Stellaluna

This starts week one of Unit Two in our Reading Street basal. Our skill is comparing and contrasting.  Monday is supposed to be the day we do our leveled readers, but they are just entirely too hard for my little readers.  So we decided to do mini lessons into go along with our skills instead.  For today’s mini-lesson I read Stellaluna and the kids used a bat graphic organizer to compare and contrast bats and birds.

Click on the picture to download the graphic organizer. How would you use this in your classroom? Please let me know how you could take this to a deeper level of understanding!

Happy Teaching!

The 30-Day Challenge

You hear that phrase all the time!  Losing weight, building up stamina to run a race, car dealerships running a sale, etc.  I think that the biggest 30-Day Challenge is the First 30 days of school.  My lack of posting is first of all a bad habit and second of all directly related to my school year craziness. Everybody is their own kind of busy so I won’t try to compare stories or carry you through my day, but I do want to carry you through the last 30 days! 

For the most part my kids are great, actually the best class I have ever had, but the MOST challenging.  We are settled into our morning routine and reading stations are running as smoothly as one could expect in fifth grade. We are finished with Reading Street Unit One and will take our Benchmark Test this week.  Hopefully, all of the hours of pinning and creating lessons to help teach the skills and strategies will pay off. Even though I admit that part is fun for me. Envisions Common Core Math is going well. We’ve covered cells,and completed an AMSTI kit on Variables (the kids LOVE this) in Science and covered map skills and Early Americans in Social Studies.

I hope that your year is going as well as you hoped.  I finally had an original idea and I am going to be using it for our Halloween Bulletin Board.  Check back for a glyph freebie before Friday!

Hoping the next 30 days are even better!

    

 

Football Fridays and College Game Saturdays

Baby Birthdays and Births

  

Flying our Airplanes

Great way to review…I put up posters with the names of all of our skills that we need to review… the kids had to choose at least three skills and write down their schema about that skill.

  

We love Pandora playing over my speakers… our top stations are:

1. Tween Radio

2. Radio for Kids Radio {Pretty much all Disney}

3. Lady Antebellum

4. Justin Beiber

5. Pachelbel's Canon in D

6. Praise and Worship

Have a great week!

Happies

Pretty stressful 12th day~

Taught one of my sweet boys how to draw a heart.  Yes I teach 5th grade and no he didn’t know how.  This is WHY I teach…he is just precious….challenging…even VERY Challenging most days, but then I step back and think…NOBODY! not his parents, not his pre-school teacher, not is kindergarten, first, second, third, or fourth grade teacher, took the time to help him learn to draw a heart!  It literally broke my heart. I’m already in love with him and I hope that he stays in my room long enough for me to give him a chance. {please don’t critique that immensely long run-on sentence}

I NEEDED some Dt. Dr. Pepper so I made a Target run tonight.  An hour later I came home with the CUTEST tissue paper to make some poms so I can hang my table numbers, oh so cute thank you cards, eye make up remover pads (best invention ever), a birthday card, an art box for one of my kids, 3 8 packs of coke, all of which I was SUPER pleased with… and I tried to find the perfect shade of fall purple polish like in this picture

So I tried: Essie, Revlon, Loreal, Sallie Hanson, and O.P.I

Nothing even close…ugh…I came home with Loreal Paparazzi Pleaser, which ended up being super grape… not really a huge fan:

Still on the hunt for a perfect purple and a new fall lipstick!  Any suggestions?

Check back soon for some more Reading Street Resources.

<3, Laura

Frindle Freebie

If you or someone close to you teaches 5th grade and uses Reading Street, please follow my Pinterest Boards.  I have spent a LOT of hours trying to find great activities to use for centers.  The ones the book provides go either too quickly or the kids don’t get anything out of them. I will write a post about how I do my centers later, but I will use this activity on Tuesday for Centers.

Directions for Teachers:  Copy first sheet for everyone in the class.  Then, I am going to copy the words for each pair of students in a group on colored paper. ( The most kids I have in one group is six so I am going to copy the words three times.) For durability print them on cardstock and laminate. I will probably store the words in a ziploc bag because they are easy and reusable.  After the pair sorts the words they will then fill out their recording sheet. I will “grade” the sorting and the correctness of the written sentences.

Happy Teaching!

