A Peek at My Week Ahead – 3/8

I am so excited to FINALLY be linking up with the one and only DeeDee Wills to give you a peek at my week! I have always always always wanted to do this, as I absolutely love going through and seeing what everyone else in blogland is up to.

Disclaimer: 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’re catching up from an INSANE number of snow days since we returned from winter break — we’ve been so behind, so this week we’re taking our unit test on patterns {number patterns, repeating patterns, growing patterns, and even/odd} and then review some key concepts before we dive into regrouping.

One of the things I’m relying heavily on this week are the anchor charts we’ve made together, our interactive notebooks {where our vocabulary pages pictured above live!}, and my money strategies pack. My kids did really well with our money unit test, but we’re increasing the amount they must be able to count {up to $2.00 mixed coins and bills} and they definitely need a refresher after our snow days. We’ll also be playing Prince Padania’s Race to $1.00 which is one of my favorite quick, low-prep games!

In reading we’re going to be taking our unit test on making predictions at the beginning of the week and then buckling down. It has been so difficult these past two months with snow days to consistently do guided reading groups! Between required assessments, once-a-year ESOL testing, and mid-year testing, we haven’t done guided reading in WEEKS.

So this week and next we’re forgoing the mini-lessons and doing extended groups! I’ll get to meet for 25 minutes daily in a small group setting with each student. We’re going to do a “Bootcamp” to refresh our centers — pictured above — and really work on those decoding and fluency skills. I’ll be infusing some of my favorite close reading resources with our series’ reading books too. I am SO READY for this change of pace with my kiddos and to give them a strong foundation for our big push toward on-grade level at the end of the year.

In writing we’re going to work on finishing up our research unit. Boy, you want to talk about difficult? Try doing a research unit with snow days all over the place! Luckily my kids have been able to keep up with things, and I really attribute that to the simple research resources pack I made with them in mind. We do a 5-10 minute mini-lesson on the carpet where I model things using a famous American (Rosa Parks) that none of them are studying — then they break into their research groups and work! I get to meet with each group as-needed, and they can continue working on it beyond the writing block because of the scaffolded supports.

We’ll also be working on getting back on track with our phonics focus, as well as reviewing those pesky skills that somehow they always seem to forget! I’ll be using my bloggy BFF’s new phonics card games for review, and one of my favorite suffixes resources from Ladybug’s Teacher Files to work on our weekly skill.

In social studies we’re doing a quick review of vocabulary {look at that FULL vocabulary reference wall — finally!} before we take our big end-of-unit test on Tuesday. I don’t know what I would’ve done without this visual vocabulary pack I made… my ELL kiddos have just soaked up this vocabulary as you can see from the anchor chart I dictated for them (and they illustrated). Fingers crossed that as we review our vocabulary four-squares and make our vocabulary word posters they are ready to go on Tuesday!

Y’all, I’m so excited. It’s MATTER time!!! This is hands-down one of my favorite science units, and this year we’re doin’ it up big with some brand new resources. I am kicking myself for not having made these resources sooner, but I’m jazzed to have them for this group of kiddos! We’ll be doing the same thing we did with economics as far as vocab — leading with the visual vocabulary posters, co-creating an anchor chart, having a learning experience (experiment or our interactive PPT — which will be posted this week on TpT), and then closing with our vocabulary four-square.

I am so ready for them to rock this, and I am so ready to get in there and be a mad scientist with them! Woohoo for science!!!

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. 🙂

One thing not pictured in my visual plans is a last-minute but always present addition — our Word Problems for Success. We do these a few mornings a week and then we do two at the end of the month to take as data that we track to make sure our problem-solving skills are where they need to be. I’m excited about some of the complexity of the problems this month, as I know it’s going to lead to a great discussion amongst the kiddos.

Speaking of that — would you look at the mathematical thinking that’s going on?! I am so stinkin’ proud of my kids.