Five for Friday Six

Thanks to Kacey at Doodle Bugs Teaching for hosting this weekly linky - it motivates me to look back on the week and what we've accomplished.

 1. We use Handwriting Without Tears in our district and my third graders love perfecting their cursive.  I don't always put as much time into it because of reading and math demands, so I decided to hit two birds with one stone, and have them write their unusual past-tense verb spelling words in cursive at a station this week.  Luckily we have access to the HWT website, and I can create my own practice sheets.  Do you use a cursive writing program?

2. I am piloting a new FOSS unit with my third graders called "Measuring Matter". I love FOSS and the way they incorporate the inquiry method into all of the investigations.  This week the students measured their heights with meter tapes and recorded their data.  Then we lined up from lowest to highest recorded height measurements, and they were so surprised that the tallest girl (and others) were not in their predicted spot.  It is such a good activity to encourage accuracy when recording data from experiments.

 

3. We are working our way towards the BIG day next week - Valentine's Day!  My students decorated their valentine bags.  I know - definitely not as creative as cute boxes, etc. that are out there, but with all the curriculum changes in our district this year I had to go with easy.  They enjoyed decorating though!

The arrow cracks me up!
 

4.  I am a secret shopper for a local financial institution.  I get assigned different "shops" each month in either the lobby or drive-up of these places, and then fill out an online worksheet to evaluate the customer service.  I get paid very little (but hey - it adds up).  Anyway today the worker screwed up my transaction and I had to go back in to get it corrected - uh, oh....

5. Is he not adorable?

Hope you had a great week!