Five for Friday: Making Connections

This has been such a busy week for me in school!  I can't believe that I only had four days with my smarties, there were so many connections being made.

1)  Connecting to Social Studies:  This week we made an awesome connection between our read-aloud book The Watson's Go to Birmingham, and Hammurabi's Code in social studies.  

You can read about that post {HERE}.  Even a few days later, they are still talking about that connection, and now when I'm reading, they are listening for other connections they can make! WOOT!

2) Finding a balance in Math:  We started talking about single step equations this week.  One of the things I really like about the beginning of this unit is the connection with expression equalities and properties.  My smarties did not like having to learn and memorize Commutative, Associative and Distributive Properties, but I think they really get it now that we have started Topic 3.  In the beginning of this unit, they get the "easy stuff."  My Smarties have to understand the difference between expressions and equations.  They get this really well, so I thought I would have a little fun with them, and we made a fun foldable for out interactive notebooks.

Next, they had to explain which property can be used to help prove an expression is equal.  The problems look like this:  

I was worried they would struggle with this.  But 'holla!  They totally GET it!  My Smarties totally earned their stripes with properties this week!  Plus, we started drawing diagrams to show balanced equations, and the whole "eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth" came back AGAIN because of the balance scale.

3)  Today was a Professional Day for our district.  We had speaker Ken Williams come in to talk to our group about Professional Learning Communities.  He came to give us an overview, and really did a great job.  The problem was, we were a little more advanced in the process than he thought, and had he been briefed about that, I think he could have given us a little more intensive training than the overview.  I did like that we had time to have a conversation about a PLC.  Now I'm ready to take action.  Hopefully my building is too!  Speaking of that, I'm looking for a new professional development style book to read.  Have you read anything good lately? 

4)  Check out this awesome project that my Little Man made this week in art!

5)  I love being able to talk about books with my daughter, "24."  This week book 3 of the Divergent Series by Veronica Roth came out:  Allegiant.  

My daughter got the book from her English teacher on Tuesday, and basically read it by Thursday.  I hate to get after her about ignoring her chores, but I can't knock having her nose in a book!  Plus, the faster she finished, the faster I get to read!

Do you have any books that you are loving right now?  I'm looking forward to a soccer game this weekend where I can work in a few extra pages with my book!