Printable for Waterhouse Hawkins

On Mondays we listen to our reading story for our center rotation. Sometimes I just don’t think that listening is enough.  In first grade there was time to listen to the story and do a reader’s response.  However, the stories in 5th grade are longer and there isn’t enough time to do the sheet also, so I just made it the seat work rotation.  I include the skill and strategy for the week and then something we need to review.  Including basic skills such as author/illustrator/genre/etc feel free to use it. My clip art came from Lettering Delights.

Click on the picture to download!

New Year Post

 

The tree is down, the closets are organized, and it is back to work tomorrow! 

We took one last picture before we took in down. {Still playing with the settings} This was the best one.  Barney was in on the action too…for like a minute haha: until the treats were gone.

 

 

Carter and I had such a fantastic break.  We spent so much time together and got a lot accomplished. The first six months of our marriage were awesome. Can’t wait to see what 2012 holds for us! {Maybe some matching earrings for me!}

After getting together with my oldest friends and hubbys since kindergarten on Friday night:

 

 

 

We decided to stay in for New Years Night. Best.Decision.Ever! No Stress to find an outfit, no plans to fret with, just a great meal with great company!

The house is clean and organized.  Carter’s sweet momma made me some curtains for our guest bed room and it feels so homey.  The declutter of Christmas is refreshing even though I hate when it is over.  Believe it or not I am ready to go back to school and see my kiddos. We are going to be doing lots of cool stuff this week.  We are going to be doing variations of these activities via Pinterest:

 

 

{does my brain even come up with original ideas anymore?}

 

Can’t Wait! Tomorrow is a special day for my little sis!  Tomorrow is her FIRST day as a real teacher!  She has worked so hard in her classroom over the break!  Her kids are sooo lucky to have her!  Good luck to Mrs. Holcombe tomorrow!

 

New Years 2010…

Reading Street Review Week

PRINTABLE UPDATED…silly contractions…I forget all the time. I am not sure how I expect my firsties to remember.  I will fix the poster tomorrow at school.

After six stories in our reading series, we have a Theme Launch/Review Week.  It is also a week to test benchmarks, sight words, and skills that were taught in the unit.  We reviewed –dge words today with this badge activity.  I made a poster and we found all of the –dge words together.  EAch student got a chance to underline one of the words.  Next I passed out individual “invitations” and we read it by using the strategy, “I DO! WE DO! YOU DO!”  After reading, students took highlighters and highlighted all of the –dge words. Then they sorted them by vowels and recorded on the sort sheet.

{Click to Download}

{Click to Download}

Realia from Last Week

So I am pretty sure that realia is a made up word since when you type it the red squiggly lines show up underneath it!  But if you went to The University of North Alabama and had Dr. Goodnite for Social Studies (undergrad and grad) then you KNOW what realia is.  It’s a word that she made up that means artifacts or examples and if you save her notes from undergrad then you won’t have to take them over in grad school because it’s the EXACT same class!  I digress…. so this past week has been so productive.  I have had several absent and I have missed them but it is amazing how much more you can get done with four absent. Together with Abby’s penguin 5 five day planner and Deanna Jump’s Penguin unit on TpT my kids were in penguin heaven! Please don’t judge the drawings haha!

    

and my absolute FAVORITE activity was the one from Abby and DeepSpaceSparkle.  I only had 13 students one day and I thought if I am gonna do it TODAY IS THE DAY! and we DID IT!  We painted…. not water paints, but real paint with real paint brushes.  I was a BRAVE girl!  I wish that I would have taken pictures of the kids with their bowls of paint and all of the different paintbrushes.  Better yet I wish that I could capture the kids behavior during this activity, put it in a jar and bring it out when the weather starts to make them go APES! I never heard, I can’t do it…mines ugly…can I start over… all things that I hear when we draw or use markers.  EVERY single student loved their art and I loved it too!  It was sooooo satisfying to see how happy the kids were.  They were sighting facts about penguins and their habitats while we were painting and it was one of “those moments” when you know that teaching is what you were made for!

 

Two more activities: time and Abby’s contraction kids.

The clock is a paper plate with yard sale dots and arrows from Word. * pre measure the arrows…. I did not so that’s why they look kinda off.  I was EXTREMELY specific on modeling where the dots should go.  We did 12 and 6 first and then 3 and 9 and then filled in between.  Students had to label the hour and minute hand.  The square piece of paper says My clock says it is _______________.  Later in the week the pieces of paper came off and were replaced with a letter and students had to record the times in a center. Good fun practice!  We did hour and half hour even though the ones in the picture are all hours.

