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---

Mentor Sentences- Tried It Tuesday!

Happy Tuesday all!  Hope you are all having a great week so far. I'm not looking forward to the colder weather that is headed our way, but other than that I can't complain!  Life is good!  I'm super excited to share some bits and pieces of something that I tried this year, and that I'm loving!  Hope you enjoy!! I'm linking up with Holly from Fourth Grade Flipper for another Tried It Tuesday!

First of all, after blog stalking this past summer, I cam across the idea of mentor sentences.  After much reading and discussion back and forth (thanks Jessica) I finally bit the bullet and decided to try it.  If you're interested, I got my resources from Ideas by Jivey.  She does a great job putting mentor sentences into action and also shares so much to make it happen in your classroom. You can start small by just getting one or two or getting a whole bundle pack. I started with the first 10 weeks mentor sentences and then bought the rest of her bundle.  I know that you can make them work with any book you're reading, but for me, having it already prepped and done has been a life saver! It's great that you can do what works for you!  

**Also, this blog post is a post on my experience and success with mentor sentences. I have not been asked to write this or to promote this product in anyway.  I'm just really loving this great resource, and appreciate the hard work that went into it! My students are showing great success with it and I am pleased to share what we're doing!


Mentor Sentences:
1- Monday I read aloud a story to the students and then write a mentor sentence from the book on the board.  We do some guessing why I picked it and just read it a few times to get a feel for it.  I am also using the picture books to teach them. So Monday we spend a lot of time picking a theme for the book and adding it to our theme wall!

2- Tuesday: For morning work students put the sentence in their writing notebook, rewrite it on the lines and then start to label things that they notice.  Then at the beginning of our writing block each day we discuss and do things with the sentence.  We will label and notice the sentence and talk about special features (quotations, alliteration, contractions, etc.)

Here is the sentence for one of our books on the board.
I write it out and then we label it with everything that
they can come up with.  This one isn't all of the way done,
but I was impressed that they did a lot on their own!
It took us several tries to get to that point.  When they are
done labeling and noticing, I bring other things to their attention
that maybe they didn't think of.

3- Wednesday is our revision day.  We talk about changing up just a few small things in the sentence to still keep the general message.  We talk about how changing adjectives or verbs can simply add a new dimension to writing.  I also write my own on the board and then they have the chance to write their own revision too.  These are revisions from The Widow's Broom. Their revision is under the sentence that we label.  

4- Thursday: On Thursday we get to be our own sentence authors and imitate the style of our author from the week.  We take the basic structure of the sentence that we've worked with and totally mix it up and make it our own sentence that could be used in our own writing. I always do one first to show the students an example and then they write one last sentence in their notebook to go along with our weekly mentor sentence. We then hang up a few on a bulletin board each week and use them as sentence models.  Here is our display. 

Here are our sentences to go along with Enemy Pie.
This was one of the earlier ones we did. I am super
impressed with how they have grown.  I can't seem to find my
more updated picture tonight of more samples.. :(....
But you get the picture!!!

5. Friday: On Friday I give students the "Invitation to Edit" quiz that Jessica includes with all of her mentor sentence units.  It gives the students time to use all of the skills that were used on the sentence for that week and they also find some mistakes in the sentence that we used and correct them. It's like a mini quiz to end the sentence and to end the week. 




I'm also doing a book study with several colleagues at my school. It's called Everyday Editing. Mentor sentences come from the idea behind this book. I'm very excited to be using this book and Jessica's great resource to help my students with their writing! If you don't know where to start, but you want to learn more, I suggest this book!  I love how it also has a whole section dedicated to in class implementation and practice.  What a great way to actually try something out!! I love books that are designed for that. 

I'm so loving how great my students are doing with using mentor sentences! I also love how they are fitting into my daily teaching so nicely.  Have a wonderful rest of the week!