Dot Day, Nouns, & Word Problems

This week was Dot Day so I read The Dot to my homeroom class. Every year I use this day to start our random acts of kindness that we do throughout the school year. We pick a door in the school and leave many, many positive post it notes on the door. Of course, my kids wanted to start with Dr. Headen, our new principal. 

The only rules are they must be positive notes and they must sign their name. 

I'm sure she was surprised when she returned to see her door looking like this!

We have been studying nouns and I found this game to help them practice concrete and abstract nouns. The kids loved it!

They played the game in pairs and the winner of the game got a ticket for the good job jar. 

Do you need some games to noun practice? Games 4 Gains had this great pack for Nouns so I purchased it. The kids loved this game and I can't wait to use more of them next week. 

We have also been working on making word problems easier. This is something my students struggle with every year. I wanted to introduce them to this collaborative problem solving activity for 5th grade math. 

So I put the kids in small groups and had them work together to solve the word problem. Then I set up the screen and we used our 4 Mobis so that each group could share their thought process and problem solving. 

I love using the Mobis for this because there are times when groups solve the problem in different ways and they are able to share with the entire class. This time everyone solved it exactly the same way. I like using the groups to solve the problems because it helps those who may struggle with word problems because they help each other!