Five for Friday: Rockets, Daily 5, Blendspace...

We are linking up with Doodle Bug Teaching for another Five for Friday...

One

The Library Can Save Me Money?!

(an age old concept, yet one I had not really learned yet)

I have been doing the summer reading program with my grandson, so we have been visiting our beautiful new library every Thursday.  Now, I am a person that has an addiction to BUYING books, as I think I need to have them for my very own in my hot little hands.  Well, what I decided to do is go to a section of interest in the library each week and investigate some books for use in my classroom (to check out next school year--NOT BUY).  This week I came upon the nonfiction section that housed what I call teaching texts.  I checked some out, took them home, read them with my grandson, and decided if I thought each would be something I would use this school year (as a mentor text, read & reflect text for use during guided math or guided reading rotations, or just one to check out and have in the classroom for student choice reading).  Since my grandson, Corbin, is starting second grade this year, he is a fabulous little book reviewer--if he likes it, I know some others will, too.  Here is a goodie I discovered this week!  Corbin is actually re-reading the book for the third time to great-grandma Rose as I type!

1 + 1 = 5 and Other Unlikely Additions by David LaRochell:  Clever!  Hilarious!  The laughs were abundant reading this one.  Here are a few of the silly, yet clever equations presented in the text.

Kids could create their own 1 + 1 equations with a sub-line, 'In other words, 4 + 3 = 7.' in an independent guided reading station. It would be great for money---1 + 1 = 15?, 1 nickel + 1 dime = 15 cents.  How about geometric art? 1 + 1 = 11?, 1 cube + 1 square pyramid = 11 faces. I am thinking the possibilities are many!  If you have used this text with your kids, please share your idea in a comment--it would be greatly appreciated...

Until next Friday! I will share some other library finds... :0)

Two

Rockets Away!

Rockets were launching this week at the library!  We went to a presentation about how rockets work and how things move--fun had by all.  The kids even got to make little rockets and launch them in the parking lot.  I will be doing a future post about how to make your own rocket and simple launcher (the launcher in the pic is not the basic one).  Needless to say, we made a trip to Home Depot for some PVC last night.  Inexpensive and fun!

Three

 Daily 5: The Second Edition

I remember the summer of 2006 when I read about this book that had just been published on a teacher's chatboard. The book was titled The Daily 5, Fostering Literacy and Independence in the Elementary Grades. It seems pretty interesting, so I ordered it. When I received the book, it took my 1 day to read it all. I was hooked and wanted to begin implementing The Daily 5 in my own classroom. I have been doing The Daily 5 in my classroom since then and it has taught me so much. When I discovered that The Sisters had come out with a 2nd edition, I knew I had to have it! Even though I have been doing The Daily 5 for 8 years, this book has taught me even more. I love how The Sisters recommend that students have to do Read to Self and Work on Writing everyday. They have also added a chapter just on Math Daily 3 which will flow nicely with the Guided Math I already do. I HIGHLY recommend reading this book!

Four

Blendspace

A couple of weeks ago, Sarah and I were fortunate enough to attend a professional development event in which we learned a plethora of information on reading and writing. The presenter, Laura Beltchenko, showed us this wonderful website Blendspace.  What this site does is puts everything in one place for you. She had her PowerPoints, documents (both Word and pdfs), YouTube videos, and much more in this one spot that we now have access to.  

This past week, a co-teacher and I, were asked to go to a neighboring district and work with teachers on The Daily 5. I thought this was a great opportunity to use Blendspace. I put a PowerPoint we created, as well as many documents and videos all in this place. Those teachers now have access to those items whenever they want!

Five

Brand-New Guided Math Blog Kick Off Continues!

What an amazing week for our brand-new guided math blog! We hope you will take the time to check it out, become an adventurer (follower), and enter to win one of our fabulous prize packages! You may enter to win through Friday, July 4th!
 

