Term 2 is over... School Holidays are in!

I saw this meme and had to chuckle that it represents all of the Queensland teachers who are on their second day of official school holidays today!

I still have about 5 report cards left to complete out of 143 of my students over the holidays but I think I can manage that!! ;)

I have a lot to do these holidays including my thesis proposal, finishing some of my freebies and new TpT/TN items!

I hope you're all having a great Summer Break or term holidays if you're on them or if you're still teaching, that your week is great! 

What goals have you set for your break/ weekend/ week?

FREE Sixths Circle Fraction Clip Art Images

It's so nice to be relaxing today knowing it's a long weekend (not back until Tuesday)! We went to Yum Cha at Sunnybank today which was lovely, and then I marked some of my senior assessment.

It's been SO long since I've created a full resource, that I thought it'd be nice to share a small freebie for you all! I LOVE making Math clipart that I can use in my classroom and in my worksheets.

Soon I will finish a COMPLETE set of fraction clipart in various colours to purchase, but until then, I hope you can get some use from these :)

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! :)

New! Bayside Math Teacher Blog Design & Button

Whoa! Talk about a busy time of late getting my new blog design up and running. Thanks to the amazing Diana at Custom Blog Designs she has given me a complete new design, signature and button!

This means that everyone who is following me or has my button on their blog will need to link to this new button below! 

<div align="center"> <a href="http://baysidemathteacher.blogspot.com.au/" title="BaysideMathTeacher"><img src="http://i1272.photobucket.com/albums/y398/BaysideMathTeacher/bayside-math-teacher_zps53fcf281.png~original" alt="BaysideTeacher" style="border:none;" width="145" height="145" border="0" /></a></div>

I'm off now to work with my Year 9s on their Pythagoras and Trionometry chalk design in their eating area! Unfortunately it's going to rain so it will probably end up washed off, but its better trying than not! They're excited to make their area more purposeful and 'arty'.

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!

 

Teachers Notebook helping Oklahoma

Teacher's Notebook is helping out in a big with with the devastation in Oklahoma. Proceeds from your donation/purchase, which is full of so many amazing items from a HUGE number of sellers (including myself), will go to organizations in Moore, Oklahoma, to help with the Tornado relief.

I contributed my The COMPLETE Perimeter, Area & Volume Collection which is a HUGE $20+ item so grab this bargain and support those in Oklahoma.

So please, have a look at this amazing bundle and support fellow teachers and children through their recovery, re-build and their emotional journey over the next few days, months and years.

MEGA Maths Teacher Appreciation Sale on TPT

Catch yourself a bargain with up to 28% off all of the items in my TpT store!

Maths, Maths anything maths... Worksheets... Game boards.. Cards... Math Centers... Everything you can imagine and items you've wishlisted! :)

This is to say THANK YOU to all the amazing teachers out there and to all of those who have supported my store.

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! :)

Math Classroom organisation & decoration

As I said in my last post, I went into school on the Sunday before school started back.
Now this cupboard looked terrible with NOTHING in it but textbooks.

One teacher has the top shelf (because she only wants textbooks), so I took over the rest.

I have my year 9 textbooks (over 2 classes), then coloured paper, pencils, pens (50 pens for $2.60 Faber Castle too!), Math centre activities, rulers, reward container and reward certificates! I couldn't ask for a better space now!

Last year I had a problem with leaving pens/ pencils and other equipment out for other student access in a Math Centre set-up because other teachers didn't actively supervise and I ended up with NO rulers, NO pens and NO equipment, so this is padlocked and open every lesson I'm in there! :)

We also moved it more into the corner so there was more open space around the teacher desk! :) I put up my puff decorations (the pastels at the front and the bright ones at the back). I will dedicated a single blog post to creating these VERY soon! :)

On the trolley I have saved the old Year 8 textbooks that were going to be binned because of ACARA (Still VERY useful!!!!). I also found some of my posters from when I had year 6 and added them to the room to bring the class together as one even more.

You should have seen how bland and naked the back of this room looked before I took over! I've added my Math Word Wall - 43 Other words for addition, subtraction, multiplication, division and equals which I colour coordinated for students easy comparison.

I also completed a fun reflection and goal setting task with my juniors which they LOVED! Some lovely pictures to come tomorrow night! :)

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! :)

GIVEAWAY! - Perimeter, Area & Volume Activity Cards

Through TN I have an awesome Giveaway where 5 lucky winners will end up with my Perimeter, Area & Volume Activity Cards #2! 

If you KNOW your students want some additional practice either now, next year or in the future, then why not enter this giveaway and be one of the 5 lucky winners to recieve these 48 question cards WITH answers in TWO themes - Valentines Day and Regular Theme!

So pop on over to the above giveaway and best of luck! :)

15% off Storewide on TeachersNotebook

I thought it's about time I throw a sale on Teachers Notebook (TN) for all my amazing supporters there!

So from NOW until April 14th I have 15% off ALL items in my TN store.

I hope you can stop on over and grab yourself a bargain on some already low prices on my new & old items! :)

Below are just SOME of the items in my store for you to look at.