A Peek at My Week {9*15*14}

Here we are,

Sunday again! 

Man, it sure comes fast!

I'm excited today to be linking up with Jennifer

from Mrs. Laffin's Laughings

for another edition of 

A Peek at My Week. 

Be sure to stop by and say hello to Jennifer, 

and link up or check out some great ideas 

that other bloggers are sharing from their 

week ahead!

Reading:  This week in reading, we're still using whole class read alouds to talk about story elements and summary. This is giving me the opportunity to finish up Daily 5 training and finish up assessments so I can hopefully start small groups next week.  Our book this week is Enemy Pie by Derek Munson.  

This is what Amazon has to say about the book, 

"It was the perfect summer. 

That is until Jeremy Ross moved into the house down the street

 and became neighborhood enemy number one.  

Luckily Dad had a surefire way to get rid of enemies: 

Enemy Pie! 

But part of the secret recipe

 is spending an entire day playing with the enemy. 

In this funny yet endearing story, 

one little boy learns an effective recipes

 for turning your best enemy into your best friend."  

Click for Amazon

I will also use this book for my mentor sentence of the week and focus on several writing elements that we will be doing in workshop, which I'll share later. 

Math: This week in math we will be starting our math journals to get used to doing them during our intervention time.  I will start with some easier prompts for students to copy and answer, and as the week goes on they will get more challenging. Our focus this week is on division strategies, and building fluency with 2's and 10's for multiplication. 

Writing- In launching our workshop this week the focus is on narrowing down a topic (small moments), gathering ideas (a review from last week) and building proper sentences.  We'll really use our mentor sentence this week to practice putting a subject and verb together to answer the who and what what in our sentences.  I also plan on using this freebie from Lovin' Lit to help out with our sentence writing. I think with all of our talk on sentence structure and learning the parts of the sentence that I can use this with my 3rd graders!

Source

Wordwork- I plan on introducing spelling contracts this week to students. This is a new thing for me, that I'm really excited to use. I purchased it this summer from Fourth and Ten.  Basically it is a month long assignment where students do different activities to practice their spelling words (instead of just spelling them to a parent aloud or writing them down over and over for practice).  I've been looking for something new and fun for awhile, and I'm hoping this is it. We use Sitton Spelling in our school so we don't necessarily have a new word list to send home each unit. It's a list of core words for the year that are introduced and a list that they come to the grade with that they should also know. So I've broken apart those lists to spiral the words through the year over the course of each month.  Their job is to complete several activities with their words for the month to practice. 

Source

I hope everyone has a great week!

A Peek At My Week {9-7-14}

Wait, What??!!  

It's already Sunday???  

Oh. No!

These weekends just go by so fast. 

Last week was my first week of school,

and we spent so much time getting to know each other, 

practicing routines and procedures and revisiting rules and expectations. 

Boy, am I exhausted!

This week we will really hit the ground running

and get down to business. 

I am ready. I am excited!

I'm linking up with Jennifer 

from Mrs. Laffin's Laughings

to share my plans for the week. 

Be sure to stop by her blog to see what everyone has planned

and for some great ideas!

Reading- This week we will continue to work with the book that we read the first week called First Day Jitters. I shared last week that we are using Jivey's Better than Basal pack to get things started. We didn't have enough time to finish the pack for this story, so that will be the plan this next week. So far it's been great to all be working on the same story and talking together about different story elements. It has really given me an idea where students are coming in at, even before I do all of my assessments. Eventually I will just be using this in my reading groups for students who need more of what we are learning about. It's set up nicely with mentor texts that I usually use in my classroom to teach our reading skills and concepts to my on-level or below level students. I think it will be great for students in my room who need some extra help.  We also are learning about making inferences, and students are using the word "inference" like it's been in their vocabulary for years. I'm so proud!  We will also be doing our Daily 5/ Cafe training this week. We'll be making T charts for each part and also practicing so we know what is expected.  

We did get a great start this last week: 

Writing- Well, I planned way too much last week, so we never got to the mentor sentences that I was telling you about. But that's totally fine, because we're still working on our book First Day Jitters, so it was an easy element to push off for this week.  Not only are we going to be starting each writing block with mentor sentence work, this week we are starting to establish our writing workshop.  I work with Jennifer, and as she has shared this week, she found a really great CCSS aligned writing resource.  As a 3-5 vertical team we are going to implement it this year with our students. I'm really excited about it. Be sure to check it out if you're looking for something to use! This week to launch the workshop we will be discussing the following:

*Why do Writer's Write?

*How do we come up with topics?

*How can we use books to help us come up with topics?

*How do we narrow down our topics when we write?

Some of the mentor texts that I'll be using to talk about these are

I'm really looking forward to seeing how the whole week goes! 

I hope everyone has a great one!

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. 

