Five for Friday: Happy Spring!

Happy 1st day of Spring!!  I, for one, am thrilled to have winter over with, even if the forecast is calling for more snow tonight. {I am just going to pretend that's not true!}  I am linking up with Doodlebugs Teaching to share 5 random things from my week.

 I finally broke down and bought a new computer.  It arrived yesterday!  It's hard to keep up with blogging and TPT without a computer!

My 3rd grade Reading class finished up our nonfiction text structure unit.  We filled out graphic organizers in our reading notebooks.  Then we finished out the unit by reading Zoobooks articles and using sticky notes to put them in the right sections on our chart.  I was told that it was fun so I think it was a win!

We made frobscottle (from the BFG) this week.  We are reading through this book as a class read-aloud, and when I stumbled across this recipe on Pinterest, I knew we had to make it.  It was delicious, and the kids loved it! 

I think one of the highlights of my week was when this sweetheart came up to me and asked if he could read his book to me during morning recess.  He struggled with reading last year, and it was so encouraging to hear him reading fluently through a whole chapter of a Magic Tree House book!

My 6th graders just finished up a grammar chapter on verb tenses.  I hung up the posters from my new regular verb tense product for my students to look at throughout the unit.  We also used the task cards from the unit to practice identifying verb tenses.  They have been doing great during the whole unit.  The test is today so hopefully they will do just as great for that!

As you can probably see, my week has been busy.  But it's definitely been productive too.  Make sure you stop by Doodlebugs Teaching to find out what everyone else has been up to this week!

Our Author Study: Roald Dahl

Wow! I realized today that it has been almost two weeks since I have blogged.  Part of that was due to some personal issues, but a large part of the problem was my computer's refusal to connect to the internet at my house. {Oddly enough, it would connect at school, but not at home.  This obviously made blogging difficult.}  I was probably a day away from buying a new computer out of frustration when the problem somehow, amazingly, resolved itself.

I wanted to share what my 3rd grade reading class has been up to lately.  We are just finishing up an awesome author study of Roald Dahl.  I absolutely love his books.  They are fun and quirky with interesting plots and characters.  I was so excited to share them with my class.  

We started with James and the Giant Peach. {I chose this book to begin with because we had just finished a unit on characters.  I thought the bugs would be interesting characters to discuss.} At the end of the book, we made a character mobile to display.  We colored and cut out a peach, James, and the bugs.  On the back of each character we wrote character traits that could describe the character.  It was a perfect extension of what we had already talked about in reading.  

 

 

 We also made a lapbook where we filled in the books, setting, character list, summary, and theme paragraph.  {Again this was designed to review many of the reading concepts we had learned this year.}

 Next up to read was Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.  We read through this book rather quickly because I wanted the students to simply enjoy the story itself.  We used our writing time during this week and a half to write an essay comparing and contrasting our main characters from the two books, James and Charlie.  {I was shocked by how much easier the essays seemed than in past years.  Possibly due to the fact that we had spent so much time talking about both characters in class.}

Once we completed the novel, we spent two class periods watching the movie. {We watched the older version starring Gene Wilder because it's the version I prefer!} The kids couldn't believe that I was letting them watch a WHOLE movie in class!!  Although they were a little less excited when I assigned them another compare/contrast essay for homework.  This time, their task was to compare the book to the movie.  We filled out a Venn Diagram while they watched the movie.  Then they took the chart home to complete their essay.  {I wanted to see if they could write an essay independently, and I must say I was pleased by the results.}

By this point, I think we were all ready to move on.  I was even asked when we were going to do more work in our reading notebooks!  So we switched to a new unit on figurative language, but I am sneaking in one more Roald Dahl book.  

We are reading the BFG as our class read aloud right now.  It worked out great because Dahl uses an unbelievable amount of figurative language in the BFG so the kids are hearing it as well as learning about it. I also found a recipe for frobscottle that I am going to attempt to make for my students when we read that chapter! Doesn't it look delicious?

I must admit, I truly enjoyed this author study.  I think I may have like the books even more than my students did.  Plus I loved seeing my students experience books that may have been out of the comfort zone of the normal books they choose.  Hopefully they were inspired to read more Roald Dahl books on their own!

Five for Friday: 2/20/2015

Woohoo!  Friday is finally here!  Why does it always seem like short school weeks feel longer than normal weeks?  Thankfully, Friday has arrived which means it is time for Five for Friday with Doodlebugs Teaching!

 We had a snowstorm on Sunday, more snow on Tuesday, another dusting late Wednesday night, and even more expected this Saturday.  I don't know about anyone else, but I am sick of snow!

We sent home our March calendars to our students today.  Thinking about March has me dreaming about springtime.  I can only hope that it is right around the corner!

I teach several different English classes, and our curriculum has us alternate between writing units and grammar units. {However, I try to add in lots of writing during the grammar units too.}  Anyway, my 6th grade English class is in the middle of writing research reports on historical places. 

