Five for Friday and Substitution Post-its

What a week it has been!  I have had about five posts floating around in my head and have struggled to find the energy or time to actually finish them off and hit "publish."  So many good things are happening in my classroom, so many things to share, but I hesitate because I want it to all be perfect before I post.  My OCD brain needs to process things for a while before they can be shared with the world.

So, I am finally linking up with Doodle Bugs Teaching for the Five for Friday linky party to share a little bit about my week.   This will be a double-duty linky; Five for Friday with a cool trick for substitution slipped in!

1.  This first one is my only complaint!  Allergies!  The ever changing weather has wreaked havoc with my allergies!
 Too many afternoons and evenings have been spent with my blessed Puffs Plus box and humidifier.  Make it stop!  Fog and then sun, rain and then the dreaded Santa Ana winds, cold and then hot!  I say again, make it stop!

2.  I am not ashamed to admit that the season premiere of NCIS was the highlight of my week.
 This really needs no explanation.

3.  Somehow I heard myself volunteering to teach Saturday School (again).  The words were coming out of my mouth, my fingers were typing an email, and my brain was screaming, "NO! We like to sleep in on Saturday mornings!"  And so, I will be at school tomorrow morning.  I have several of Erin's (of Lovin' Lit) Interactive Reading Notebook lessons for Literary Elements copied and ready to go.  Plus, I have math foldables ready and whiteboards cleaned.  This year is the year that puts "school" back in Saturday School!

4.  Then after resisting the email pleas for someone to step forward and coordinate our new afterschool RTI program, I heard myself agreeing to teach the 6th grade math if my friend would agree to be the coordinator.  Seriously, I need to stay in my room and resist the urge to help or communicate with other grown-ups at my school site.

5. Finally, I have to share a strategy that worked so well for my kiddos with "equations and their solutions" or variable substitution.  My students were really struggling with substituting.  They could not grasp placing a number in the place of a variable.  It was a nightmare, they were a sea of blank faces holding whiteboard markers.   

So at risk of becoming known as the Post-it Note blogger...
 and then I did this...
 yep, Post-it Notes...
 
the light bulbs started flickering on...
and they asked for a few more...
so we got fancy and used two colors...
Today they had a little flex time during rotations.  After their essay was peer edited and revised, they needed to study for the "Chapter Test" on Monday.  One of my boys came up and casually took the Post-it Notes off my table, and asked, "I can use these, right?"  He took them over to a table and carefully placed them on his whiteboard (just like we had done in class), then he and his study-buddy worked on solving equations from the review.  

I had grabbed them out of desperation, it never occurred to me that my students would be calmly using them as a math tool.  I love Post-it Notes!

Hopefully, I will post a little something about our Bigfoot narrative essays and my new organizer, but I have to read over them well first!  Have an awesome weekend! 

4 comments

  1. Oh, I'm keeping that post-it trick in my back pocket. Our 6th graders are SUPER low this year and have struggled with our REVIEW lessons. We just introduced them to variables, and I can see there will be a huge need for this trick. Thanks!!!!

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  2. Oh my goodness....Saturday School??? I suffer from the same thing.... My mouth says "yes" even though my brain says "no."

    Jennifer
    Mrs. Laffin's Laughings

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  3. I've been having that problem too, saying yes to things that I really shouldn't. Good luck with Saturday school! We don't offer it, but we really should.
    I love the post-it note idea! I love post-its!!!!!

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  4. Love your post-it note idea!! Genius!! I'm thinking of so many ways I can use this in my ESL class!!

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