TpT Back to School SALE

It's hard to imagine that we're part way through out third term out of four terms here in Australia, and on the other side of the world, some of you are beginning a NEW school year!

 

I have 20% off my entire store from August 4th-5th so stop on buy and grab a great back to school bargain! :)

 

Literacy in Maths - WHY it is so important?

I always quietly laugh when I hear students ask "why are we doing spelling in Maths" or "why does it matter if my spelling is wrong, it's Maths NOT English".  

I know I'm not the only teacher who hears this from their students and NOW I can show them why it can be a problem when they're older. I saw this sign on Wednesday and just HAD to pull over and take a photo.

So I ask you: What is wrong in the below sign?

Relaxing on Holidays & Back to School

I am sure you all know what the end of the school year feels like... Relief... Exhaustion... Excitement... Cleaning... Unit review and re-writing... Preparing assessment for the first term of the following year... Class lists... Timetabling... It gets VERY busy but now it's over and 6 weeks of holidays are here!

The first week was spent with Kylie from DownUnderTeacher, her son Brendan, my husband, Max my step-son and Caitlin (we are her guardians) at Burleigh Heads on the Gold Coast.
Full of surfing lessons, bodyboarding, sun, relaxing, reading and most importantly, time together as a family.

Before we left we put up Christmas trees at both our home and at my Mums ('Grandma B'). Here is a photo of us together with Mums adopted Greyhound Tessa. We realized after this photo was taken that we were COMPLETELY blocking the Christmas tree! Oppppss....

Christmas Day was just beautiful and better than I imagined. I woke up still sick with tonsillitis so was feeling very average, but after relaxing at Mums with everyone I started to feel much better! :) Christmas Day we also had a good friend Maz join us for Christmas lunch. Caitlin and Max were also with us for Christmas day and present opening as was out blue-cattle dog Blackie!

Lastly my husband and I spent the other day 'fishing'... Well by fishing I mean throwing the line in, getting some sun, reading, relaxing and catching absolutely NOTHING! :)

Now its the time of year where I'm thinking about heading back to school! We have 25 days until students are back at school and 19 days until all teachers are due back for SFD. I'm in the middle of creating integer fast fact sheets along with more multiplication, addition and algebra fast fact sheets. It's great way to check for student understanding and for them to record their 'best time' and challenge themselves. 

Math Resources - Get 20% off on TpT NOW!

Good morning bloggers,

I have linked up with the lovely ladies from Freebielicious who are celebrating with TpT for reaching 100 000 likes on Facebook!

We are offering 10% off store wide and when you use the code FB100K at checkout, you will get an additional 10% off. That's 20% off overall!

I'm off to have a look around and hopfully to grab some amazing deals and stock up on some Christmas ideas :)

10 Pin Math Linky!

This week I'm linking up with Askley from Just Reed in her 'Ten Pin Linky'! All about math ideas and I just LOVE IT! :)

Below I have 10 of my favourite Pinterest Pins related only to Maths! They are in no particular order, but I hope it gives you some awesome ideas for next term or next year! :)

These are my favourite pins:

1. A fun visual and attractive way of presenting equivalent fractions! A fabulous idea and one I can't wait to get my students to create. 

2. I just love how Dianna Jump has used the students faces to create their class graph! It really adds ownership and meaning to class work :)

3. Here is access to a whole lot of FREE Greg Tang Math books for students! What an amazing resources I wish we all had access to. 

4. Relating perimeter and area in a graphical way! Completely awesome and covering three concepts at once :)

5. Ahhh the good old Pringles container! I bought one the other day to create these... I can't believe I can no longer fit my hand down the container easily! I wonder if they've shrunk?

6. We don't really celebrate Halloween here in Australia, but I am KEEN to carve this and bring it into school. Only drawback is my classroom isn't able to be darkened much so it will just be for looks and not much light coming from it :(

7. oOOo I want want want WANT this clock for our classroom! Would be great to get students to design/ create questions to suit a clock for the classroom. Clocks are easy to make too! 

8. I can't EVER remember making one of these at school, but I remember other kids being able to! I can't wait to do this activity with my year 8 and 9s when we begin their data unit in a weeks time! :)

9.More younger children's Math related books/ stories that I would LOVE to get my hands on! :)

10. I just love this type of question! I will show my year 9s this and wait to see the 'oh that's pathetic' look :) 

I can't wait to look through some of the other Math pin linky posts! More ideas for the new term :)

Chalking it up in Year 9!

My Year 9s were excited! They knew we were going out to create their chalk designs from the previous lesson and some still needed to design theirs.

The time we were to go out was on the board and they worked SO HARD! 

They were so proud to have their Mathematical 'artwork' on show in the Year 9 area and they put a LOT of effort into each of their drawings! 

They had 7 minutes to complete their design in class on paper and have me sign it off and only 7 minutes to pack up, take bags down to their eating area and construct their drawing with all working out! 

It was the topic of conversation between the 260 year 9 students when I was on play ground duty. Both my year 9 classes were showing others their drawings, playing handball and eating around it so no one else touched it! It even sparked discussion from the senior students when they walked through this area during their early finish!

Now to get COLOURED chalk! :)

June Currently & $90 000 towards Oklahoma Relief

I've linked up with Farly's over at Oh boy its 3rd Grade as it's already June Currently time so ! :) Each month she has an awesome currently so go check her out if you haven't already! and link on up! 

I just can't imagine the heartbreak and terror everyone in Oklahoma went thro\ugh during the tornado and now again as they suffer through even more terrible and on-going weather problems. I couldn't be happier to have linked up with TeachersNotebook's Moore Relief Effort Bundle and donated a $20 item for which so far has raised over $90 000 towards relief efforts! 

