MMI- Cheesy Tortellini Soup & Literature Circle 3-5 Pack

Happy Monday!

I have just two little things to link up with 4th Grade Frolics for my Monday Made It. 

One is a great recipe that I made this week and the other is a new TpT product. 

My craft list is a mile long.

Seriously... a mile. 

I'm like half done with multiple projects right now and it's driving me bananas (cue the song now...)

I'm trying to stay on top of things, 

but right now trying to stay on top of things has not been that easy. 

 Cheesy Tortellini Recipe

I know it's still summer, but I'm trying to start to get back into the routine of school year cooking.

Yes, I said it..school year cooking!!!  

YIKES! 

This is one of my favorite soups to make, and it's soooo easy! I made it this week for us and for a friend who just had a baby. I also won the soup cook off at school with this recipe... just sayin'... ;)

Not a great picture, but my award winning soup ladle...
Now if you had any question about making this
recipe, hopefully you won't now! :) 

I didn't take a ton of pictures, because it's not that great to look at. But here is the recipe. 

Don't hesitate to try it! It's amazingly good, especially when you don't have a lot of time to prepare a dinner!

This is it for the bulk of ingredients! So easy!

8 oz. cheese Tortellini (non-frozen)

1 pinch Salt

1 T Pepper

1 T olive oil

3 cups Marinara sauce

1 ½ cans Water

Water for boiling

3 cans Campbell’s Minestrone soup

Parmesan cheese

Bring salted, oiled water to a boil. Cook tortellini to al dente. (Use directions on tortellini packaging). Remove tortellini from water, set aside to cool. Rinse to avoid sticking.

In a large pot mix together minestrone soup, 1 ½ cans water, marinara sauce, pepper. Heat to desired temperature. Stir occasionally. Add in cooked tortellini and cook for about 10 minutes. Stir occasionally.

Serve with grated parmesan cheese on top. Enjoy!

Literature Circle Pack: Intermediate Edition

A few weeks ago I posted my elementary lit circle pack on TpT. 

You can read about it here. 

I have finally finished up the intermediate version of the same idea.

The idea is the same in that it is set up in the exact same way. There is a 12 day rotation schedule, 

and during those 12 days, each person has a job assigned with a reading. 

Differences are the job titles and the directions for each job. 

 They are discussion director, literary luminary, literary connector and selection summarizer. 

Also on the bottom of each page is a grading scale that can be done by the student as a self-evaluation or doe by the teacher after the book or page is collected. There is still a day-by-day self assessment page included in each book. 

I'd love for you to stop by and check it out! Let me know what you think.



Also, if you have time today, check out my friend Mrs. Spangler's blog. She got a new design to celebrate her blogiversary and is also having a giveaway! Be sure to stop by, say hello and enter to win!!

  

Have a great week everyone! I'm off to a 2 day PD class! 

I'm becoming a Techy.... :) {A Peek at my Week}

Happy Sunday! 

I'm late to the the party, but I still have some time to link up with my friend Jennifer, from Mrs. Laffin's Laughings for her weekly linky 'A Peek at my Week'.  

I usually link up during the school year, but with it being summer, I really haven't had much going on other than the typical new mom 'stuff'...so I haven't really linked up much.

 I'm looking forward to this next week with some professional development on the docket, so I'm happy to be linking up today!!!

I'm taking an advanced google training course this next week and I'm super excited for it.  

We're going 1:1 this next year with chromebooks, so this class hopefully will help direct me with some pointers to get started with them.

 I have to say I'm a lot bit nervous for this big jump....but also excited! I'm hopeful that we will have a good implementation year, and I plan to do a lot of reflection and blogging about the process for our school and my classroom of third graders. 

Change is hard for everyone involved...I'm trying to have an open mind and embrace it!

 I hope my students do too.

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Have any of your gone 1:1 or close to it? 

I'd love to hear some basic advice on what you think is important for me to know before we get started. What would you have wanted someone to share with you??  

 I am all ears! 

Also, please go ahead and check out my friend Mrs. Spangler's blog. 

She's sporting a fancy new blog design as she celebrates a wingding of a BLOGIVESARY! 

 She's having a big giveaway to celebrate. There's something for everyone! 

Be sure to stop by and wish her a happy year ahead on her blog!

Have a great week. 

I'm off to bed...setting an alarm clock for tomorrow also

scares me!!!  EEEK!

Point. Click. Shoot.! Saturday Snapshots 7.26.14

Loving me some Saturday!! :) 

I'm linking up with Miss Nelson for Saturday Snapshots!  

This week I got out a bit to enjoy some of the nice weather here in Wisconsin. 

I took Hudson to the beach for the first time. It was a lot of work dragging him out but so beautiful!

We also went to eat at this awesome new diner in Lake Geneva.  

I love how it looks inside and out!

My first diner experience....

We spent an early morning walking around Lake Geneva, and people watching. 

It always amazes me that I live here.... It's so beautiful!!!

