Five for Friday!

Been a L..O..N..G while since I have posted a 5 for Friday post. I have been super busy this past fall getting into the 'groove' of teaching a new grade level - 5th grade. I am feeling pretty good about how it has progressed, but there is still so much to learn. #1 to me in any classroom is building positive relationships with students - this is of utmost importance and I feel confident that I have accomplished this with my students. It was pretty easy in Kindergarten, as they LOVE their teacher!!! With 5th grade, it took a little more work in that you have to really build an environment of trust. There are more years of disappointment that they may have gone through that you have to wound in order to gain that trust. We have 77 days left to fill their brains with knowledge that will assist them in becoming College and Career ready ... so here goes!!

Let me share 5 things from this week:

It has been an awfully busy week - even though it has been a 3 day week for me - Tuesday was a planning day and it took my colleague and I almost the entire day to write our 3rd quarter Reading and Writing units... but we feel really good about them!! We are reading Out of the Dust, working with figurative language. During writing, we are working on our last type of writing (Informational) and preparing ourselves for the GA Writing Assessment (beginning of March - yikes)!

My colleague and I are piloting the BYOT at our school and we begin implementation on the 21st!! We are SO very excited. Our students will have the same opportunities as other districts to explore learning in various ways! 

This may sound silly, but I absolutely LOVE solving picture puzzles, word problem, etc. (not math - math isn't my thing). Well, I found this free app and I cannot stop playing it. It is peaceful to come home and wind down by playing this game (okay, I am a total NERD):

Flow Free

My sweet girl was super excited this week when she FINALLY got her ears pierced! She had been begging for a while, but we wanted her to be a little older to make the decision. Santa gave her a certificate if she was ready... she was a trooper!

We are preparing for BYOT, so we worked on a team-building activity yesterday. Students had to work together to put together a 100 piece puzzle WITHOUT talking. They could not take pieces from others, but could offer a piece. They began with a few pieces each. By the end (when we discussed what we learned from the activity) students realized that the more they gave to another, the quicker their puzzle came together. It was an eye-opening experience for my students. They enjoyed it very much and learned a good deal about themselves, others, and how important it is to work as a team!