Monday Made It

Today I'm linking up with Tara from 4th Grade Frolics for Monday Made It! I've been wanting to join this party for the past few weeks but time on Mondays kept slipping away from me. I'm late to the game but excited to share what I've been up to!

My district is adopting 1:1 Chromebooks for 3rd and 4th grade next year, and I am thrilled! I've been considering how to best utilize them throughout the day and have decided to use them for 

 morning work each day (among other things, of course!). That led to a change in my morning routine expectations... I typically generate a chart of expectations with my class the first day of school, then type what we have agreed on. I decided to go ahead and put something together because I'm planning a Vistaprint order - we will still have a discussion as a class and generate a chart together, but the typed version will be ready to hang. Here's what I ended up with! 

I went ahead and did one for the afternoon routine while I was at it... 

(In case you're curious, these are the preview images from Vistaprint. I do not have the ideal poster-holding model hanging around in front of a perfectly whitewashed wall.) 

Also on the Chromebook page, I've been spending time planning my flipped math units for the upcoming school year. I flipped my math instruction as part of an action research project last year, and my students and I were really pleased with how we were able to utilize our class time, and how homework instantly regained its value. I will do another post on flipped math, including some samples of my lessons and pictures of our set-up. This upcoming year, I'm planning to start flipping the math instruction early in the year and sticking with it. 

Because I teach the self-contained gifted class, I hit all of the third grade standards and also many, if not the majority of, the 4th grade standards. Teaching gifted students was a new endeavor for me last year, and about halfway through the year, I was kicking myself for not spending time aligning the math standards from the start! 

So, I aligned all of the standards - you can access my alignment for math here for now... I'll eventually make a more attractive printable, but this will do for now! 

Then, I used that alignment to start determining my scope and sequence for the year. I've rough-drafted two units so far, and have my first unit finalized. It was important to me to break down how many videos I'll need to put together and how many in-class days were necessary for every individual topic. My school has not adopted a math program, so I pull resources from all over and create things on my own to fill in the holes. 

My ultimate goal for the summer is to create daily warm-ups, note-taking sheets, quizzes, and assessments to go with all of my flipped math units. It's nearly July, so I better get moving on that one! But first, I want to finish mapping everything to be sure I'm making the best use of the time I'll have in class. Here's the Unit 1 map I finished - feel free to use it if you are also planning flipped instruction, or working on squeezing in 3rd and 4th grade standards! Click to enlarge. 

The last thing I've been working on this week isn't quite finished, so nothing officially "made" yet - but it's been a major endeavor! I've been purging hanging files and re-organizing all of my printed graphic organizers, assessments, etc. Hopefully, I'll have binder covers ready to share next week! I'll leave you with the ultimate tab-age shot from this morning... Yikes! 

Have a great week!