Five for Friday... on Sunday ;) 9.25.16

Happy Weekend!

Happy Fall!

I am so excited to be back in action, and I'm hoping that this will be a more regular thing for me. A personal goal that I had this school year was to blog more. I'm really wanting to get connected again. So I'm starting out with an old favorite of mine: Five for Friday with Doodle Bugs Teaching!

It was a slow process, but this week we managed to rewrite, label and discuss our first mentor sentence. We didn't do much more than that, but it was a harder book to start with! I used this book to talk about September 11th, and since we had it already read we stuck with it!  

Really working on growth mindset for a school wide initiative. We took some time this week to discuss some of these quotes and how we can use them in our everyday 

It always amazing me each year how quickly our math picks up at the beginning of the school year for our third graders.  We are already working on 2s, 5s, and 10s for count-bys, and discussion things like commutative property!  These guys are rocking it, but it's been up-hill most days! 

Speaking of an up-hill battle some days, I've really gotten creative to get us up and moving in the morning!  We are loving these math centers from Ideas by Jivey! Check them out!

I've been working really hard on a classroom redesign. It's been a slow process, however I've started to put some things together and some furniture is slowly being delivered. I've done a lot of clearance shopping this past couple weeks after the back to college items have been discounted! I'm also lucky to have had some great support through our schools PTO!

Here's a sneak---

Monday Creativity- Teacher Toolbox, Product Updates and Gifts **FREEBIE ALERT!

Happy Monday! I'm excited to link up with Tara from 4th Grade Frolics for Monday Made It today!  I've got several things to share that I'm really excited about. Happy Monday everyone! 

Teacher Toolbox:

I know you've seen a hundred million of these. 

I have too, which is why I wanted one. 

I found this great toolbox at Home Depot for $12. 

It's not the typical looking one, as it's taller vs. wider, 

but I think it turned out great. 

I spray painted it a blue color

and added labels made from Jameson at

Lessons With Coffee.

Product Update:

I had some time this last weekend

and decided to do some updates to a few products

in my TpT store. 

The first one I made was Vocabulary Boxes.

Some examples of activities students will do with new words are they will look up a word in the dictionary, tell the definition in their own words, 

write their word in a sentence, 

illustrate their word, 

or make a list of synonyms or antonyms for their word. 

I kept the template the same,  and also simple but made variations

of the sheet to offer some choice and differentiation to the mix. 

Check it out... You can have it for FREE tonight. 

IF you do download it, I would really appreciate you leaving feedback on it. 

Product Update 2:

The second product I updated were my 

Number of the Day sheets. 

I did something similar to the vocabulary boxes, 

in that I made a few variations of the sheets for choice

and differentiation. 

The basics are, you give a number to be put in the middle 

and then students do different things with that number for the day. 

They add to it, subtract from it, draw it, create story problems, count by 5's or 10's from it, etc. 

I hope you can use it!

You may also download tonight for FREE! 

IF you do, please be a friend and leave some feedback!!

My last Monday Made It

is actually from last week. 

I made some letters for my teammates 

for the new school year. 

I liked how they turned out but needed a little something more.

I was out of ideas. My blogger Friend, Cassie

from Funky in Fourth helped me out and suggested that

I add some ribbon to them. 

I think they turned out great. So I thought I would share them again. 

To see the original post, head here. 

Have a happy week!

MMI- Teacher Friend Gifts & A Writing Prompt Book

Monday.

Close to my last Monday of summer.

I have one more left. 

I really have been slacking in the MMI department lately.

I've got several projects started..... 

they just aren't finished yet. 

So today I'm linking up with Tara, from 4th Grade Frolics for

Monday Made It!

I'm hoping the other two projects that I have started will finally be up and running next week. 

I HOPE!

My first made it is from my growing MUST MAKE list!

I started it at the beginning of the summer 

when everyone started sharing all of their great crafts!

This first one is from Rachel @ Living, Loving and Learning: Adventures of a PK Classroom

She made these adorable letters for her pictures to pose with at the beginning of the year.  

I decided to make them too, just use them for a different reason: Gifts!!!!  

 Supplies: Cardboard letters from JoAnn Fabrics, scrapbook paper, and super cute buttons (which I did not use..... super sad day!) 

First I traced each letter on the scrapbook paper and cut them out. 

Then I painted each cardboard letter a different color. 

When they were dry, I put the construction paper on the to of the letters with decoupage.  That way the bottom was glued to the letter and the top of the paper will be protected.  

 I thought I would add a button to each letter, however it just didn't look right.

 Too busy I guess. 

So now I have 5 super cute buttons to do a project with. 

 Any ideas???

Secondly, I finally updated something that I've been using in my classroom for my writing center. 

My prompt books were outdated, and falling apart! 

I also was finding that I needed more of them.

I've shared this quickly before, but now it's time to add to my MMI list!

So.... I put together this writing prompt book.

It's a half book style book however it can be used for so much more.

You can easily just make one and use it for whole class writing prompts.

Or you can do like I do, and put together a few of them for the writing center. 

There are 180 prompts in this book with a variety of writing ideas. 

Topics include: narrative, opinion, persuasive, story starters character education prompts

 and story titles for them to use. 

Excited your kids who can't come up with anything to write about! 

Now there won't be an excuse!

For Example: 

Click any picture to take you to my product!

Have a great week! I can't wait to see what everyone made!

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!!!