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Daily Warmups

This was a pretty good week! Another long, busy one though. I had back to school night, and so did all 3 of my kids. Declan, my youngest, had his the same night that I had mine! All 3 of my kids also have soccer practice, so every night this week we've been busy with something. I also did a 5k this weekend in San Diego, which was good because I got to spend the weekend with awesome coworkers, but also took away from some of my beginning of the year planning time.
 

I also had to be out this week for personal reasons, so it's just been a bit chaotic. I feel like I'm doing too much and not enough at the same time. I thought I'd be able to get ahead today but found myself still at work at 3:30, unable to really accomplish anything so I came home.

I do feel like with doing the table folders, there's more pressure to have all of the handouts ready ahead of time, and I haven't been able to do a good job of that. I'm really hoping next week (and future weeks) will be better.

On to the fun stuff! I already put some on Twitter but I've really been enjoying my setup for warmups (so far). I made a note to myself in Google Keep so I'd remember because I always make these plans and then forget. I think I may change Reflection Friday to Notice/Wonder Friday though, because that's what I did today after being out Thursday.

 

I started Number Talks with the first set of dots, and basically got these 4 every period (I only remember to snap a picture during 5th though). I was amazed at the students who split it in half and came up with the expression using halves! I don't think I've ever had that before.

For Today's Number Tuesday, again my students amazed me with their creativity. Some of the students were shy about sharing their "simpler" expressions but I made sure to let them know all expressions are appreciated and valued. I did try to write out the multiplication with parentheses because students usually struggle with remembering that parentheses are multiplication, they tend to add. I also had a student who kept trying to use a square root, even though square roots aren't something students do until 8th grade. He didn't get it right, but we worked together to write an expression that would work. He then was on Khan Academy working on square roots and cube roots on his own, which made me unbelievably happy. 
Wednesday we did Which One Doesn't Belong, and we had some great discussions about the vocabulary with shapes. We just talked so I didn't write anything down on the board, but I made sure we talked about the reasons each ones doesn't belong because I know from past years that students tend to think there is just one right answer.

Thursday I was out, so we didn't get to do the Clothesline math, but I'm excited to try it next week. Today on Friday I didn't have them do a reflection but I had them do a Notice/Wonder on multiples since we're working on LCM.

I'm still struggling to fit reflections in at the end of the period, which is why I had wanted to do Friday Reflections, but I'm just going to work harder at fitting it in at the end of the period. Using the timers has worked out really well on time management so far, but it still feels like there's not enough time in each day.

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