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!

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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. 

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I hope everyone has a great week!

A Peek at My Week 9-1-14

Hello There and Happy (sun) Monday..... 

I am a little late, but school hasn't started yet so in my world that means that I'm right on time. 

I'm gearing up for my first day of school this week and want to link up with...
Jennifer from Mrs. Laffins' Laughings for 

A Peek At My Week!

                                                                                                                                                                       

There it is.

The first week!

I know that I have way too much planned.

I always do that. 

Here's my plan.

Reading/LA- The first couple of days we're going to be working on some small projects so I can get an idea of where the kids are coming in at. We'll be doing some writing and reading and trying to have fun. One of the first things we will create are All About Me posters.  As the week goes on and we finish that, my plan is to dive into some of my new purchases from the TpT sale.  I'm going to use a popular Mentor Text for some basic reading and writing activities. I know you've heard of it!

Click here to find on Amazon

                                                  

The plan is to use this book for much reading and writing through the week thanks to Ms. Jivey's awesome complete pack of reading and writing units. Click the picture to go to her store!

What I'm most excited about is that I also have a mentor text unit and an interactive reading notebook unit for this same book thanks to Jessica.  So this first week of planning was not hard for me at all! I'm so thankful for that especially because I don't know where my kiddos are yet. 

Writing: In writing, along with the story activities from above we will be starting our 3rd grade memory books this week. The first entry is a picture from the first day of school. I love this first entry because the kids are so excited about it and they are really wanting to show me all that they can do when it comes to writing. I give the least direction with this entry to get an idea of where they are coming in at, and I am usually surprised as to all that they share!

Math- This week I'm going to do some review activities. I have a telling time scavenger hunt where I put clocks around the room and they have to read the time. I strategically place the clocks next to important parts of the room so then we can talk about them, like the mailboxes or the extra supplies, etc. There are also mystery letters with each clock so as they complete the hunt, the letters spell out a new word. I haven't updated it yet for this year (YIKES I'm running out of time) so I don't know what my mystery word will be this year yet. We're also going to spend some time doing some basic math centers that I put together to get our math brains going. Again, it's great to see where the kids are coming in at and also have them 'playing games' while they are showing me! I'm just sad, because I don't know if I can get my hands on some iPads so they can use the version that I made with QR codes. They always love those!

Read Aloud- I always start the year with a fun read aloud. This year will be no different. I plan on putting together some activities for this book this year, so stay tuned for that. This week I will be doing a lot of reading of Justin Case: School Drool and Other Daily Disasters.  

I know I've talked about Justin before but if you aren't familiar I really suggest you check it out. It's a 3 book series, but I usually only read the first on to my kids. Maybe I'll do it differently this year. Justin is starting 3rd grade and he is a nervous little guy who is scared of almost everything, including his dog that he begged for. The story just takes you through his third grade journey and how he morphed to a strong, confident, only sometimes scared 3rd grader. 

Oh my goodness---- this post got very long winded, and I do apologize for that. I'm going to stop there even though I had some other things to share. Let's just save them for next week, considering I'm sure I have way too much planned anyways!!!  Hope you all have a great week. 

Five for Friday {4.4.14}

It has been FOREVER since I've linked up for a 'Five for Friday' post with Doodle Bugs Teaching! I'm so excited to be linking up with the fun and randomness of summer! Happy 4th of July Everyone!!! :)

I am super excited to be signed up for a postcard exchange for next year.  I have never heard about one before, until I read this post from Pinkadots Elementary. The short version of the story is that you sign up along with teachers from all of the other states in the U.S. (and even some out of the country) to send postcards to each other during the school year.  You either create or get a postcard that can highlight what is special about your state so others can read and learn about it.  I'm super excited to be doing this.  If you think that it's something you might be interested in, there are still several spots available in the exchange that I'm doing.  Please click here!  How fun! :)

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Tuesday was Hudson's first day out at the park. Granted he doesn't enjoy the park yet, but it was so nice to get outside and enjoy some fresh air.  Hello breezy 80 degree weather and goodbye 99% humidity and air conditioning.  

With the cooler weather we enjoyed a nice walk in Lake Geneva.  We try to get out and enjoy our town as much as we can, but in the summer it can be soooo busy that it's hard to get around.  If we go during the week it's much more tolerable. 

I did some work at school this week with some other colleagues.  We are working in our school's book room.  We spend some summer hours putting new books into the system and organizing what is already there.  I really love working in the book room because I always find a title or two that I didn't know we had!

Happy 4th of July!!!  It's hard to believe that last 4th of July my hubby and I were running free with plans plans plans.  I swear we had like 4 parties to go to in one day.  This year we didn't really have plans....just relaxing and enjoying the babe.  It feels nice not to be running all over the place, but still enjoying some time together.  

I hope you all had a wonderful week.  Happy 4th of July!!  

A Peek at my Week |3.17.14|

Happy Sunday, everyone!  I'm excited to say that I'm on top of things this week to be able to share what I'll be doing for Jennifer's weekly linky, A Peek at my Week.  Be sure to check out her blog at Mrs. Laffin's Laughings, as well as see what others are planning on doing this week. 

Writing-

I will be using one of my favorite read alouds to spark some imagination with my kids to write some leprechaun stories to go along with St. Patrick's Day this week.  I don't even know why I love this books o much, I think it's because the kids laugh and giggle through the whole thing! It's called Leprechaun on the Loose. This week will be more about creative writing and having fun.  I will review some of the basic sentence structure elements that we've been really hitting lately, and then let them write their own leprechaun story. Students are also doing a sentence writing activity in centers this week to practice using linking words to combine sentences together.  I'm hoping that I'll see a lot of that in their stories!!!! Hopefully we'll get some very mischievous leprechauns causing problems!

MATH-

This week in math we'll be working on story problems.  Lately I feel like that's been the story of our lives, and any of you who use math expressions know that it is full of story problems!  I have to say sometimes it's a lot, but they sure aren't afraid of them anymore or they aren't skipping them on homework. We'll be working on multi-step story problems as well as story problems with extra, hidden, or not enough information. I plan on giving morning journal questions that have wayyyy toooo much info that will need to be crossed out to prepare for this! 

I work with a small intervention group in the morning for math and looking ahead on the two step story problems for the week we're going to do a lot of prep work for it.  Math expressions has great task cards for each lesson for students that are needing intervention, who are on-level and those who are needing a challenge.  This activity comes right from the task cards, and I think it will really help students out. 

Reading Groups-

I'll continue my work on Knights & Castles this week with students to focus on non-fiction story structure and elements.  We'll be discussing clothing, protecting the castle, and medieval entertainment. Students are loving all aspects of this book study.  I just recently shared a few samples here, so if you're interested check them out.  I'm so impressed with one group, who usually struggles to get conversation going.  Vocabulary has been harder with this book with where they are, but with us working together and taking a lot of time to discuss words, I can barely get through everything that I need to with them because they won't stop talking and asking/answering questions.  I'm so excited to see how this week goes!

I hope everyone has a great week ahead! I'm looking forward to some warm weather so the wiggles can start to be left on the playground!  :) 

  

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!