Peek at My Week with Maroo, Daniel, and Division

It is Sunday, right?  This blessed three day weekend has me a little mixed up.  Don't get me wrong, I couldn't be happier about it!  It just feels like Saturday still:)  My week is really beginning to form in head and I am starting to get it out on paper; I thought you might like a little peek at it.

 

Jennifer of Mrs. Laffin's Laughings has this great new linky that is really encouraging me to plan and share what I hope will be going on in my classroom this upcoming week.

Conferences and SIT

Tuesday will be a full day starting off with an early morning conference with a parent, and concluding with SIT (or Student Study Team) meetings (this year, I have my own day on the SIT calendar) after school for four of my students.  The rest of the week will be spent catching up and rescheduling a few more conferences that got away from me last week.  Transportation and work schedules are big issues for most of my parents, so rescheduling conferences is the norm.

Maroo 

We will be continuing with Maroo.  On Friday, we stopped right before the men went off on the ill-fated ibex hunt!  So this week there will be a little sniffling and shouting going on in my room.  We will continue with their Interactive Reading Logs.  They are doing great work in them.  This week we will be able to do some small group work during Read 180/System 44 rotations, and I want to dig into sentences.  So this will be one of the lessons that we will work on in small group.

 

The overwhelming abundance of colons and semi-colons was just too good to pass up.  It will be very much a teacher-led lesson for my kiddos, but they definitely need to be exposed to it.  Afterwards, I am going to challenge them to use a semi-colon in at least one of their Notebook entries this week.

Daniel's Story

My 7th grade group and I will be doing actual rotations this week (thanks to our computer tech).  It will take a bit of training to get this bunch doing "independent reading," so we are all reading Daniel's Story together.  

I chose Daniel's Story because it is a very popular audio-book in the Read 180 library, but they tend to rush through it and miss some important details - like all of the historical background and they keep asking me when Anne Frank is going be in it (I love my kids:).  Listening to it together, stopping and doing what the "coach" is modeling, and filling out the Quickwrites together will really set them up for success when they really start their "independent reading."

Long Division

We are starting equations in Math this week, but we are constantly reviewing basic skills.  Most of my kids can handle addition, some can handle subtraction, a few can perform multiple digit multiplication, but NONE of them can do anything past the most basic of long division.  I have this idea for Post-it Note Long Division, but haven't worked out the kinks yet.  Give me a few more days, and I will post about it later in the week.

 

Grades!

Am I the only one who is occasionally blindsided by the fact that the district office actually wants grades turned in?  These first four weeks have flown by!  I have mid-quarter progress reports due on the 6th!  Yikes!

Enjoy your long weekend!  I am going to spend mine grading (and actually entering those grades) and trying to shake this nasty cold that my sweet, but snotty-nosed kiddos passed on to me!