Currently March & Workshop Wednesday

I'm late to the party....again!!!  Man, am I the only one that doesn't have enough hours in the day?  I know I have some excuses, but I still just wish I could get it together.  I had my birthday this past weekend, along with another unexpected doctors appointment on Friday (I had to leave school suddenly though, so that's never fun) and Tuesday, a baby shower, my best friend had her baby, I broke the garbage disposal...... the list could go on and on and on.  All good things to report though, and I've been cleared by all doctors now for any blood pressure or related issues that I had been having, so here's to the next month of school!!! Woo hooo!!! So that news and this little one and her snuggles just make it all ok! :)

To try to stay on top of things, I'm going to break my one post a day rule to link up for two things.  To keep it simple, I'm going to add my second link to this post so technically I'm not breaking any rules....First I'm linking up with Farley's monthly linky 'Currently March'.  Hopefully this gets me back on track! I'm excited to get caught up on some blog reading tonight as well!

Listening to the T.V-  I am a T.V. fanatic!!  I always seem to have it on in the background and can't live without my DVR.  I'm always watching either a recorded show or old Friends re-runs!  :)


Loving-  I absolutly LOVE March.  It's that magical transition month where we get special warm days mixed in with the cold and makes us have high hopes that SPRING is just around the corner.  My birthday was on the 1st, so that might be why I love it too.....


Thinking that 29 is going to be great!-  Like I said I celebrated a birthday this weekend along with our first baby shower.  I turned 29.  Although it feels weird to say that so much will change this year, I truly know that this one will be a year that I will NEVER forget!  So here's to 29...... and being 29 forever, right????


Wanting-  I so want to go shopping and get some new clothes.  Being 8 months pregnant doesn't exactly make me want to go shopping, but I'm sick of wearing black all of the time right now!!!!! Some retail therapy is just the ticket!


Needing-  MEEEEE time would be oh so amazing right now. I've already scheduled a pedicure for Spring Break, even though it's still a few weeks away.  I'm going to get my hair done too.  Ahhhhhhh the little things!


???????????-  8 weeks until my due date! Like I said earlier my best friend from High School welcomed her first child on Monday this week.  He is amazing in all aspects, and it made me super excited for my baby which is really just around the corner.  8 weeks to go.... and counting!!!!




Secondly today I'm linking up with Jivey for Workshop Wednesday to share an app that I really love to use for reading.  I actually forgot that I had this app until this workshop came up so I'm excited to use it later this week again.  It's been awhile!

Today we're sharing resources for reading that are either websites or apps.  I have a great app to share that I really love to use with students.  The app is called Tools4Students.   It's an app with 25 graphic organizers that can be used for just about anything. One of the best things is that it's free and there are sooooo many choices in this app.  

There are so many things to explore and use, here are just a few of the organizers that it offers....

Here are just a few of my favorite ones that I have used quite a few times.  I love how students can do this with assistance, or on their own.  There is an option to have them email their organizer to you as well.  I can't tell you how much I love using graphic organizers, and how useful I feel that they are.  I've used this for kids to work independently on books that they are reading, or with partners on activities that we may do in guided reading groups.  They love any chance that they can to get on the iPad!!

Hope you can find something you would like to use!!!   :) 

A Peek at My Week [2.3.14]

Happy Sunday!! I hope this finds all of you relaxed after a great weekend!  We finally got out of the house and did some fun things at Lake Geneva's annual Winterfest.  It was snowing and chilly, but it felt good to get out and do some walking!  Here are just a few of my favorite pictures from our adventure. What did you do this weekend?

This was my favorite!!!  I voted for it.  The little fish in the tub rocks!

This was my husbands favorite!!  :)

 


Here I sit again with almost the exact same plans in front of me as last week.  We had two snow days last week, making for a short week with students again.  I decided to change things up just a little to squeeze some things in that I felt didn't get as much time as they needed previously.  So some of my plans from last week got done, and some are going to get done this week.  So if there is an echo in the room, and I post some of the same things, I apologize!  I'm linking up with my wonderful co-worker Jennifer today from Mrs. Laffin's Laughings for her weekly linky A Peek at My Week.  I love that this linky is set up so I'm ahead of the game and get all of my things in order with plenty of time to spare!  Be sure to check out her blog and see what she's up to as well as all of the others who are linking up.

Math-  This week we will continue with addition strategies.  We will still be working on proof drawings, however now we will be actually using them to add.  I'm excited to see how the kids take to this, as it's something new for them this year!!  They did great with what we learned last week, you can check it out from this past post.  I'm anxious for them to make the connection between adding and regrouping in the next steps.  My intervention group will focus a lot on just getting comfortable with proof drawings to ensure they are ready to move on to adding with them.  We will also be using proof drawings to round!



Reading-  We will actually start poetry this week.  Last week I ended up doing some review on author's purpose and point of view.  After grading some assessments I saw we needed to do some more with that. So our poetry unit will officially start.  We did some fun activities last week with poetry to get the students ready, and it was really cool to see what kids knew about poems or what they wanted to share about poems.  I'm hoping to change some of their minds on liking poetry after we're done.  Our team uses a poetry book to help us out with more of the structural aspects of poetry.  We use Read and Understand Poetry grades 3-4.

