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Order of Operations, AI in Reading, & a Ballpark Field Trip ⚾
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Hi teachers, We’re in that stretch of the year where things start to move fast. The content ramps up, the schedule fills up, and there’s a lot happening all at once. Here’s what’s going on in our classrooms this week: Math: Order of Operations with GEMSWe’re diving into order of operations, and we are firmly Team GEMS over PEMDAS. If you’ve ever had students multiply before dividing just because the acronym told them to, you already know the struggle. PEMDAS can lead kids to think there’s a strict order within those pairs, instead of understanding that multiplication/division and addition/subtraction are handled left to right. That’s why we love GEMS:
Combining M/D and S/A into single steps makes a huge difference in how students process expressions. It just clicks. We even made our own song to go with it because… of course we did. We’re sharing the lyrics with you as a freebie this week if you want to use it with your class. Grab it here: GEMS Song Lyrics And if you’re looking for something more comprehensive, we’ve put together a full set of activities, games, and assessments that walks students through GEMS step by step. Reading: Wrapping Up Flush + Using AIWe’re finishing up our novel study of Flush, and this is always the part of the book students love most. Everything starts coming together, and those big moments hit. We also tried something new this year. We know people are at varying levels of comfort when it comes to using AI, but we had a lot of fun with this one. Using ChatGPT, we took the detailed character descriptions from the text and generated images of what the characters might look like. Then students rated them and explained how they matched (or didn’t match) what they imagined. It led to some great discussions and pushed students back into the text for evidence. AI can be a really exciting tool when it’s used with purpose. (And if you’re teaching Flush too, we’ve been using our novel study resource for quizzes, vocabulary, and summaries to keep everything organized.) Reading + Writing: RI.5.9 & ResearchWe’re also deep into RI.5.9 while working through a research project on threats to Earth’s water supply. One thing we’ve really focused on is note-taking. A lot of students will either copy everything from a source without thinking, or rewrite information they don’t actually understand. So we’ve been explicit:
Topics have included water pollution, climate change, and overuse of water. The goal is helping students move from “copying facts” to actually thinking about information. If you’re working on this standard, we also have a set of RI.5.9 worksheets that focus specifically on helping students integrate information across sources. 👉 RI.5.9 Reading Comprehension Pack ⚾ Field Trip: Petco ParkWe’re heading to Petco Park on Thursday! It ties perfectly into one of our favorite units where students analyze baseball card stats to practice decimals, fractions, and get a preview of ratios. More on that unit coming soon… but for now, we’re just excited for a fun day out. Go Padres! We hope your week ahead goes as smoothly as possible! See you next week! Quyen & Joe Follow us on our social media accounts and TPT store! |
Top Floor Teachers
We're so glad you're here. We're Joe and Quyen and we can't wait to share all things teaching with you. By signing up, you will be the first in line when we share new ideas and resources. Can't wait to meet you!
Hi teachers, Testing week is here, so we’re shifting how we use our time. Less new instruction, more review, and a big focus on keeping students engaged without overdoing it. One of our go-to moves this week is turning math review into a friendly competition. We set up task cards around a common area on campus and have students work in partners or small teams to solve them. When time is up, we collect all the responses and tally the correct answers by class. The class with the most correct...
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