Peek at My Week 9/28-10/3

Ok It is wednesday and I forgot to link up with Mrs. Laffin's Laughings for A Peek At My Week!

AND...Success IN Secondary with 4mula Fun!

So here it goes!  Week FIVE.  I am already having a desperate need for our MEA break.  FIRST OF ALL because we are doing a Midwest Blogger Meet-up.  I am trying to nail down the location as we speak...one of the reasons that I have not posted in a while.  With that, school, LWCcreates and OH having a life....I got caught up.

This week we are done with our instruction of the main concepts behind LCM, GCF and Factor Trees (OK actually I taught factor trees on Monday...we are POST testing on Friday so this week is a lot

• Monday-Factor Trees
• Tuesday -Choiceboard/Flex Group
• Wednesday-Choice Board/ Flex Groups
• Thrusday - Choice Board/Flexgroup
• Friday - POST learning quiz

As a team we have decided if we do not have 80% of our learners at proficient or exceeding we are going to spend another week with practicing and retest on Next Friday.  Part of me wants this as I am super tired and I just want to freshen up my choices and not really have to plan next week.....Is that bad?

I have not heard anything about my social studies class yet...but I will update you as soon as I know.  My homeroom class is starting a novel study of the book Wonder!  I am so excited to bring some ELA to my life you have no IDEA!  I am going to post those posts (I only teach that every other day) in separate posts, starting Friday.

Here we go...Lesson Plans MATH!

We have a new principal this year. (Again...third in three years) and he is really into the idea of a task/choice board in our math classrooms.  I am still trying to figure out how to make this work in my 45 minute period...so bare with me as I make adjustments and experiment with a workshop model!  I would love to have any help that you can give me in the way of this as well.

Here is a picture of my choice-board and the area that I house everything in.

I modeled it off of Miss Bunny's  Hoppenings:

I used her free template.  What I did differently is a differentiated the choices that start from a remember in Choice One and go to a Create in Choice Nine.  So far my kids are really doing a great job of picking choices that are at their level of understanding.   THEY LOVE The stinking partner games and are mad at me that I have more than one game...but they can only play games for one choice.

So here is a breakdown of what we are doing!

Today we talked about Factor Trees and how to use them to find GCF.

I broke away from my lesson plans (like we all do.) and actually had students use small squares of paper to identify the prime numbers (Tomorrow I will post some pictures of our ISN for this unit, and include links to some of the foldables I made.)  I cut squares of 5 different colors of construction paper.  We defined PRIME and listed the first five by glueing five different colored squares down and wrote 2, 3, 5, 7, 11 on the top of those squares.  We then did a factor tree for a number and when we got to a prime number we put the square down to let ourseleves know we could stop.  We then did a second one and compared the prime factorization to get a GCF. 

Kids were very angry at me that I did not show them this "short cut" before and we did rainbows.  I explained to them that just like driving in a car...I have to know how to get to where I am going first before I can start to learn the short cuts home.

I then asked the kids to fist-four their learning and we worked on some activities.

1: These students did a finding factors activity book by FlapJack Education Resources:

 This was really helpful for my students who are still struggling with identifying factors of a larger number

2: My students in this group came and sat with me.  We really focused on extending the lesson.  I grabbed some bingo daubers from the dollar store.  We took turns drawing numbers from a baggie(these numbers actually:) from Debbie Suduth Designs - freebie!!!) and did the factor trees but we got to put bingo daubs on the primes.  We talked about using our notes to help us remember which numbers are prime. 

Here is a picture of our posters with daubers....

This was my example that I was doing upside down.  there are some upside down numbers because I stink at writing upside down. 

3 and 4:  these groups did an activity by Little Lovely Leaders

I adapted this for my high learners by giving them larger numbers to work with.  This activity is great but it only went to 56 for a target number to factor.  I added a some more difficult numbers like 122 and 396 for my high flyers. 

I then had them compare with a friend to find the GCF.

This is my first day of the Choice board.  It is expected that in three days you get three Choices done, even if I meet with you as a FLEX group. My low group I assigned one task to, although most of the other kids did that task too.  :)  Here is how I broke down my choices

1. Vocabulary Sort - I made this quick activity for students to practice their vocabulary words and to practice the difference between what answers to a GCF problem and what answers to a LCM problem look like.  This was probably the easiest of all of the choices and was the one that I assigned my lowest group to complete.  Many of my others Students completed this activity though as well. 

