First Week as a Middle School Teacher with a FREEBIE!

Well, I have officially completed my FIRST week as a 6th grade math/science teacher!!!!  WAHOOO!  If I had any doubts about my decision...they were squashed! :)  I love it!  I learned something this week that were a bit of an epiphany for me:  There was really NO HUGE difference between 4th graders and 6th graders!  They are still sweet, talkative, and hard working. If anything middle school kids get my jokes more. :)  LOVE IT!  If you follow me on Instagram (@immixingitupinmiddle) you saw that I even treated myself to a pumpkin iced coffee on Friday to celebrate!

I thought I would take a moment to blog about what we did our first week of school.  I was really worried about what I was going to do for ice breakers, so I had to come up with some new ones (some of my elementary ones were a little cheesy).  So, I hope that this gives some of you some new ideas for YOUR first week of school. :)

I used some GREAT math brain teasers from Stella's Stunners.  These were GREAT, and the students LOVED them!  We did the toothpick one, and the students had a blast.  Here is a picture of one of the genius ways one of my groups tried to figure it out...

These got my students up and moving around while working with other students.  You have to check that site out if you haven't yet!!! :)

We did some other ice breakers, like my 4 Corner Power Point get to know you activity:

They had a BLAST going to "their" corner of the room and mingling with the other students there to talk about WHY they chose the choice they did.  Here is an example slide:

We also put together our classroom puzzle for each class period!  This was a lot of fun, too!!

I copied all four sheets on different colored paper so that each puzzle could be four different colors.  The students filled out the pieces as a group, then mingled around the room looking for the different pieces to their puzzle. Once they found their group, they glued it together and presented it to the class!

 You can get this activity for FREE in my TPT Store!!!!

The last activity that we did that was SOOOO much fun was our Marshmallow Tower Introduction to the Scientific Method for our first science lab!

This went AMAZINGLY (aside from the sticky hands from the marshmallows!!!).  The students worked together really well, and had some amazing team work in the process.

Our tallest tower was 32.5 inches tall!!  Can your class beat that? :)

Last weekend I had a contest to have one lucky follower win a BUNDLE of my back to school goodies!!!  The winner is...
a Rafflecopter giveaway 

Congrats, and be sure to e-mail me so I can send you your prize!!! :)

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!!!!!

Peek-a-Who: My Tried and True Teaching Tip

Happy Thursday!!!
I'm sorry for not blogging yesterday...now that we're safely in Michigan, I'm going to try to unplug a bit to spend more time with family, but I will be on here from time to time still. :)
I am excited to write about one of my tried and true teaching tips today with The Teaching Tribune.

So..with back to school only a few months away (kinda scary!  wahhhhhhhh) I wanted to share one of my FAVORITE back-to-school ice breaker activities.  When I worked at a summer camp for 3 summers in a row we always played this, and it was so fun (even for adults!!!), but I LOVE playing it with my students.  I'm not sure how it will work with 6th graders, and I may need to find something else.  However if anyone reading this is a middle school teacher, I'm open to your suggestion on if you think that it will work. :)

Here is how you play:

• You split your class into two teams.
• You stand in the middle with another student and hold up a sheet so both sides CANNOT see each other.  
• Then you motion for one student to come up to the sheet on both sides.
• You count to three and then drop the sheet.
• The first person to say the other persons name captures them to the other team.
• If the students do not know the other students' name, then they introduce each other and stay on the same team.

It's a GREAT get to know you activity, and my students have always loved it!!! :)  They even ask to play when it's NOT the first day of school.  I hope that you like this activity, too!!