Five for Friday

Still loving summer Fridays...but I think it's to the point where there are fewer left than I've already had :-(

My daughter and I had a girl's date today and saw this movie.  From a teacher/parent standpoint it's brilliant and very funny!!  This is like SEL and metacognition coming to life and explained to kids in a simple, fun way. I really want to incorporate this into my classroom somehow this year.

I'll never forget using my dad's typewriter in middle school to write book reports...thank goodness for laptops and iPads!!  I LOVE to write Readers' Theater plays and ideas are always bouncing around in my brain...just hard to make time to sit down and write more often.  But when I do make time, it just flows out of me and, since I can save everything, I can stop in the middle of a play and come back to it later.  I have many unfinished plays because I'm like a cat that sees something shiny and jumps right to it...

 I did make time this week to finish up another batch of partner/trio plays AND I lumped all 4 batches together into a MEGA pack.  I can't wait to use these with my new kiddos this year.  I also need to print some off so my daughter, husband and I can read them at bedtime while snuggling in our bed....it's so fun!

There is nothing like picking your own salad out of your garden each night for dinner!  Yum!

 

 I LOVE taking pictures of flowers and my blog began with a beautiful picture of my mother's peonies.  Peaceful and beautiful they are...

A Dinner Plate Dahlia I grew from a bulb.

Irish Lilies that a student gave me at the end of the year.

Fireweed, the state flower of Alaska.
It's beautiful but actually a weed that can grow in excess of 5 feet tall!

Have a wonderful weekend and hold on to the fleeting summer!

Partner Plays #4 Hot Off the Press!

I've now been away from home, Alaska, for a month on vacation.  I'm ready to get home and back to reality but so sad to leave my Minnesota and all it holds dear.  This past week was spent in Montana with my in-laws.  

We had a nice, relaxing visit and I was able to get some work done on my latest batch of Partner Plays.  I absolutely love to write plays and get lost in it...giggling as I write funny lines.  I finished editing the plays en route from Billings back to Minneapolis.

Apple products rocks...and make for fantastic flights!

So go check it out and get ready to help your new batch of students improve their reading fluency AND have fun at the same time!

Click above to check it out.

Click above to check it out.

After getting up at the crack of dawn, we have 1 flight to Seattle, a 5 hour layover (during which we'll go downtown to explore for a bit), and 1 final flight to Anchorage.  Goodnight!

Worksheet for Listening Comprehension

Recently I talked about aural reading comprehension (sans book), which made me think about what I do for listening comprehension (avec book).

Listen to Reading is one of my small reading groups.  I quickly realized I needed an accountability piece to help ensure my students were paying attention and understanding the story.  I started making a listening comprehension worksheet for each book that I use for Listen to Reading.  I save them, of course, on my computer in a file so it's easy to pull them and print them off.  It's also easy to make a new one by just changing an existing one.

In addition to assessing their comprehension, I wanted to include 2 reading strategies: evaluating & making connections.

I hear you wondering: "What do you do for the kiddos who can't read the questions?"  There are 2 solutions: students help each other (if the group is mixed ability) -or- you can pre-record each individual question on a very cool little device like this:

10 seconds of recording time, find them here.

Or this one:

30 seconds of recording AND the top is clear case, into which you can insert a picture or whatever!

Five for Friday

On this Friday I'm spending my last night living in a dorm with my husband and children.  What?!

Bemidji State University in Northern Minnesota

I never had the dorm experience in college because I lived at home.  Now I get to experience it because my husband teaches a 2-week course on the campus of this university each summer when we travel back to Minnesota for vacation.  Usually, while my husband is here, my daughter and son and I stay with my parents 3 hours away at their house. . .

Our 3 bedroom suite is just down the hall from the lounge, which has a full kitchen!

We discovered this game room in the basement yesterday as well as a laundry room that has free machines!

Concordia Language Villages

My daughter is finally old enough to go to summer camp AND learn a foreign language at the same time thanks to this place. . .where my husband and I met while counselors at the French 'village'.  This wonderful place is located only 20 minutes from our dorm.

Esta es mi hija 'Mia'!

Spending time with my son

While 'sissy' is at camp all day, we go shopping, play at parks and take a nap (YES, I'm included in the napping...and it's glorious!).

Mama gets coffee and he gets a hot chocolate!

My mother's sewing machine

I love to sew skirts and don't make the time for it as much as I'd like to, so each day this week (while my son was napping and my daughter was at camp) I happily whipped up some new additions to my wardrobe.

I got to stop and shop at a fabric outlet store in a suburb of Minneapolis when we first started our vacation, so I had lots of fabric to work with!

This is like a candy store for me!

The chance to finally do a race where you get color thrown at you.  You start in a white t-shirt and end up multicolored after running 3 miles.  It's an untimed run so I'll get to just run and not get stressed out racing, yay!

Man I really LOVE summer!

Visualizing Worksheet For Any Book

Have you ever TOLD your students a story and then had them SHOW you their comprehension? 

www.mycutegraphics.com

I had never done this before we adopted the Houghton-Mifflin reading curriculum a few years ago and it was a big part of the first few units of study.  I loved this idea (especially at the beginning of 1st grade) and created a booklet that we use for each story we do.

Click to get this freebie.

But after using this for a year, I realized that it can be used whenever with whatever story you want.  It can be a fiction or non-fiction story, a story you read aloud or tell off the cuff.  Here are two examples:

This kiddo broke the story into parts on his own.

This kiddo drew one picture that conveyed the general meaning.

I'll admit, this is my FAVORITE reading strategy because I do it all the time when I'm reading, listening to music, etc.