A Peek at My Week Ahead – 3/15

Two weeks in a row?! YES ma’ams and sirs! I am on fire!!! Or, I’ve just figured out a routine for myself so I can bring you my visual plans each week. Either way, I am so excited to be linking up again with the one and only DeeDee Wills to give you a peek at my week ahead!

Disclaimer (Again): I have to do extensive lesson plans for my district, so rather than reinvent the wheel and put them in a more standardized format, I’m going to be giving you the “big picture” of what I’m up to. At the end of the post, you can download a PDF version with clickable links. Anything that’s outlined in black is clickable and will take you to that resource, video, or product. I use a mix of free and paid resources, so definitely check it out if you like what you see!

We finally took our unit assessment (the kids did GREAT, wahoo!!!) and so now we’re moving on to our next unit. We did some review last week of money concepts and place value, and now those skills will be put into our centers for independent and guided practice. I like doing that because I don’t have to waste valuable whole-group instruction time, but during guided math students still get to access, practice, and receive feedback on those skills.

This week is ALL about word problems. Two to three times a year I do a week-long “Word Problem Bootcamp” to refresh our word problem strategies. I utilize the 4.5 Step Plan, based on Polya’s problem-solving framework. My kids eat, sleep, and breathe this framework and it helps them TREMENDOUSLY. I can confidently say without it we would not be the effective problem-solvers that we are.

This week we’ll be using our March themed word problems to practice showing what we know at each step of the problem-solving process. (You can grab a freebie St. Patrick’s Day sampler, here.) With the snow days and distance between us and our last “Word Problem Bootcamp” some of my friends have gotten a little lax and it’s beginning to show in their “My Answer” boxes. So! We are going to fix that up by going back to basics, doing a little interactive note-booking, and TONS of practicing. Toward the end of the week we’re going to focus on writing our own word problems (I’ll be posting those resources shortly!).

We took our making predictions assessment (they did fabulously, by the way!) and now we’re ready to head into two weeks of intensive reading instruction before we have Spring Break. We’re continuing to meet for 25 minutes daily in a small group setting with each student. We’re continuing our “Bootcamp” to refresh our centers — pictured above — and really work on those decoding and fluency skills. I’ll be infusing another one of my favorite close reading resources with our series’ reading books too. I’m excited to continue getting to know my students as readers even better than I already do!

We’re also going to continue our group read-aloud of The One and Only Ivan, which has stolen our hearts. Friends, please please please run out and get this book and read it with your class. I have never seen my kiddos more engaged, invested, and just in tune with themselves as little humans. It is unbelievable.

In writing, we’re beginning our persuasive letter-writing unit! I adore this unit because I get to bring out some of my favorite mentor texts, including one that I was read when I did my own letter-writing unit in second grade! We won’t be doing a lot of formal writing this week, but rather we’ll be responding to each text, deconstructing what letters have, etc. I look forward to sharing our anchor charts with you toward the end of the week!

This week we’ll be diving into compound words (with silent letters) in our phonics unit, so I’ll be using two great resources from some TpT friends — Compound Words Task Cards from the awesome Teaching With a Mountain View, and Bloomin’ Compound Words Craftivity from the awesome Applicious Teacher. I’ll also be using my bloggy BFF’s new phonics card games again for review — we love them!

It’s still MATTER time!!! Gosh, I could just teach this unit all year. Really, I could! With me being unexpectedly out of the classroom a few days last week (writing a 21st Century Grant — more on that later this week), we’re still at the beginning of our study. We’ll continue to lead with our visual vocabulary posters, co-creating an anchor chart, having a learning experience using our interactive PPT, and then close with our vocabulary four-square. We’re going to do some experiments toward the end of the week which I’ll be documenting in detail… And we’re going to incorporate some informal assessments (with the exit slips pictured) as well as some interactive flipbooks for them to study at home. {My matter printables will be up on TpT by mid-week.}

If you’d like to download my visual plans and have ALL of the links to click on and refer to, click the button above. 🙂