Five for Friday - Finished Testing, Lifehack, and Tunes Tuesday Coming!

I'm linking up with Doodlebugs Teaching for Five for Friday! 

It's been a busy week! I'm definitely ready for the weekend!

I'm excited to announce that our state testing for the year is over! I've taken down the black paper covering everything, and our schedule is back to normal! Woohoo! The kids loved their testing treats, and today we're celebrating by having a Pajama/Game Day! (Really the games are only happening for an hour in the afternoon, but still!)

Wednesday, my kids finished up their Rube Goldberg Device projects and shared them with the class. Here's a tiny 5 second clip of my favorite one! 

This week I taught a pretty cool lesson that goes along with one of the new Common Core standards. It's all about "Shades of Meaning." I feel like when kids come to me and tell me what a synonym means they always say, "two words that mean the same thing." But that's not really true. It's a misconception that really needs to be cleared up. For example, sad, glum, and depressed are synonyms. But they have shades of meaning. 

The common core standard asks you to distinguish shades of meaning between words that describe states of mind. I started my kids off with something a little more concrete, the color green. Mint, Olive, and Kelly are all Green. But they're very different too. 

This eventually led to an understanding that words like Question, Ponder, Wonder, and Inquire are all synonyms too...but there are nuances to those words that make them different. The lesson and sheets I used for the lesson, along with an interactive notebook piece and a poem activity are in my store for 2 smackeroos. Smackeroos, clams, bread, and dough are all slang synonyms for money!  ;)

Here comes Lifehack for Teachers #4! Have you or your kids ever had a word that you just can't seem to remember how to spell? Become a better speller by forcing yourself to spell it all the time by making it your password!

Tunes Tuesday is coming up again! Tuesday, April 15th will be our Tunes Tuesday for Social Studies! If you're a blogger, then I hope you'll start preparing a post now about how you use music to teach Social Studies, or link up a previous post of yours!

Thanks for reading!