Love. Love. Love

Of course I can't have a Saturday Snapshot post without a picture of Hudson.

He was baptized last weekend.

Here's Mr. Serious in his cute little white suit. This is the biggest smile we got out of him all day! 

Oh well...There's even a pocket square on his outfit!  Swoon!

Go check out Miss Nelson's Blog, and see what others have linked up for their Saturday Snapshots!

Happy Saturday!

Social Media Has Taken Over! 5 for Friday!

Happy Friday! I'm excited to be linking up with Doodle Bugs teaching for the 5 for Friday linky!!

I have to say that this week, I have really gone full force with all aspects of social media to try to make connections.  I have to say that progress has been a bit slower than I thought it would, but I've been having fun!

I started a Facebook page for Mrs. Bentin's Blackboard.  I've started to follow many of the blogs that I read and it's been fun to see more than just a blog post from people.  How many of you have a Facebook page for your blog?? If I'm not a fan, I'd love to be. Just tell me where to find you and I'm there! Just click on the picture below to get to my page. I'd love for you to stop by and say hello and while you're there I'd love for you to like my page too! :)

I also recently started an Instagram account for Mrs. Bentin's Blackboard.  It has been equally as fun as Facebook, in that I've really gotten to see more personal aspects of my blogger friends through pictures.  I know that I shared earlier about Instagram, but in the past week I have really been able to find a lot of people that I know through blogging and it has been so much fun!!! You can find me @mrsbentinsblackboard on Instagram or through this link.  I sure do love sharing my life both personal and school in pictures. Here are a a few of my favorites.

I took Hudson to the beach this week for his first time!  It wasn't exactly what I was expecting, however nothing is with a 3 month old.  He ended up enjoying most of his beach time in a tent hidden away from the sun (he fell asleep!!). He also didn't like when the water touched his feet.  However, the hardest part with a new baby is just getting out and doing things by yourself....and I did it! :) I felt very accomplished.

We went to eat at Joni's Diner in Lake Geneva one morning for breakfast. It was so delicious and super fun. I felt like I was out of an episode of Breaking Bad!!!

My dad had surgery this week... it was a long week, but everything turned out good and now hopefully he is a double cancer survivor!! :) Thankful for so much right now! I hope I don't offend anyone with the picture below, but right now this is our mantra for the cancer.  He has just been cleared for his year check from the last bout with it, and then got diagnosed with a different kind.  So it's all very fresh!

Source

Have a great weekend!

Postcard Exchange

Hey there, and happy Wednesday! I'm here for a quick post today to just share something that I'm really excited about for the upcoming school year.  After reading a blog post from Pinkadots Elementary I decided to look into doing a postcard exchange with my students.  Boy am I glad that I did because I have really been trying to come up with an interactive way to include teaching regions to my 3rd graders.  We try to squeeze as much in as we can during the year on regions, especially for our end of the year pioneer unit, but it doesn't always happen as much as we like.  Often times we cram a whole lot into the pioneer unit to explain to students about the different parts of the U.S as they are 'traveling' from place to place during our simulation. When reading and thinking about this postcard exchange I thought, what a great way to take time out randomly when mail arrives to discuss different areas of the country that we live in??

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So, I haven't worked out all of the details yet, and I'm not exactly sure how I want to display them yet, but I'm doing it! I'm so excited to be signed up for a postcard exchange this next year, and even more excited for the learning that will come because of it.  If you're interested, here is the link that I am signed up through. There are still some spots available.  If your state is taken, pass along the information to someone you know who teaches somewhere else.  The more states that get taken the better!

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I'm so excited for how this is going to go this year, and we will be sure to document our journey along the way.  If you have any advice or suggestions I would love to hear them! :)

Two for Tuesday- Lit Circles & Fable Organzier (2-4)

Hi There,

I know I've been a little MIA the last week or so, and I'm sorry about that. I'm hoping to get back on track.  The little one has been a little out of sorts, and we've been trying to figure out exactly what's going on.  I'm guessing a mixture of growing pains, and being passed around too much (he had his baptism this weekend with 40+ people googling over him!!)  Let's just say that he is exhausted, and so are his parents!!!  I'm linking up today with The Teaching Tribune for Two for Tuesday. The linky where people put items from their TpT store at 50% off. Be sure to check out the other great link ups!! I know that I'm excited to shop. 

Today the two products that I'm putting up for 50% off are....

1. Literature Circle Pack

I use literature circles in my guided reading groups all of the time.  I don't use them over and over, but tend to rotate through a variety of different learning tools with students to do in guided groups.  Something that is always in my rotation is literature circles.  I have created a literature circle pack for a group of students to use right away in a small group.  This pack is designed with 4 members, but no fear, you can easily have more than one member 1, 2, 3 or 4 depending on your group.  The work is independent until sharing time, so very seldom do you have duplicates of what students are sharing.  

Each member has a twelve day schedule included with the pack.  There can easily be more added, or some taken away if you don't need that many.  Each member has a rotation of 4 jobs do go through each of the twelve days.  The pack is put together so all you have to do is print, and you will have each booklet pre-made in order.  It's over 60 pages!!!  You just need to make copies. 

