Five for Friday, Classroom Reveal, Giveaway, & More!

Wow...I have not been anywhere NEAR as dedicated to blogging this week as I would have liked!! I didn't even get to link up with ANY of my favorites all week!!  Today is Saturday and NOW I'm finally linking up my Five for Friday with Kacey over at Doodle Bugs Teaching???!?!

Here we go!

I officially went back to school this week!  First week in a new school, new grade, new EVERYTHING!  As many of you know I have taught elementary for 10 years, and this year I will be teaching at an AWESOME middle school in my district.  I'm teaching 6th grade math and science (my two favs!!).  I am working with an awesome team, and my teaching partner and I are on a two man team and we work together beautifully.  We have one of the higher gifted classes on our team, so I will be doing a LOT of differentiation this year.  What is also great about this school, is that the elementary school I taught at for 6 years feeds into this middle school, so I am really excited to see and teach a lot of my former students.  We had our meet the teacher open house on Wednesday, and it was so GREAT!  It makes me sooooooooo excited to start teaching on Monday (although I'm sure this will be the most nervous I have been since my first year)!  I am excited to take you all with me on the journey!

 I figured that since I was headed back to school, it is a good time to give away a little back to school goodies.  I love having giveaways to thank such wonderful followers, so here it is!

I have included 5 of my back to school items that have been hot sellers, and one that I just created! :)  If you win, you'll get my Student Procedure Handbook, Exit Ticket Bulletin Board, Inspirational Quotes Subway Art, Math Problem Solving Strategies, and a Would You Rather 4 Corners Ice Breaker Power Point!!  That is a $14 Value!!!  So, if you have already gone back to school you could still use it, and if you HAVEN'T gone back to school--this will hook you up!!! :)

a Rafflecopter giveaway

I finally got my classroom ready to go!  I thought it was hard to decorate a middle school classroom!  The hard part was trying to figure out WHAT to put on the walls and boards, but I was pretty happy with how it turned out:

So, the board that I really had some fun with was this one:

I created a BOGGLE board, like many of you have...but I needed something more CHALLENGING for my students.  So...I made sure that all 20 numbers were linked to another on the board in some way or another, and it will be the students job to tell me HOW they are related (such as which operation links the numbers).  For example, I have 1/4, 3, and 3/4 scattered on the board, so a student could say 1/4 x 3 is 3/4.  I am collecting all of the boards that I do this year into one file...so I can get any kinks out first, then it will be up in my TPT store once I get it rolling! Then for the first people that download the small file, you will be able to keep REdownloading it at no cost as I add more to it.  If you think this is something that you would want NOW, just send me an e-mail and I'll get it up and running. :)

So, another thing that I have been struggling with this week is what kind of ice breaker activities to do the first week of school---I LOVE me some ice breakers!!! :)  I'm going to do some of my old standbys, but I worked on one today that I think will be a hit---especially with older kids!

I plan to use this sometime within the week!  I'm pretty happy with how it turned out!  There are 9 questions for students to answer with choices A-D that correspond A, B, C, D throughout the room.  I thought this would be GREAT for middle schoolers because of the moving around, talking, etc.  Plus there are some great questions--I plan to play along, too! :)  It would be great for grades 4-12!  It's part of my giveaway package, but if you want it for the first week of school, you can get it HERE.

I hope that everyone has a great rest of the weekend!!!!!