Five for Friday on a Saturday! :)

Whew!!  It's the weekend!!!!  This back to school stuff makes it a lot harder to keep up with the blogging!  Yikes!  I need to get with the program. :)  So...better late than never I guess with my Five for Friday link up with Kacey at Doodle Bugs Teaching!

First, I am still LOVING my decision to move to middle school!!!!!!!  LOOOVVVEEEEEEEEEEEEEE.

I really also LOVE my principal!  She is AH-MAY-ZING!  Just working for her alone will make me a better teacher (and no I am not just saying that because she could read this someday if she ever finds out I'm a teacher blogger!  ha ha). 

 It is so nice to teach two subjects, and it makes it a lot easier to "go all out" with two as opposed to teaching EVERYTHING.  I still stand by my initial observation of that 6th graders are not that much different than 4th graders.  So, if you have ever wanted or thought about giving it a try, I HIGHLY recommend giving it a shot!!!! :)

Friday, after our quiz we played my FAVORITE game.  I received a class set of this game as a gift from a wonderful parent a few years ago, and I LOVE it.  It makes the perfect emergency sub plan, too!!  It's called Equate!  It's like Scrabble only for math!   They have it on Amazon if you want to check it out! :)  I used it with my 4th graders, too!

My class has also been really enjoying their science lab, and I am also enjoying teaching it!!!!! :)  This week we are doing a parts of a flower dissection lab, so I created our lab materials for Monday!

I'm super excited to use it, so if you are interested in using it, too, check it out! :)  I'll be posting pictures of how it goes this week!!! :)

I don't know if anyone else out there has a COPY LIMIT, but this year is my first year with one, and I am FREEEEEEAAAKKKKIINNNGGG out!!  

I'm used to making anything I want, but now I'm stressing.

So, this year I am thinking of ways to save on my copies (and also saving trees in the process!!!).  

With middle school I have been doing a lot of bell ringer activities.  I used to use Accelerated Math as my activity, but we do not have that anymore, so I had to get creative.

Sooo...I put about 5 math questions on the board, and in the first week of school I gave ALL of my students a clear sheet protector and a piece of their choice colored paper.  I asked them to also have a dry erase marker.  This goes into their binder.  So, now instead of making copies of work for the students to do, they can do it on their boards!

I also now can use these for another way to do formative assessment or classwork! :)  Hooray for saving trees (and paper!).  I am also VERYYYYYYY excited about the way I am doing my homework this year, too!!  I'll be blogging soon about that, so stay tuned!

I FINALLLLLYYY used my sticky note exit board this week!!!!

My class had a ball with this.  They commented on how we needed more different colors of sticky notes!  ha ha.  Plus this was yet ANOTHER way for me to use formative assessment in my classroom!