Fly on over to Doodle Bugs Teaching to read more Five for Fridays!

All the best for a wonderful weekend!

We Love Books & 10 Things I Want to Do This Summer Linkies!

We are linking up with Mrs. Jump's Class for two fun linkies--We Love Books and Ten Things I Want to Do This Summer.

We Love Books

We are never at a loss for sharing books, so this is a perfect linky for us! Loved reading about all the books linked up...

Courtney and I both discovered this gem at different times, but we were equally taken with it---Courage by Bernard Waber. Everyone should own this book! Makes a perfect gift, too. It is great inspiration for writing ideas such as happiness is, kindness is, compassion is, friendship is, etc.  If you do not already have this one, put it on your list of MUST haves!  Written by the beloved author of classics such as Ira Sleeps Over and Lyle, Lyle, Crocodile.

 Fly on over to Mrs. Jump's Class to read about more fabulous books that are loved!

Ten Things I Want to Do This Summer

1. Have my grandson every Wednesday night and take him to the library's summer reading events on Thursdays.  Can't wait! 

2. Paint the house! A HUGE job! I am determined to get it done.
3. Mow the lawn all summer.  I do this every year so that my husband does not have to do it after a long, hot day at work or on his weekends.  Bless the zero turn mower!

4.  Cook more! Not that I am a chef, but I do have more time now to do some cooking beyond the usual (which isn't much). This time of year is perfect for making my delish fresh green beans with garlic and Parmesan cheese--click her for the recipe!

5. Paint the bathroom.  Bought the paint months ago and have never gotten it done.  Painting the house comes first, though.

6. Get our guided math blog up and running---Adventures in Guided Math.  We are excited about this new endeavor!

7. Read more blogs and blog more.

8. Paint the mudroom.  This paint was purchased last summer! First the house, then bathroom, and finally the mudroom. We shall see...

9. Create some new clipart to use next school year.  Look for some freebies in my Graphics by Sarah Beth TpT Store this summer!

10. Begin preparing for our Guided Math presentation at the Raising Student Achievement Conference this coming winter.

1. Clean clutter out of my house. We have lived in our house for 4 years, and in that time we have accumulated a bunch of stuff! My girls are growing and the toy pile is up to our eyeballs! Time to get rid of stuff:)
2. Paint my living room and master bathroom.
3. Read some professional development books like The Daily 5 second edition, and Guided Math Conferences by Laney Sammons.
4. I really want to buy a bicycle and ride with my girls. My little ladies are getting old enough now that we can go on bike rides and now I just need to go out a purchase one!
5. Go to the gym. I would like to make a goal for myself to get up early 3 days a week and go workout...this is a huge challenge for me since I love to sleep in!
6. Go on vacation to Gulf Shores in Alabama. This is something I will be doing in mid July. I will not think about anything school related during this time, just enjoy time with my family.
7. Get a new puppy. We had to put our beloved German Shepherd down in December after loving him for 11 years. We have been itching to get a new dog, but I wanted to wait until summer when we had time to work with a dog. I'm a little apprehensive about the puppy stage again, but it's been weird not having a four legged friend around.
8. Go through my closet and purge clothes and shoes. Holy moly do I have a ton of shoes! Time to get rid of some....so then I can make room for more, right?
9. Work with Sarah to prepare our Guided Math presentation for Raising Student Achievement Conference this winter.
10. Live in the present. This is something I have been putting effort into. My girls (whom I have referred to many times) are 10, 7, and 3. There are times I can't wait for them to be older so that I can have a little more freedom, but then I tell myself not to wish my life, or their lives away. Enjoy them now (and at times that can be very trying), and count all my blessings!

Thanks to Deanna Jump for the opportunity to link up!  Read more top 10 summer to dos for some inspiration... 

