretty soon:)) They are bringing in anything they can find that they think we could use. I can't wait to see their ideas come to life. They are SO inspired. We have decided that we will build and play the last 2 school days before Thanksgiving break. They are aware that we still have classroom learning to do but they have already started brainstorming ideas, some students have already started drawing out their plans. 

I am so excited to see where their imagination and creativity takes them, and can't wait to come back and share a blog post about our project after it is finished. My students will be laughing at me that day - because I can guarantee that I will be in tears at their fantastic, magnificent imaginations. 

~ Ms. Niehaus