My currently is very simple this month due to my step son's 9th Birthday today! After around 6 hours baking and decorating cupcakes and his cake along with preparing sausage rolls, sushi and other food, this weekend has been a crazy blur!!!!! 

One small picture of Max's Rock Climbing party! Such a busy weekend and creating a Rock Climbing cake was very hectic as well but I loved every minute of it! :)

What did everyone else get up to this weekend?

Engaging & Creative - Area of Special Quadrilaterals

I must admit, I have the most BEAUTIFUL Year 8 students who are motivated, work well, ask questions and the majority of them are self-driven. 

I really wanted to engage not only MY class in their work, but the rest of the Year 8 cohort, so I thought... Why not get permission to 'chalk up' their Year 8 eating/ sitting area so ALL Year 8 students can see what they're studying in Mathematics at the present time! 

Well the Year 8 Deputy LOVED the idea and the cleaners are happy to leave their designs around for a week or so until they look messy and then just hose them off! 

The guidelines: 

• Any simple shape (square, rectangle, triangle) and special quadrilateral could be used.
• It must be used in a creative picture as long as there were measurements on their picture.
• It needed to be large enough to easily see
• The area of one shape must be calculated somewhere near the image with full working out. 

I had some VERY creative kids (I say kids but they are all 13!!) who just LOVED this task! These are just three of the photos so I don't clutter this post too much. I am doing the same thing this coming week with more Year 8 work in their area and work in the Year 9 area on Pythagoras and Trigonometry so look out for this post later in the week. 

What type of 'chalk' or painting tasks have you done with your class? I'd love to hear about the/ see some pictures! 

On a short note, it's Max's 9th Birthday this weekend and he was so excited to get his Ju Jitsu uniform AND a sporting award from Sensei which he worked so hard to recieve! 

A busy night ahead of us making a RockClimbing cake, cupcakes and party food for tomorrow! :)

FREE Fraction Clipart - Halves, Thirds and Quarter Triangles

I have been sssooooooo BUSY with school work and writing my thesis proposal that I've neglected my blog!

So much so that I thought I would spend some time creating some simple FREEBIE fraction clipart (halves, thirds and quarter triangle) to offer as a freebie for you all! :)

To download, click on the image above, pin this FREEBIE to yours and other Pinterest boards or click here.

Please leave a comment if you download this freebie :)

Five for Friday

This Friday I am linking up with Doodle Bugs Teaching for 5 for Friday! Make sure you hop on over to her blog to link on up and post your Five. 

1 - Work Ethic Success! We've begun using MathsOnline as a tool for issuing some student homework. This is generally what each week looks like for my year 8 homework. Of the 4 blanks, two do theirs on paper, one has left and the other cherub doesn't do any homework. I am SO proud of their continual efforts and I can only hope that my year 9s begin to show such a strong commitment to work. 

2 - Max had his second Sanitarium Tryathlon on Sunday (19th May) and absolutely LOVED every part of it! It's all about giving it a go, TRYing their best and having a fantastic fun filled day. He loved in that much he wants to do a 'real' kids triathlon in December :)

3 - Today we had out school Athletics day and this is a picture from our school twitter page of some year 8 students. It was a fantastic day and the weather was perfect until the last 30minutes... then the sky opened and it rained... and rained... so everyone ended up in the hall doing the Nutbush, Macarena and Gangmanstyle until the bell went! I missed most of the day as I was on 'bubbler' duty for 3 out of the 6 hours :( 

4 - I am trying to find time to put my thesis proposal together! If only there were more hours in a day. It's on the impact of parental involvement on student achievement with Year 8 and 9 students at the school I am presently teaching at. Hoping to have it ready to submit in the next week :)

5 - I am SO thankful I bought three new pairs of shoes last week! TWO of them are boots. These boots are vinyl but keep my legs soooooo warm, my others are shorter leather boots and my third pair and maroon dress shoes which I can't wait to wear later in the year. 

Now don't forget to head on over to  Doodle Bugs Teaching to link up your 5 for Friday and check out others! 

About time I head to bed here in Australia ready for a Saturday full of marking!

 

Engaging Reflection & Goal Setting Activity

I got this idea from an excellent 'reach for the stars' activity I saw on Pinterest during the school holidays and adapted it for my students and for my own purpose. 

Firstly I quickly reviewed last terms Mathematics lessons and prompted them to think about their work ethic, homework, active questioning, book work, listening skills, behaviour and so on. I then asked them to think about four goals they could reach this term (not nearly impossibly goals)! 

After students had 1.5 minutes of reflection/ goal setting time. I then showed students my hand that I created with my own goals (I wish I had taken a picture of mine)! My name was on my thumb and on each of the fingers I wrote my own goals for the classroom and shared them with the class. 

Here are a few of my year 8 and 9 students goals for the term. 

This is what it looked like after my year 8 class completed this goal setting activity. So far each lesson I have reflected on the goals they made and encouraged them to always work towards reaching their goals.

I would love to hear ways in which YOU all focus on individual student goals and how do you track them?

P.S. - I told my students that during parent teacher interviews I will be bringing their hands with me so their parents can see the great goals their child has made! :)

Classroom Puffiness - SNEAKPEAK!

A very, very, verryyyy, VVERRRYYY busy week so far with the first week back for Term 2. I went into school on Sunday with Scott and Max and they helped me move around some things and put some decorations up! 

Soooooo helpful.

What took 1.5 hours would have taken me over 3 hours to do by myself.

Here are some of the decorations I made to decorate with... more pics to come! 

I've had a parent interview already, marking University Math assignments/ games along with planning resources and assessment for this term! Running my final workshop at Uni tomorrow night and then just marking marking marking to do!

I'd LOVE to hear about ways you have decorated your room this year! :)