Five for Friday - August 28

It's Doodlebugs Teaching's Five for Friday link up!

Today is a HUGE day for me.  I'm interviewing in Nashville for the state Teacher of the Year program.  Thoughts and prayers around 11:00 a.m. are greatly appreciated!  I am so excited to be representing my district, but I'm also nervous because I want to make them proud.  Kind of like those first day jitters.  :)

So, without further ado, here are my five favorites from this week.

This week was Stitch Fix week!  Which is kind of like Christmas around here.  Love!!!

I love this fragrance from Bed, Bath & Beyond.  It smells like happy.

This truly is not a shameless plug.  But, since I'm out today, I have LOVED being able to just pull this resource, make some copies, and know that my kids are productively engaged with fun work today that's aligned with our standards and requires just a little guidance from the sub.  Because we all know we'd rather drag ourselves to school on our deathbeds rather than get ready for a sub.  Grab your copy for Pocahontas or Amelia Earhart in my store.  More units will be coming out throughout the fall.  

This is going just okay in my classroom.  I got the idea from someone this summer to give each kid a pencil box with 5 pencils and one cap eraser on Monday.  Those who still have all 5 pencils and the eraser (even just crumbs of it) on Friday get a treat (for me it's a clip up).  I've got kids coming to me on Friday, though, with just 1 pencil left and no idea of what happened to the other 4.

So, our conversations go like this.

Me:  "What happened to your other 4 pencils?"

Kid:  Shrugs.

Me:  "Did you eat them?"

Kid:  "I dunno.  Maybe."

Me:  "Maybe you ATE them?"

Kid:  "Well, I don't know.  Maybe."

Me:  "No.  You didn't.  You can't eat pencils without getting seriously sick."

Kid:  "Oh."

Me:  "Did you take them  home?"

Kid:  Shrugs.  "Maybe."

Me:  "Didn't we talk at the beginning of the year that these pencils must stay at school?  Or we'll lose them all really soon?"

Kid:  "Yes."

Me:  "So why did you take them home?"

Kid:  "I don't know.  Maybe I didn't."

Me:  "You do realize you won't get to clip up?  And that I have to replace these lost pencils?"

Kid:  "Yes."  Looks at me with blank eyes.  I can tell that there is honestly NO knowledge whatsoever of what happened to their pencils.

I'm really not sure if this is any better than my traditional method of having a basket Velcroed to their desks and them keeping pencils in it.  Maybe a quarter of my kids actually have all 5 pencils at the end of the week.  I do think I'll stick with it for another week, maybe giving bigger rewards for those who keep up with their pencils, and see if it gets better.  But at this rate, I'll be buying pencils by December.

And avoiding THAT was the whole reason for the challenge in the first place.

Also, I would not make a good police interrogator.  I get nothing.

I love Frixion pens.  They are REALLY erasable pens (not like those you remember from the 80s that only kinda sorta erased).  These are smooth-writing gel pens that erase cleanly and completely.  I like to use them for me, but I also like to let the kids use them during math workshop.  When they bring their work to me for guided practice, I let them do our work together with a colored Frixion pen.  Then, what they do independently at their seats is done with pencil.  That way, when I collect work, I can easily see what was done with guidance and what was done independently and compare the quality of the work.  You can get them from Wal-Mart or Amazon.  

And that's it for my Friday!  Hop on over to the link up to see what everyone else is up to!