Five for Friday

Only 5 more Fridays for me!

4 of those Fridays are with kids and 1 is the last teacher day, which is also move-in day for us!  We've been living in a hotel for a month (and loving it) but are excited to move into our new place!

My week's Top 5:

I'm ready to push myself and have a great Heart Run!

Cute little vase needed some flowers.

OMG these are deliciously AMAZING and I'm addicted!

This yogurt is surprisingly awesome too!

I rarely do any artsy projects in my classroom, but we all did this today
and the kids loved it and did a terrific job!


So glad it's Friday!

Fluency Fix for Manic Monday

I'm linking up again with 

Our district started using AimsWeb this year...

and the focus has really been on fluency.  Of course I had my kiddos rereading everything but I felt like there was something missing.  I came up with the idea of writing some short partner plays so kids could practice together during "Read to Someone" time during our Daily 6 groups.  But there always seemed to be an odd number, so I wrote the plays as trios too.  Doing those plays (both during Guided Reading time and Read to Someone time) has really helped many of my kiddos become fluently proficient!  

The bonus is that I LOVE creating these scripts (always trying to make them funny), so everybody wins!

Here's a freebie to try if you're curious about what they are -or- if you're using them and enjoying them.

Here are some pictures of how I set up having the partner plays available for student use during our Daily 6 time:

Now go check out more freebies!

Caterpillars!

It's that time of year....when winter just won't leave and you try anything to get spring to arrive, including studying the butterfly lifecycle!

I'm trying to do more thematic things in my classroom and did the following things this week:

Received 5 caterpillars (one for each team) to observe

Listening Center: Houghton-Mifflin 8.3 story Butterfly

Listening Center: The Very Hungry Caterpillar, by Eric Carle

Storytime: read several non-fiction books about the lifecycle

Did a scavenger hunt which lead to making a word bank poster for the lifecycle

Did a sequenced writing activity about the lifecycle

Did an art project to illustrate the lifecycle

Here are some great resources I made:

Sequenced Writing Activity

Readers' Theater Play

Scavenger Hunt stuff

Manic Monday *Freebie*

I'm baaaaaaack!

I've been MIA for the last two weeks or so.  We moved out of our house and into a hotel for the next two months as we await closing on our new house.

Luckily my sister flew up...a total surprise...and helped immensely with the kids (4.5 year old & 7-month-old) while we moved.  And now that we're settled, I have time once again to get back to all the projects that float around in my brain and want to come out.  

I'm on a partner & trio Readers' Theater kick because it's an AWESOME, highly successful way to improve your students' reading fluency...and they LOVE it!  I'm using all of the plays I create with most of my reading groups and it's been so fun and rewarding!

Here's my latest creation, based on the popular book by Laura Numeroff:

click on it to grab it

After you check this out, head over to check out all the other FREE resources being offered at:

March Madness

March Madness, for me, has nothing to do with college basketball.

March Madness 2013 went a little something like this:

-bought a bigger house

-quickly sold our current house

-had to pack up and move out of current house over spring break

-moved into a hotel with our 4-year-old and 7-month-old

All the while I'm guiding my kiddos through 4th quarter and trying to finish some more TPT projects, woah nelly!

But the silver lining is that our hotel has a great breakfast everyday AND they make you dinner M-Th!  I've loved coming home this week and changing my clothes to go down to dinner that has not been prepared by me!

And we have a pool, hot tub & exercise room, woot woot!

We await moving into our new BIG beautiful house at the end of May, but love it here at the Marriott so far!

Since March is winding down and April is on the horizon, I'm throwing a sale over at TPT, 20% off everything!

Hooks for Books!

I've tried many different things over the years, as far as where I have my students keep their book bags.  I hit the jackpot last summer when visiting an IKEA on vacation because I found these black bags for .25 a piece!

And then it was my maternity sub, this past fall, who had (in my opinion) the ingenious idea of attaching a hook to the back of each chair for the bags to hang on!

Yes the hooks come off once in a while, but I just use a hot glue gun to reattach them.  I also put a hook on the back of each chair at my reading table so kids have a spot for their bags when they meet with me.

I'm hoping to reuse the bags from this year for my new first graders next fall.  But you could also use any old gift bag (which I have a collection of because I keep and reuse them).

I would LOVE to know if you have an ingenious idea regarding student book bags.

Not Too Late for St. Patrick's Day!

Even though this jolly green holiday fell on a Sunday, I'm going to let it trickle into my classroom on Monday the 18th.  I went to JoAnn's because I knew there would be some St. Patty's stuff left, and I found a few cute things to leave in the classroom (by Lucky the Leprechaun of course).

A leprechaun story has been a bee in my bonnet for the past few weeks because I was wanting to whip up a Readers' Theater play that had a leprechaun in it.  I'm pretty sure it was a level 16 DRA story from our DRA kit. 

I pieced it together best I could and came up with 

I'm sharing it as part of Manic Monday, so check it out and then go check out all the great FREEBIES!