Five for Friday

This week went by so fast! Yesterday we did not have students. I ended up being late arriving and early leaving.... I had to get a tire repaired in the morning and my daughter and I had Doctor's appointments in the afternoon.  Which means I did not get as ready I would like to be and I'll have to go to the school again today. *sigh* We had a late, but now I'm linking up with my favorite weekly linky, Five for Friday, even though it's Saturday.

 1. First grade practiced different ways to make ten. I forgot to take a picture of the tens rods we made this week. We made "rods" using pipe cleaners and pony beads to help with math facts within ten. Kindergarten is also working on facts within ten and they also made the 10 rods, so they can make "friends of 10."

 2. We start keyboarding practice this week. It was really frustrating for a lot of my students. But we'll keep practicing and it will get easier/better. Here's the free practice site we went to. http://www.learntyping.org/beginnertypinglesson1.htm

 3. Last weekend I read an article about a one column rubric. So I am trying it with my Fourth grade research project. I put three columns but the approaching and the exceeds columns are blank for note taking and the expectation or meets expectation contains the expectation the student must meet in order to be considered as meeting my expectation. When students' work is in the approaching column, the notes will help them bring it up to the "meets expectation" column. I will continue to write a note and hand the work back until it comes up the expectation column. I know that I am not the best rubric maker because the expectation seems clear to me, but it's not always clear to my students, therefore I'll keep making rubrics and revising them. I use Rubistar to make rubrics. How do you let students know what your expectation is? If you have a free Rubistar account, you can see this rubric by using this id: Rubric ID: 2475974.

4. Fourth grade began working on a research project. We've been studying pumpkins, but Fourth grade is ready for some new excitement. So.... in keeping with a fall/creepy theme, they could choose from Spiders, Owls, Bats, or creepy crawlies. Two students chose bats, and one chose owls and the other chose spiders. Interestingly enough, the student who chose spiders says that he has arachnophobia. I am scared of certain types spiders. Wolf spiders in particular. The biggest factor that freaks me out is the that they jump at you. Not to mention that they get very big. Eeks! 

5. On a personal note.... last weekend my daughter was home from college and we got family pictures taken on Sunday. Here is one of the previews. I got the disc last night. I can't wait to start ordering pictures!