We used library books to do research on note cards, wrote an outline, and are currently working on writing our rough drafts.  {This has to be my least favorite unit that I have to teach. Hopefully we will be done soon.}

On the other hand, my 3rd grade class just finished writing Compare/Contrast essays.  This is a unit that I always enjoy.  We have been reading Roald Dahl books recently so we wrote about characters from his stories.  Not only did they turn out great, but I feel like using information from books we have read made the writing process even easier.  {I am going to write more about our Compare and Contrast essays tomorrow so check back then to find out more!}

I don't know if all of you have heard, but Educents has decided to let teachers open storefronts similar to TeacherspayTeachers.  It is a completely new program they are rolling out soon. I have been busy setting up my store and uploading products for sale. If you haven't signed up for Educents yet, they are also offering a free $10 credit right now. {That's like $10 worth of free teaching products!!}  You can get your $10 coupon by clicking here: Educents coupon. 

Also feel free to stop by and check out my new storefront!

My friend Kristin over at My Carolina Classroom is having a huge giveaway for her blogiversary!!

 She is giving away over $180 worth of teaching products {including some TPT gift certificates}!  The giveaway is only open until Saturday, so don't forget to stop by and enter.  In fact, you may want to go there right now!

Tried It Tuesday: Interactive Reading Notebooks

For several years I have been unhappy with my reading curriculum.  The readers are full of short stories that I find pretty dull. (And if I don't find them interesting, I have a hard time getting my students interested.) The workbook that accompanies them mentions many different reading concepts, but I didn't feel like the skills were covered in enough detail or practiced enough that students really grasped the concepts. 

So this year, I decided to try something new with two of my classes - Interactive Reading Notebooks!  

I know, I know, this is old news for many teachers out there. But for me, this was a huge and scary step. I was walking away from the curriculum I had always used and trying something completely different. 

So I bought almost every single interactive reading notebook product by I'm Lovin Lit this summer. (Her stuff is amazing, by the way!) I printed everything out, sorted it into units, and filed it all.
  

You can see my language arts file drawer is full!

I decided just to start with my 3rd grade and 6th grade reading classes this year. I must say I am loving it!  We are reading very few short stories, but instead we are reading whole novels. Sometimes we read them together as a class and sometimes the students read chapters independently.  Students also read books outside of class.  For every book they read independently, they record the book in their reading log and complete some sort of reading response.  I love that this gets them writing and thinking about what they are reading.

Since we spend at least several days to a week on each reading skill unit, I think the students are understanding and remembering the concepts much more than they were with my old curriculum.  Also, I know they like reading the novels better. (Believe me, they have told me.). 
 

6th Grade genre study unit

3rd Grade Story Elements and Text Connections lessons

They also seem to enjoy coloring, cutting, gluing, and even taking notes in our notebooks. (Plus they are learning how to take notes in class without even realizing it!) My only complaint is how long the coloring and cutting takes some days. I have learned to send home the pieces with plastic baggies to color and cut for homework the night before. Then we only have to glue in class. That leaves more time for discussing and note-taking. 

I'm so glad I switched to using Interactive Reading Notebooks. It gives me the freedom to teach skills at the level of the students and make sure that they really understand it before moving on.  

Studying nonfiction text structure

I am linking up this post for Tried It Tuesday with Fourth Grade Flipper.  Be sure to head over there and check out what other teachers have tried in their classrooms. 

Five for Friday - We Have a Winner!!

Another beautiful Friday is here, and I am once again linking up with Doodlebugs Teaching for...

 My first and most important announcement is that my giveaway has officially ended!  So CONGRATULATIONS to Becky B. who was the winner of a $10 TeachersPayTeachers gift certificate!

Thanks to everyone that entered!  Make sure to keep following my blog to find out when the next giveaway is happening.

My 1st grade Phonics class has been learning all about cowboys for the past few weeks.  We have talked about what cowboys do, where they live, cattle, ranches, and rodeos.  We even watched some neat videos of rodeo events yesterday.  The students were amazed by the ability of the cowboys to stay on a bull for 8 seconds or rope a calf  in under 7 seconds.  So I whipped up some cowboy themed memory games to help my kids practice what we have been learning.  I let them play Cowboy Contractions today, and they had lots of fun.  I like the fact that they were reading a contraction on every turn.

 My 3rd grade reading class and I finished James and the Giant Peach this week.  One of my students said that out of 5 stars, he would give it "infinity." I guess they liked it!  Now we are working on finishing our mobiles and folder displays to go with it.  So far they are coming out great!

My 6th grade reading class is reading a favorite book of mine - A Father's Promise.  We studied four story devices before we started the novel, and now we are watching for those story devices while we read.  The story focuses on a Jewish boy in Poland during World War II.  It is definitely full of suspense, cliffhangers, and foreshadowing!

Even though we are supposed to get a big snowstorm here in New England tomorrow, today has been beautiful.  The temperature is 32 degrees which means we took the kids out for recess.  {If it's above freezing and dry, we go outside!}  The kids don't even seem to notice the cold though.  They are constantly asking to take their coats off despite the fact that it is barely above freezing!

Feel free to link up Doodlebugs Teaching and let us know how your week has been!