This week's topic is Tic Tac Toe. Look at the Tic Tac Toe board and choose three topics to write about. They have to be three in a row, either vertically, horizontally, or diagonally. I love this idea!
I will share horizontally across the middle of the board.
My First Year of Teaching
In 4th grade in Texas, our kids have to take state tests in Reading, Math, and Writing. My 4th grade teaching partner and I were not from Texas, and we were not even told that our kids would be tested in Writing. I remember when we found out around December that our kids would be taking this big writing test in March! We had been teaching writing, but this test was focused on writing a narrative paper in a very specific way. We did the best we could, and actually most of our students ended up passing, but we definitely incorporated Writing Workshop from Day 1 the following year!
My Favorite School Memory as a Kid
My 3rd grade teacher did something that I have continued as a tradition in my teaching career. At the end of the year, she spread out a bunch of books across the floor and let one student at a time pick a book as a gift. I picked a Steven Kellogg book, Ralph's Secret Weapon. That gift from my teacher was so special, and now I let my students choose a book from me every year at Christmas and the end of the year. I order Scholastic $1 books and write a message inside for each child. Hopefully it will be as special to some of them as it was to me!
Books I'm Reading
The main reason I'm being so unproductive this summer is because I am trying to read all of this series before school starts:
Once school starts again, I won't have nearly as much time to read, so I am letting myself relax. These books are AMAZING! Extra bonus: watching the HBO TV series once I'm done.
Eventually, I will get around to reading these professional development books I purchased from Barnes and Noble (yay for 20% teacher discount)!
As you can see, most of them are Math books. I need to try something new to get my kids to be critical thinkers and problem solvers, and to motivate them to try their hardest on Math problems. Hoping that these books have some fresh new ideas (PLEASE!!!)
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Hi Rebecca! Getting kids to be critical thinkers and problem solvers is tough! I am trying out a new inquiry based math curriculum with my kiddos that I am really excited about. It's called Mentoring Mathematical Minds. I also saw a book study over Building Mathematical Comprehension over at Primary Inspired. It talked about making problem solving a reading genre ... how genius is that?!
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