Five For Friday- 4/22/16

Check out my Five For Friday for the week. I sure do love linking up with DoodleBugs Teaching!

Thank goodness we are getting a raise in my county!

So, if you've not heard MYon.com is allowing students in Georgia (I'm not sure about other states) to read ebooks for free for the summer on their site and the summer dates start now!

I showed my students how to long on and read the ebooks. The narrators are amazing. They do not sound like robots at all, or students can turn the narration off and read the books themselves.

See more information about this HERE

My WWE fans were excited when they found an ebook about John Cena!

MATH

Make base ten blocks using sponges! This is a great solution for noisy blocks or even to create some to send home for students to use or suggest this idea to parents for them to create their own to use at home. 

Have you heard the term "To kill two birds with one stone"? Well, I totally did it today. We make an Earth Day craft by drawing the Earth on a coffee filter with marker and then spraying it with a water bottle. We then used those same Earths to make our Mother's Day gifts! 

We used storybird.com to publish our writing from the week of our own version of the Three Little Pigs. I had students work with a partner and this was really interesting, because I usually have students work individually for writing.

Funny things you find yourself saying or students saying. I've decided to start posting these on instagram as I reflect on my day for fun. My instagram name is casedillacrumbsclassroom

Anyone else have something funny to share?

I cannot figure out if this student was being nice by wanting to buy me something or being mean...

Thanks for joining me for my randomness from the week!

Five For Friday - 4/15/16

Check out my Five For Friday for the week. I sure do love linking up with DoodleBugs Teaching!

Back from Spring Break required two things: Starbucks and my trusty Sand Snake Tieks! 

The "S" on my alphabet had me wanting to rewind to the beach.

Alphabet Posters HERE

We enjoyed making Weather books or Little Red Riding Hood books. We've read about both this week and I allowed students to choose one of the two to turn into a book. I used some grocery store brown paper bags as the book covers.

MATH

During math we worked on making equal groups and finding multiple solutions to problems.

If you have 40 fish, how can you equally distribute them into fish tanks?

We used BlendSpace to review comparing numbers with interactive websites and videos. I find it easy for students to access BlendSpace by putting the link on Edmodo. 

Took some time to organize a few of the books I ordered from Scholastic. I organize my books with these labels you can find in my store. I then put color coded and numbers stickers on the tub and on each book so students will be able to put them back in the correct tub after reading. This system has worked really well. You can find the labels HERE.

My new product for the week!

You can see it HERE. 

My mom has started up her own store on TPT. She teaches 5th grade and has started with listing Paired Passages. Her products are unique because the fictional part of her paired passages have the same characters and read more like chapters in a book opposed to stand alone passages. The main character is Skeeter and at the end of reading one passages students ask, "When are we going to read the next one?" You and you're students will fall in love with Skeeter. You can see her Duncan's Munchkin's store HERE.

Here's one of her FREE products.

Funny things you find yourself saying or students saying. I've decided to start posting these on instagram as I reflect on my day for fun. My instagram name is casedillacrumbsclassroom

Anyone else have something funny to share?

Thanks for joining me for my randomness from the week!

Five For Friday- 4/1/16

Check out my Five For Friday for the week. I sure do love linking up with DoodleBugs Teaching!

I survived the week before Spring Break!

It's the day we've been waiting for.....Spring Break and Pay Day!

We had a new toy installed this week. It's IPEVO's wireless interactive whiteboard system. Each classroom is having them installed and we are all excited about this. It's basically a pen and a sensor added to your projector that makes your basic whiteboard interactive.

We started using Lyrics2Learn.com this week and my students really like it. I just started the 30 day trial, but it seems like a great program that students enjoy.

Stepping up my Reading Centers!

Sometimes you just get the feeling that you've done your job so well and your students have learned so much and now it's time to revamp your reading centers to be more challenging for your students.

I've added some new Personal Narrative Response Sheets to the Writing Center.

I've added some Close Reading about weather for students to complete and answer questions using text-based evidence. 

I also added some new technology and ideas for students during reading centers.

Using QR Codes to complete research on animals during reading centers. 

Animal Research with QR Codes

We also use QR Codes to review sight words by unscrambling these mixed up sight words and using the QR Code to check your answer. 

Sweet Mixed Up Sight Words

New Wobble Chairs from DonorsChoose!

Consider joining our Facebook Community Page for funding DonorsChoose projects HERE. 

I was able to get 4 and I plan to use them at my small group table.

I am so proud of my kiddos becoming independent readers. The year started with me reading Junie B. Jones aloud to them and now they are reading the books themselves and loving it! We went to the library today and there was basically a race to the Junie B. Jones section. I am planning to introduce The Magic Treehouse books once we return from Spring Break.

Thanks for joining me for my randomness from the week!