Five for Friday! Games, Science Labs and More!

Happy Saturday (this is become my new trend!)!!  Maybe someday I will link up again with Doodle Bugs on a Friday. :)  I hope that you all had a great week!  I am still in LOVE with teaching middle school!  We have been having SOOOOOOO much fun!  I can't wait to share my Five for Friday with you!

 The first thing that we did this week to reinforce our understanding of finding the difference between positive and negative integers was to play a little game that I made for them.  They HONESTLY had a BLAST with it!  It also gave the students a lot of practice with adding and subtracting on to either positive or negative integers.  They almost forgot they were doing math! :)

 The class honestly kept asking to play this game every day ALL week long...no joke!!!  They thought it was HILARIOUS when their money total was in the negative (I guess I have more to teach them ;) ).  You can grab the game HERE!

If you are currently doing positive and negative integers in your classroom, you might also like:

 The second thing that we did this week that was a TON of fun was our flower dissection lab in science!!  I did it twice with two different classes, and when we did it, I used two different flowers for each class.  One class a student even brought a flower from home.

Before this lesson we had learned about the different parts of the flower, the students drew their own flower and labeled the parts to put in their science interactive notebooks.  We also completed Case 4 of the Great Plant Escape with their Chromebooks.  The students used their notebooks during the lab to help them identify the parts and sort them onto their sheets.

We used roses AND lilies for the lab, and had a local flower shop donate them! :)  Personally I liked the lilies better because they could see the parts a lot better...however, I learned an important lesson about lilies from flower shops...and taught my kids when I learned, too.  When the flower shops first get the lilies they take the anthers off to keep them blooming longer.  The sepals are also off, so we had to do some improvisation when we sorted the parts. :)

Either way, the students had a GREAT time, and they are all ready now to take the parts of a flower quiz on Monday!!!

If you're interested in this lab you can find it HERE.

 I teach two sections of math, and one section of science each day.  It works out well, because for my first class I make an anchor chart for their interactive notebooks (which they create in their own notebook), and then for my second math class we create the anchor chart in my example interactive notebook.

We had fun this week with the checkbook activity deciding what to buy and spend money on.  We also had fun making up our own absolute value word problems (bottom left).  After we designed our anchor chart, we broke off into pairs, and the students wrote and presented their own story problems.  I told them NOT to worry about the realistic part of the question (if you want to jump out of a plane and land in the water 45 feet below sea level--that was fine!) because I was more concerned that they knew it was more about each situations distance from zero than anything.  They turned out really cute!!  I should have taken some pictures of their finished products.  They are already teasing me about how I take pictures of EVERYTHING. :)

 My teammate this year and I work so well together!!!  We are on the same page with a lot of our beliefs in education, and we both work hard to make sure that our students feel cared for and know that we believe in them.  I couldn't have been paired better this year, and I am very blessed.  

We do this behavior baseball program on our team, and when students have less than three strike outs for the week, we reward them during our enrichment time on Fridays.  This Friday we played a Minute to Win it game. :) I meant to take pictures, but we were so caught up in FUN, I didn't. :(

Just a reminder if you don't already follow me on Instagram, please do:  @immixingitupinmiddle.  I post often on their during the week with what we are doing in our classroom, then on Fridays or sometimes in between I will write up a summary of our week.  I always follow back.  I do have my account set to private (just because I teach middle school! :)) Don't forget to check out the You Oughta Know Blog Hop this week, too!!!  Lots of GREAT ideas!  I wrote about how to SAVE ON MAKING COPIES!!!!! :)

You Oughta Know About...SAVING ON COPIES!!!!!

Happy Saturday!  I am so excited to link up with Jasmine from Buzzing with Mrs. McClain for a You Oughta Know Blog Hop!!!

Ok, so this is my FIRST year since I have been teaching (11 years!!!) that I have a COPY LIMIT!!! This is ALSO the first year that I am teaching middle school (math AND science), and I have 27 MORE students than I am used to...so needless to say I've been STRESSING about the amounts of copies I can make (interactive notebook, classwork, homework....) that could equate to hundreds of copies a WEEK.  However, I have come up with a few ideas this year that are saving me on a LOT of copies!  I thought that you all "oughta know" about them!!

First, all of my bell work, some classwork, and ALL formative assessments are done on students personal dry erase boards:

I love being able to quick check classwork, and they LOVE using their markers to make it colorful and fun!!!  All I did was use a sheet protector that the students clip into their binders.  I let them pick what color paper they want as their "board", and they keep a little tissue and their marker in their binder so they are ready to go when needed! :)

The second thing this year that I LOVE is my homework!!!!!  I was stressing before school even STARTED about how I was going to NOT go over my copy limit, yet still be able to assign homework!  That's when I thought of a solution!  Homework NOTEBOOKS!!!!  I had the students decorate them all cute (it's amazing what kids can do with duct tape now!), and then each day they post a STRIP into their notebooks to do that night for homework!  

 I encourage them to make it fun, colorful, etc.  I don't care if they do it in marker, pen, etc.  I want them to ENJOY their homework, and whatever it takes to keep them engaged I'm game.  :)  

Essentially, I can fit 4 days worth of homework on one sheet, so in the course of a week, I only make the 60 or so copies that I need for the week ONCE.  I just cut the strips as  I go each day, and they just glue them into the notebook that day.  Here is ONE example of a strip for the week:

I love this because I can use story problems, differentiate, etc.  I have put these strips in one bundle for SUPER cheap! 

It would work well for grades 6-8 (as a spiral review or as a new concept).  You could use this as your bell work, classwork, quizzes OR homework! Remember you can print ONE sheet/student/week!!!! :)  I'll continue to grow the units as the year progresses, so if you're a 6th grade math teacher, this could be the idea for YOU!  I will post them by standard group, starting with part of Number Systems first. :)

This is 15 letter sized worksheets worth of work condensed onto 5 pages!  So instead of making one copy for one student, you are essentially making one copy for one students ONCE A WEEK!

I am in the process of adding some Number Systems spiral review strips (50 more questions-5 strips) into this packet, so be sure to get it while the price is LOW, and then you can upload the file again when new strips are added! :)

I also have a Interactive Notebook Practice Strips for Ratios and Proportions, too! :)

 The third thing that I do to save on copies is to do a LOT of group work/pair work.  I can thank my Kagan training for this one! :)  I use Rally Coach a LOT, and my students know if their name is on a paper with another students, they BETTER agree with the answer that is on that paper.  If not, they need to talk to out and figure out what they agree on.  This took some practice, and MODELING to get it they way I want it, and with a new class and a new grade it is still a work in progress, but you need to stay persistent to what your expectations are. :)  I used this recently with my marshmallow lab & flower dissection lab (which I will blog about sometime this weekend!):

Students had ONE paper for the group to make their recordings, but they ALL needed to agree on the answers.  

If you like THIS Oughta Know tip, you will LOVE the tips from my other bloggy friends!!!!  Head on over and check them out!!! :)

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