Five For Friday October 31, 2014

Happy Halloween! Time to link up with Doodle Bugs Teaching for Five for Friday! We have had a crazy busy fun filled week!  Lots of history and lots of candy make for an exhausting week!

My week started with a field trip for the Earth Science STEM class I am taking.  We all met at the Churchill County Museum in Fallon, NV (which we toured a bit before leaving) and then headed to a place called The Hidden Caves which were used by Native Americans.  It is the site of several archaeological digs, and they have opened it up to the public.  Here are a few pics from our visit:

 

 

 

 

Monday, I took my own class on a field trip to City Hall as part of our social studies curriculum.  They were able to meet and greet with the mayor and then take a tour of the building.  They had a ton of questions for our mayor!  They were also able to see voting in action as we are currently in the middle of early elections.

They were so surprised to see their teacher's picture on the wall (I am on the city council).

They even got bags of goodies!  They were filled with pencils, city pins, Nevada pins, along with candy and glow sticks.

We received dictionaries from the Rotary Club this week and they were so excited to each have their own!  They also noticed that there were resources in the dictionary such as a map of the United States, common conversions, and even a multiplication chart.  They were quite amazed by the longest word in the English language and were extremely thankful that I would not be putting it on our spelling test this week!

In Nevada, we celebrate Nevada Day on October 31st, so we actually have today off!  Yesterday we participated in a record breaking attempt at the most people singing Home Means Nevada as part of our state's 150th birthday celebration.

 

We also learned about the Pony Express - complete with a reenactment!  Photo creds to one of my third grade team members.

And since we have today off.. we celebrated with our Halloween party yesterday.

 

 

Be sure to link up and share your week as well!

Halloween Bash Blog Hop

I am joining up with The Teaching 2 Step and over 40 bloggers for a Halloween Bash Blog Hop! The prize I have donated is my Ghoulish Math product which features lessons, games, centers and activities for learning about factors and multiples.

 

 

 

The pictures are of my 4th graders from last year and they loved the activities - especially using my iphone to check the QR codes!  If you don't win, or you can't wait, you can get it on sale for 20% off in my TpT store here.

Ghoulish Math

I also have a special freebie for you to download as well!  

 

Pumpkin Relating Addition to Multiplication Freebie

As part of the Blog Hop, we were asked to share a Halloween memory and our favorite candy.  My favorite Halloween costume was when I went as a 1950's roller waitress.  I got to be on roller skates the whole time and even won a prize for best costume!  I unfortunately couldn't find any pictures of it to share :(

My favorite candy is Mike & Ikes.  Not just because of Halloween, but because one little candy (and yes I mean just one) can be so motivating.  When I have a few kiddos that are not working as hard as I would like them to be, I find a kiddo who IS working and place one Mike and Ike in front of them.  Just like magic, everyone at the table becomes more on task and focused.

And now... for the contests!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

a Rafflecopter giveaway

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Thank you for joining The Teaching 2 Step Halloween Hop. I hope you enjoyed our post, did you know you can follow me on Facebook, Pinterest and Twitter?

Hop through more Halloween Bash Bloggers below.

An InLinkz Link-up

Mr. Jack-o-Lantern Mustache You A Question!

Ahh...I am so excited that I pushed this last one out in time to still prep it and use it before Halloween!  I have so many students this year working on answering wh- questions and expressing using complete utterances.  Well..I have another one for you!

Use this fun, Halloween themed card game to work on answering WH- questions!!  This activity targets who, what, where, and when questions!

Students should take turns picking a card.  They must answer the question on the card.  If they pick the “lose a turn” card, they must lose a turn.  Students can hold onto their cards once they respond to questions correctly.  The student with the most cards at the end of the game is the winner!


Review worksheet is include!

You can access this card game in my TpT store by clicking HERE!

Halloween Sentence Comprehension (FREEBIE!)

I have many students working on auditory comprehension and answering wh- questions.  Why not another freebie to use over the next 2 weeks?!

 Students will pick a card and listen or read the sentence provided.  They must answer correctly in order to hold onto their card.  If they pick the “trick or treat” card, they get a bonus turn.  The student with the most cards at the end of the game is the winner!

You can access this activity in my TpT store by clicking HERE!

Update from Miss Speechie's Room: Fun Friday!!

Do you LOVE Friday's as much as I do?!  Do you like to celebrate FUN FRIDAYS?!  I always promise my students, do well during week and we can have a FUN FRIDAY!  I take out the crayons, turn everything into games, bring out my computer games, and more!!  Well...keep reading to see how we celebrated today and where you can grab these ideas!

Today, I took out my cauldron that I got years ago at a local CVS Pharmacy.  Have you heard about the series, "Listening for ___ All Year 'Round"?!  I have them all and LOVE them.  I recommend altering them and using the activities to meet your needs best.  In each book, each month has a theme.  It has listening comprehension stories, activities that you can create, and worksheets that target that month's skill and following directions.  Today's activity was from the Listening for Language book.  

The month's skill is "associations."  I took some ideas from the lists provided and wrote them on pumpkins and laminated.  I put the pumpkins in the cauldron.  We pretended to be witches and picked a pumpkin one at a time.  Students had to express as many things as they could related to that topic.  For each item expressed, they got a point, whoever had the most points at the end was the winner!!

As a follow-up activity, we used the worksheet that came with the book.  We worked on our following directions and naming associations.  If you are familiar with the book/activity, you can tell from the picture below, I changed the directions!  I have a student OBSESSED with pink and some other colors.  I purposely got rid of that directive! HA!  Also, due to time pressures, I only gave them 2 directives per line.  After we followed the directives using the 3 pictures provided they had to express another item not mentioned.  Great way to keep on practicing and having fun!

I also had some students working on identifying and expressing antonyms.  I found this fun board game on Boardmaker Share.  You can check it out by clicking HERE.  I glued the game onto a file folder and provided my students with a sentence strip to help with expressing in a sentence and to remind them what are antonyms/opposites.  Using Boardmaker, I created all of the vocabulary words from this game and their matching pair onto index cards.  This way, I could give them choices easily if necessary.  We also played memory matching games after playing this board game for extra practice and drilling fun!

That was just a BIT of my fun day today!!  What did you do?!  What fun ideas have you found and has worked well in your therapy rooms?!

Jack-o-Lantern Object Function Fun! (FREEBIE!)

I have been working hard to teach my students this year how to express present progressive verbs and identify objects by function.  I decided to create a fun and easy to use freebie to address both of these goals!  Who doesn't love pumpkins and jack-o-lanterns?!

This easy to assemble activity can be used for drilling and/or a memory matching game.  You can glue the cards onto card stock or index cards or you can glue them onto construction paper and laminate for safe keeping.  Students can have fun looking for the object and the verb function matches.  I know my students giggle when they get the wrong matches "a vacuum isn't for eating!"  

I encourage my students to use the sentence strip "A ___ is used for ____" once they get a match to get practice expressing in a complete sentence.  This activity contains a cloze sentence worksheet using this sentence strip as a review/homework/way to collect data after the activity to monitor progress.

You can access this FREEBIE in my TpT store by clicking HERE!