You can get this activity for $1.00 in my TPT Shop

2. Textbook Schmextbook - This is basic problems from the Holt 2 text book. 

3. Partner Games - Ok this is pretty self explanatory but I used a slew of them.

The first is from Dots-n-Spots and is called Factor Football!  It is an AMAZING freebie

A LCM GCF board game by Felicia Watkins

and QR code LCM GCF Checkers by Flap Jacked Education another AWESOME freebie!

4. Independent Activities - I used an activity called Apples to Apples by Mercedes Hutchens working with factor trees. 

It is perfect for fall and a GREAT independent activity.  There are the little trees with the numbers on them, then the red apples have the factor trees that match, and the yellow apples have the prime factorization with the exponents!  SO GOOD. 

5. Journaling- I made some journal prompts and put them in a baggie.  

I am expecting students to write at least 5 sentences to explain the prompt.   You can have this as a freebie here!

6. Around the Room - this is an active learning activity.  This time I used the Scavenger Hunt by Math Hands On

7.Building Better Responses.  We have been working really hard at our problem solving in my class.  Our district uses the Five Easy Steps.  I can not say that I am a fan of this program...what I can say is that I am a fan of the process.  I have adopted the Building Better Responses program from the genious that is Runde's Room.  

(this picture sucks)

We have done enough of them in class that students are capable of doing them independently or with a partner.  I just put a back to back (indy/partner) in the drawer with some higher order word problems and they go for it.  for the word problems I am using my girl Kate over at To The Square Inch.

8. Word Problem Task Cards- Straight up...this is my challenge drawer.  Kids know it too.  I am using the LCM GCF sort and solve activity by Esther G.

9. CREATE- This is my favorite station and I love seeing what the kids come up with.  Basically, my students are drawing a number (same numbers from above) and they are making a poster with the factors, the multiples, their definitions of factors and multiples.  I found this lesson on Kristine Nannini's Blog Young Teacher Love.

We followed the same format from Tuesday.  I pulled a flex group and did an activity with students for thinking about how to list factors.  I used this worksheet that you can find for free on TPT.

This is how I used this work sheet. I handed students 20 unifix cubes of the same color.  I asked them to take a stack of 8 and with out looking at other students, split them into equal groups.

We took a look and noticed that some of us had made 4 groups of 2 and some made 2 groups of 4.  We talked about how you could also have one group of 8 and 8 groups of 1. 

Then I told students to grab their other 12.  I asked them to with the 12 split them into equal groups.  we noticed that there was more ways of doing this.  We then took turns reading the sentence prompts at the top of the worksheet that I laminated and used dry erase markers on it. 

We each wrote it in our sentence starters.  Then I asked students to see if they could make all the possible equal groups starting with one.

Then we tried to make two groups

Then three...I lost that picture and I am lazy.

So then we went to four groups.

Then an interesting thing happened when we tried to make 5 groups. 

Oh, you can't.

Then we made 6 groups (I lost that picture too)

and finally 12 groups. 

When we were done...kids started asking me why we did this "dumb" activity.  So I asked them....what do you notice about your first three columns.

MIND FREAKING BLOWN.

Hey...those are factors.

:)

Sixth graders just got a little more smart. 

Yesterday we did pretty much the sam things as Wednesday

I pulled a flex group and worked on higher thinking.  particularly word problems.  I used the "Build it" by Mathematic Fanatic!

SO good.  I used integer tiles though...because they were right there and I was (again) lazy.   Students thought it was funny that I was talking all day about peas and carrots. 

Also today I conferenced with EACH of my students in regards to an exit slip they did yesterday with ONE question of LCM and ONE question of GCF.  It was a pretty good indication of how they would do on the test so I made sure to hit each student.  We also went over the study guide and I gave them an ORDER UP! activity  by Mr. Hughes to take home and try for a study guide.

It's Friday, Friday gotta get down on friday!!!!  Ok Rebeca Black moment!  Alright!  Today we are talking about GCF.

Today we take the test!

:)

What does your week look like?

Cheers,