Traits Tuesday Linky!: Using National Geographic Kids Readers as Mentor Texts

We are rekindling our Traits Tuesday Linky! Click our logo to learn all about it! Simply, share your writing ideas, resources, mentor texts, successes, student work, and MORE related to helping your students become authors.  ANYTHING GOES!  We would love for you to hop on board---we all have a school year full of goodies to share!  Don't have a blog, you can share in a comment!

Writing Traits

Ideas

Organization

Conventions

Sentence Fluency

Word Choice
Voice

Presentation

Organization and Fluency

Using National Geographic Kids Readers

My students embarked on a wonderful research and writing journey some time ago, and the fruits of their labor have been amazing.  I will be sharing more details and student work in a future post...

In a nutshell, students have collaboratively researched and written informational animal texts.  For now, I would like to share how we used National Geographic Kids readers.

Bold Beginnings

As we know, bold beginnings, grabbing our reader's attention, or hooking the reader (whatever you want to call it) is essential.  To learn how authors achieve this goal in informational texts, we turned to various texts from our classroom library--ultimately we found National Geographic Kids readers to be effective, as they received the most votes from students.  

We explored how four different authors began their books related to the same topic, discussed their level of effectiveness (in comparison to the requirements we generated on our anchor chart), and then brought it to a vote. We did this with several topics.  Why were National Geographic kid readers a favorite?  The kids especially liked the creative questions, how the authors made them think, and how some used a riddle format.

Here are a few we found to have bold beginnings. 

The kids' beginnings turned out to be fabulous!  Samples will be shared soon...

Creative Headings

We went through a similar process in analyzing how different authors use headings.  AGAIN, Nat Geo Kid readers came out on top for their creativity and getting the reader to think about each main idea.  

Quickly, here are some of the headings my kids came up with for the various main ideas in their books--Fur Style (spider monkey's appearance), The Stripe Type (zebra's appearance), Oh, Baby! (snowy owlets), What's for Dinner? (African lion's diet)...

Student proved that they can lead by example, yet be original!

Sentence Fluency

Ponies was an excellent example of how an author begins sentences in different ways.  This was a great opportunity for the kids to see how what they have learned about using pronouns becomes most important when it is applied in the context of their writing.

We focused on the key details the author shared about foals by charting the varied sentence beginnings. We talked in depth about how important sentence variety is to the reader, specifically citing our own feeling when reading informational texts.  

I am sure you have notice the abundance of rich informational texts being published today---I feel National Geographic Kids readers are among them. Nick Bishop's texts were a close runner up in our votes.

I encourage you to think about using these text to teach the traits of good writing.  I bet you already have a few on hand!

Thanks so much for stopping by!!  Please link up or leave a comment sharing your goodies!

AND don't forget Teachers Pay Teachers is having their Teacher Appreciation sitewide SALE! Visit my store!

An InLinkz Link-up

Must-Read Monday---New Poetry Books for Our Classroom Collection!

Linking up for the first time with Amanda at Teaching Maddeness for Must-Read Monday!  Since I am an amazon prime addict, I always have new books I can share.  Since Amanda shared some poetry goodies--thought I would do the same.  Here are some new must-read poetry books that have been added to our classroom library this year...

UnBEElieveables by Douglas Florian

UnBEElievalbes by Douglas Florian is a beautiful picture book of poems all about honey bees.  Love how there is an informational text passage that accompanies each poem.  We used this text to kick off our poetry unit by exploring three texts related to bees--informational, fiction, and poetry.  Summer Hummer worked perfectly to demonstrate a poets use of organization, punctuation, and rich language.  It was also a superb example of how poetry can teach the reader about a topic in a different way (in contrast to an informational text). 

Enjoying this picture book made me (my arm was twisted!) order another of Douglas Florian's picture book of poems called Poem Runs. Looking forward to its arrival!

Make Magic! Do Good! by Dallas Clayton

Stumbled upon this one online, and I am so glad I did!  Make Magic! Do Good! by Dallas Clayton is a wonderful collection of poems that really speak to kids.  Themes such as kindness, friendship, citizenship, and pride come through the poet's words and illustrations. Your kids are sure to love this it!