CONTRACTIONS!

I loved Babbling Abby’s contraction kids but I added my on little spin to it.  My kids love to play a game we call Mix and Match.  I am sure that you do a variation of it in your classroom.  I print off cards for each kid so in this instance one child will have a card that has: is not and a child that has : isn’t.  I’ve also done it with –er and –est words.  I play music and the kids mix their cards by trading with each other. The rules are NO running and you have to trade even if you have already traded “a million” times. After the music stops the pairs find each other. We did it about five times and the last time the pairs got to sit beside each other and USE MARKERS whooo… to decorate their kids.  Then they glued the pair together and we hung them up!  Great involvement activity.

Y’all keep checking back this week.  Lots of printables for time and Unit three review for Reading Street.

Have a Happy Week! Laura

It’s the Love Month

Since it is the Love month I wanted to post a few of my favorite things that I LOVE and CAN NOT live without:

STORAGE TUBS!  This is just one of the walls in my classroom…. LOTS and LOTs and LOTs of storage tubs in LOTS of colors…. LOVE

Sharpies and Bic Markers

  

They make my posters AMAZING eye candy!

Pocket Charts and Organizational Holders… in every size and color! 

                

Archer Farms Cinnamon Vanilla Nut Coffee…  This stuff is Heaven in a Cup! 

Along with this cup of joe I have to have a Dt. Mt. Dew every morning!

 

 

 

Dry Erase Markers:

Again, in every color.  Right now my favorite thing to do with these right now is to get a plastic plate and let the kids make words during reading, practice their spelling words during reading seatwork or free time.  The kids are loving “Playing Teacher” with their markers and plates.

 

There is more on the list of love, but I’ll leave some for later. What I am having is a love/hate relationship with Google Documents!

I am going to leave you a little surprise at the end of the post!  Hopefully you will see a printable for a badge I used with our decodable today.  The kids read the decodable, circle the –dge words, and then write the words.

What can you not live without?

test

It worked!  Whoooo hooo!  Actually the acutal PP is a little messed up, some of the fonts and sizing, but I figured it out! I can go to bed.... I will post a sort, recording sheet, and warm up words tomorrow to go along with I'm a Caterpillar.

Frog and Toad Together: The Garden

Our reading street story this week is Frog and Toad Together: The Garden.  Our main skills are inflected endings –ed and –ing when you have to double up the consonant, –ar words, plot, and past and present tense verbs!  (You think they could’ve add more more thing?)

I have been stalking everybody else’s blog and just love love love all the ideas and clip art and activities so I download me some clip art from Scrappin Doodles and Lettering Delights and got busy. I haven’t really had a lot of time to play around with it but I will leave you with a plot activity where students can draw a picture of what happened and then add a picture, –ar words to warm up with in small groups, and another –ar word activity to go along with the decodable or the story.  Enjoy!

*Okay sO I just thought I knew what I was doing!  Its 12:08 and I started this post at 10:15!  I will work on the Google documents and post more tomorrow! For now…if your still up just click on the links to see the documents.

Free Choice Friday

Sight word Review Game

For those of you who use Scotts Foresman you know how l-o-n-g reading is for our little firsties.  It seems like they have to sit there and listen to you talk for hours.  My reading coach and I decided to spice things up and get them involved.  Student Engagement = Paying attention!  (I know you already knew that!) So on Thursdays, we play a little game of Smack It!  As soon as I introduce the new sight words my kids start asking when we are going to play it.  THEY LOVE IT!
This is how you play:

1. Write the words you want Ss to review on your board:

* Variation: Instead of writing the words on the board, write them on a post it note.  It is easier to set up and they don’t erase :)


2. Place a line of tape away from the board.  Ss need this so they will stay behind the line and it will be fair.  Otherwise you are going to get a lot of “This is not fair” when the student loses.
3. Students will need a pointer.  We use fly swatters so the game is true to its name “Smack It”.
4.  Have two students stand behind the line.  (I use my '”sticks” with Ss #s on them to call out who gqes first and next…) call out a word and let them smack it.  The first Ss who smacks it stays and the one who lost gets a sticker and sits back down. 

This a great and quick way to review your sight words.  I hope your kids love it as much as mine.  Let me know how you use it and if your kids love it.  Have fun!
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