We've really enjoyed using the poems in this book, because it's easy to follow and easy to make sure that we touch all elements of poetry that we need to cover.  We don't just use this book, but it's a great starting point.  In the teacher's section before each poem there is a 'toolbox' section where it talks about what the kids will learn about in the poem.  It ranges from stanza to bold and italic words.  We actually then make a toolbox with the kids and put each element in it so they can go back to it for reference.  I've tried to upload it several times facing the correct way and it's just not working...so for now, we'll just have to turn our heads, ok??!! :)

They will need it later for our big fluency project that I will share about as it gets closer!  I'm excited to start exploring poetry and fluency with my kiddos!



Writing-  As I've shared in the past, I am working very closely with our amazingly wonderful ESL teacher. While we're doing guided groups with reading and writing combined at the end of the day to give kiddos a double or triple does of the skills that they need I'm also starting to work with an enrichment group this week. I'm using a resource that I love to use in the classroom.  It's especially great for when there is a sub in the room, because it has a great resource guide and follows a lot of the reading strategies that we focus on through the year, including reading non-fiction text.  I have so many saved, so I dug in the back of the cabinet for an older issue of a National Geographic Explorer magazine.

We'll work on reading an article called Discovering Deserts.  I picked this one for several reasons.  One being in the 4th quarter we do a big pioneer simulation where students travel west in wagon trains.  They get fake identities and everything to experience life on the trail. I thought getting them familiar with some of the land they will travel over will help them teach some information to their groups when we get started. Secondly, the reading strategy to go along with this article is compare and contrast which I feel this group of students needs some extra work in.  They will learn about climate, landscape, plants and animals from different deserts.  We will also discuss how climate impacts each category.  Lastly I love the writing that goes along with it.

It will be longer than a week to work on but when we get there the writing will be to talk about the difference between 1st, 2nd and 3rd person.  We will discuss how writing in 2nd person helps the author write an article form a readers POV.  We'll start small by choosing a photo together and write a short story on it in 1st person.  Together we'll go back and rewrite in 2nd and 3rd person and compare how the perspective changes.  They will then do the same with another photo on their own. I'm excited to challenge this group and to get them writing about this non-fiction topic.  If all goes well, they will create a project to take to our buddy class to teach them about desert land!



I hope everyone has a great week! :)

Independent Reading Motivation

Happy Snowy Saturday from Wisconsin......  it just doesn't end!  We're on deck for several more inches today and also maybe a surprise snow storm on Tuesday.  I say surprise, because I can't seem to find two weather reports that say the same thing.  Some say it could be just the usual as of late 3-5 and others are reporting up to 12+???? Oh dear, I guess we'll just have to wait and see.  Gotta love the unpredictable weather. It's been amazing to read posts from all over the place saying similar things.  Especially the stories from areas that don't typically get snow or ice.  I really hope the groundhog helps us out tomorrow!



It's Saturday so I'm linking up with Head Over Heels for Teaching for her weekly linky to 'Spark Student Motivation!!!'

Today I'm sharing an  independent reading activity that helps get kids to change up their routine a little bit but still be excited to open up a book.  It's a pretty simple one--- a basket of furry friends.  I always read a class book at the beginning of the year called Justin Case: School, Drool and other Daily Disasters.  If you haven't read it, I highly suggest you do if you're looking for a new elementary read aloud.  There is a sequel now as well about his summer after 3rd grade, which I haven't read yet but hope to this summer! In a nutshell Justin is a third grader who is afraid of everything! He is a worry wort, and nothing seems to ever go his way.  This story is a great tale about his adventure in 3rd grade to becoming a more independent, confident and proud young boy, who only worries.... a little!  One thing in the book is that Justin still has stuffed animals, he calls stuffies.  He has a lot of them and loves to play with them, but doesn't like other people to know about it for fear of getting made fun of.  

After the story is over or close to when the story is over  is when I introduce our furry friends! When we see a change in Justin and his confidence we talk about things that we hold close to use that might be something we think people will make fun of.  I mention my 'pillow'---I can't go ANYWHERE without it.  All of my family and friends know that there is no way I'm sleeping anywhere but home unless I have my pillow.  It's a great discussion for kids, and it's really cool how so many of them open up about things that they care about. It helps them realize that even as an adult I have my 'thing' too!  I then introduce the students to our classroom stuffies.

On Friday, if students are all caught up with their reading goals, they can take a stuffy to a special place in the room and read to them!  Now I know that this won't work forever, and some third graders are so beyond this---BUT they still all take the chance at reading to a stuffy when they get the chance.  It does help keep goals up too.  I may change it up and offer this during quarter 2 and 4 and then do other things depending on the group of kids.



I hope this sparks some motivation with you to come up with some ideas to keep kids reading....how else could you use something like this or what do you think would work for your classroom?  I would love to know!