Enjoy this video teaser animation of the poem Make Magic! Do Good!

Make Magic! Do Good! from Dallas Clayton on Vimeo.

Messing Around on the Monkey Bars

and other School Poems for Two Voices 

by Betsy Franco

I shared this collection in a previous post, but I cannot say enough how much I adore this one--Messing Around on the Monkey Bars and other School Poems for Two Voices by Betsy Franco.  What a superb collection of poems to help students build fluency--AND have fun!  My students loved "performing" Whir, Whir, Zing, Zap--a poem with classroom onomatopoeia. Enjoy Anatomy Class and add this one to your classroom collection today!!

I have to be honest and say that I went a bit crazing in ADDING to our collection this year--these are just a few of my favorites... Hope you found something you too enjoy!  

Fly on over to Teaching Maddeness to discover more must-reads!

Wishing you a splendid week...

Friday Already?? Oh, Well! Five for Friday it is...

When on spring break, as Friday rolls around, it's not necessarily a YAHOO moment!  But Friday does means Five for Friday, so we are linking up with Doodle Bugs Teaching.

More Time to Blog

Click here to read, Let's Take a Dive: Ocean Unit--Part One.  Finally had a chance to blog about our ocean explorations. Part Two from Courtney is still to come!

Time to Create

I spent some time this week creating some new items for my kids--AND you have a chance to win one of them!

First up is a game/center that I have overhauled for use this April.  Earth Day Fact & Opinion: Learning Game & Center.  Included are 48 fact/opinion cards, two game boards (one letter and one legal sized), and student directions for board game and sorting center.

I also discovered that my kids really enjoy checking their work with QR codes.  I recently purchased and prepared some super hero themed QR code inference cards (Fun in 5th Grade) that my kids loved---SO I decided to whip up some Whacky Watches telling time task cards.  I created the watch graphics last summer, and I still had not put them to use.  I created telling time to the five minute and minute versions. I wanted to provide independent work options for all of my students--therefore, I created the minute version to meet the needs of some of my students who are ready to move beyond the second grade standard. The kids will love them!

Lastly, the kids were doing very well with fractions before leaving for spring break, so I created four spring-themed games, Flying High with Fractions.  The games have rectangular and circle shaded models, and they will be used in guided math rotations and math workstation time.  I also wanted to get some students thinking about equivalent fractions for one half, so two of the games meet this need.

 

Time to Read

Spring break is a perfect time to get some reading done.  I thought about reading something non-school related, but I have had Mentor Texts: Teaching Writing Though Children's Literature, K-6 for several months and have been wanting to get started on it.  Can't say enough what a wonderful teaching resource this is.  Lots of lesson ideas, mentor texts, and student samples. I have oodles of Post-Its marking pages.  You can take a look inside at amazon.com!  I also purchased the nonfiction version, but have not really gotten into it yet. Would love to hear your thoughts if you have read either...

 

Courtney's Five for Friday!

Here are a few words from Courtney that may ring true in your case as well, when it comes to having time off, "My Five for Friday is basically me getting NOTHING done that I had planned to do this week!"  Ha!  The BREAK part of spring break is really the most important anyway!

Fabulous Finds Friday Linky

We have started up our Fabulous Finds Friday linky again.  We hope you can stop back and link up your fabulous finds next Friday.  Don't have a blog, we would love for you to share your finds in a comment! To learn more, just click our logo. :0)

Now for your chance to WIN!  Three lucky winners will get to choose one of the TpT products shared in this post.  Hurry to enter---giveaway will end Sunday night at 12:00 a.m.  Monday night at 12:00 a.m.  I messed up setting up the giveaway, so I have extended the time.  Please enter!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Don't forget to fly on over to read more Five for Fridays!

 All the best to you for a fabulous weekend!