After the front cover for each member book is a self assessment page for students to assess how they did with their listening and talking skills for that days literature circle discussion.  I typically have them do that at the end when we're all done.  Then the booklet is laid out with the job pages.  Like I said there are 4 jobs. One is to come up with 3 long answer questions for the reading that was done for that day to pose to the group for discussion.  One is visualization where students draw a part from the reading.  It can be a part they liked, didn't like, an interesting part or a part that made them question something in the reading.  They share their picture, why they drew it and then others can comment/discuss.  The third job is to make connections to the reading, and the last is to give a summary with the main characters, setting and plot of the pages read.

2. Fable Organizer

Students use what they have learned about story elements (title, setting, problem, solution, characters) to fill out this graphic organizer on a fable that they have read. Additional details that are added to this organizer are an illustration of an important part of the fable, to tell the moral of the fable, and to retell the fable in their own words.

If you download a product I would love for you to leave feedback!! Thanks so much. 

Monday Made It- New TpT & Garden Stones

Happy Monday!  I am barely making it to link up with Tara from 4th Grade Frolics today for her Monday Made It linky!  I spent all day in a Google training (more to share later when I figure out how to process all of my new info) and I am beat!  I'm excited to look though and see what everyone else made this week!

I've got two things to link up today for my Monday Made It.  One is a new product to my TpT store.  I'm pretty new at this whole teachers pay teachers thing, so we'll see what happens. This is something that I use in my own classroom.  I revamped it only to look a little cuter for the classroom, but the idea is still the same exact thing as I've been using.  I talked about this a little bit here if you want to check it out.  Keep in mind that this link will take you to the older version.

Literature Circles:   I use literature circles in my guided reading groups all of the time.  I don't use them over and over, but tend to rotate through a variety of different learning tools with students to do in guided groups.  Something that is always in my rotation is literature circles.  I have created a literature circle pack for a group of students to use right away in a small group.  This pack is designed with 4 members, but no fear, you can easily have more than one member 1, 2, 3 or 4 depending on your group.  The work is independent until sharing time, so very seldom do you have duplicates of what students are sharing.  '

This is member 1.  Each member's cover will look like this, just have a different rotation of jobs for each day. 

Each member has a twelve day schedule included with the pack.  There can easily be more added, or some taken away if you don't need that many.  Each member has a rotation of 4 jobs do go through each of the twelve days.  The pack is put together so all you have to do is print, and you will have each booklet pre-made in order.  It's over 60 pages!!!  You just need to make copies.

After the front cover for each member book is a self assessment page for students to assess how they did with their listening and talking skills for that days literature circle discussion.  I typically have them do that at the end when we're all done.  Then the booklet is laid out with the job pages.  Like I said there are 4 jobs. One is to come up with 3 long answer questions for the reading that was done for that day to pose to the group for discussion.  One is visualization where students draw a part from the reading.  It can be a part they liked, didn't like, an interesting part or a part that made them question something in the reading.  They share their picture, why they drew it and then others can comment/discuss.  The third job is to make connections to the reading, and the last is to give a summary with the main characters, setting and plot of the pages read.

This is an example of a job page.  There are 4 total jobs in the packet for students to rotate through. 

Here is another example of a job page for the student book. 

Helpful Hints: I color code the front covers of each book if there are more than 4 students so I know who is on what rotation.  I also have color coded the job pages in the past.  All of the connection pages were yellow, and the visualization pages were pink so I also knew quickly at a glance what each student was working on.  That was more helpful for younger students when I did this in 2nd grade.  As they get older they tend not to need it as much.


Like I said, I'm new to this whole thing. I'd love for you to check out my product and if you think you could use it I'd love for you to download it. I'm going to offer it at 50% off to get started at my store until Wednesday night.  If you do download it I would love for you to leave feedback!  If you do, I will then put your name in a drawing to win a free copy of the higher elementary version that I'm working on right now.   It can easily be used for all grade levels, however it will have a rubric at the bottom of each page and the job descriptions are a little different to accommodate higher level thinking. Hopefully I'll get that done for next week's Monday Made It!

Garden Stones:

Materials: I bought Plaster of Paris from the art store, had some stones in my craft room from random projects that I've done in the past which are totally optional for this project, and larger paper plates with the wax coating as a mold.

Steps:

1. We made the plaster to the directions on the container and then poured them into the plates to settle.  While we were waiting for them to settle, that's when we added any of the beads or stones that we wanted to dry into the mold. 

2. When the plaster began to harden that's when we made our imprints in them.  It was hard to do with a 3 month old, which is why I don't have pictures of the actual process, but we managed to get them somewhat done!

3. After about an hour we removed the plaster from the plate and set on a piece of wax paper to dry overnight.  Then we added paint.  Lastly we coated with a spray plaster sealer so they could go outside and not be ruined by the weather! 

Have a great rest of the day!!!