Lessons With Coffee

And that sucks. If you have read my blog you know that this year I teach 3 classes of just 6th grade girls and 2 classes of just 7th grade boys and one class of just 8th grade boys.   We are a gender segregated school. Anyway.  We also have TERRIBLE test scores.  Our scores are so bad, the students that are placed in the "advanced" classes...are students who are scoring at proficient. It is pretty bad.  I would say of my seventy-two 6th graders, maybe 12 are really proficient at their multiplication facts. I watch students skip count, I watch students make tally marks, I watch students make arrays.   As I start teaching students how to simplify expressions using the distributive property, I am looking at these children and wondering how are you going to factor binomials if you have to count on your hands 9x5?!?!?!?!?!?!  I CAN NOT STAND lattice multiplication (this subject is sore, and worth it is own post), but for crying out loud I ...

I want desperately to post about my ISN's which are going smashingly with both my 6th graders and my 7th graders! But I do not have pictures or anything yet....I will get on that ASAP.   BUT. I want to share today about my Frayer Model dilemma and solution. I love FM's.  They rock my vocabulary world.  What I did not love was the "non example" section.  Often I could think of a non example but had a hard time verbalizing it to students.  OR if I let them come up with a "non example" they almost always had a miss conception about the word.  So I changed it to PROVE IT/DRAW IT. This has worked SO MUCH BETTER than it did last year.  It really helps my kiddos who are struggling with the abstract thoughts and put's it very concretely, pictorially and allows them that kinesthetic avenue of modeling and drawing it out.  SO I wanted to share it with you. Here is a picture of what it looks like: You can download them here:...

OH my goodness.  I was going to come home and blog about completely lame things just to put a blog up.  BUT I got home, checked the mail and my SLANTbox from Molly at Lucky To Be In First finally came!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ON a side note...Does anyone know how to rotate pictures on BLOGGER with out editing the picture first?  I am LAZY as dirt!  I was super excited!  It was the perfect ending to a GREAT first day with my students.  Yes yesterday was our first day but as I said in my CURRENTLY, I only got to hang out with my homeroom.  Today I got to meet all my kiddos!!!!!! INside of my box was a cute hand written note...New nail polish (That I don't already have...double score!!!!)... A super cute owl nail file (going strait to work!)...Binder rubber bands!!!!! (Oh my gosh.  I love these.  I use them in my huge binders for PD, my binders for GRAD SCHOOL, and my binders for LEGO League!!!!!)...and the cutest stinking note cards known to ...

I feel like I have not had any time what so ever to put forth into this blog.  How do you all do it?  DO you set side time daily, monthly?  Or do you just do it when you get time.  I feel like I have so much to tell everyone but I seriously have no time to sit down and write it out articulately!  I am loveing INSTAGRAM for quick updates but feel like I am letting quite a few of you down! I have done a lot for my classroom and had a little bit of time to work in it yesterday.  I will be there all day on THursday and Friday and even have a little helper coming in to help me on Friday (Yaye!)  So hopefully I get everything done before opening week! Here are a few down loads if you want them!  I am desperately working on getting more up and out but that takes time too.  YOu make something for yourself to use, then to change it to an editiable format takes time, then I have to upload it to a place you can download it.  It is time cons...

It's gonna take a lot to take me away from you  There's nothing that a hundred men or more could ever do  I bless the rains down in Africa   When I went to Africa Each and everyone of us had that song on our ipods!  What does AFRICA have to do with this post?   Well....Free stuff of course! I saw a bunch of Pennent Banners floating around Instagram in the last few days so I decided to make some of my own.  Before I get to mine, which yes you can have, I want to show the ones I liked a lot on IG! IG misswolgy IG ilovemyclassroom IG smittenwithfirst IG topdogteaching So then I decided to make my own.  I have a color theme.  I decided I did not want to do all animal print, or all chevron, or all anything.  I just wanted fun bright colors.  The colors I chose are blue (aqua), purple, orange, yellow, lime green, and hot pink. I also decided that my banners were going to be zebra print.  In order to do that I h...

I posted a picture of my to do list on Instagram and had quite a few questions about what some of them are.  Here is the picture I posted: The first question I got was "How do you plan to paint a pocket chart?" from Katie at Keep Calm Float On .  Well it is a little hard to explain so I will do a tutorial of it sometime next week.  :)  Promise. The Second question I got was "What is your get to know me poster?" from Marissa at  My Classroom Is My Runway . WELL.  Here it is: Click the picture or HERE to download.  It is what I am going to have my kiddos to on the first day of school, then I am going to take them per class and put them in a binder for myself and for new kids.  They can check out the book and get to know their classmates. I will fill one out for each of my classes books too.  BUT!  I also create a huge one (anchor chart sized) and post it up first day. First day of 6th grade, new school, 5 elementa...

I know that SOMEONE has a Monday Made it but I can't remember it!!!!  Darn.   This weekend was crazy busy and I have a grad class today "Turtles of the World" so more pictures will come later today for sure!!!!! But I wanted to post my very first font.  And let you download it if you chose to!  OK it has some issues.  The main one being that the g and the y get a little cut off.  The second being that it is a little wonky.  I am going to make another, but, will make sure I stay in the lines and try to make it a little more straight.  I made it because I wanted to make my own super cute signature at the end of every post.  It turned into this 4 hour ordeal and well...I am still proud of it in it's awkwardness.  But if you do not mind a crazy little handwriting font.  Here you go.  Free.  That is write (see what I did there) free. SOOOOO go ahead and get your free Jameson Michelle Prototype font here . ...