Five For Friday - Easter and Earth Day

Hi All!

Happy Easter Weekend!

I'm happy to be joining Doodle Bugs Teaching for this week's Five For Friday.

I found some cute Easter decor this year, and will be sad to put it away come Monday.

 The lower right bunny is from Pier 1.

The lower left egg and candle is from Steins.

The upper pieces are from Gordmans.  Sadly our Gordmans is going out of business.

We've been working on synonyms, so I found an Easter egg template online that was a simple stripe pattern.

I put different words in the line under the name, and students chose which word they wanted.

We used the website www.thesaurus.com to find a variety of synonyms.

I have an online thesaurus investigation available in my Teachers Pay Teachers store.

These made for a cute bulletin board display!

Have you ever received recipes in the mail and wondered what to do with them?

I used to receive lots, and decided to take them to school. I noticed on a standardized test once that students were required to read and analyze a recipe.

This station activity is always a BIG hit with my third graders.

 They are required to answer questions about the order of the directions, and I run a copy of recipes that students are really interested in.

My Spring Break was two weeks ago, and I went to Los Angeles to the NSTA conference.

I was lucky to meet two fantastic authors, and get their autographs on classroom books.

Ashley Spires was giving away her book!

Andrea Beaty's books were only $5.00!  Many of us teachers in line bonded over our love of these books!

I was also lucky to attend the premiere of this movie with a group of teacher friends while in LA.

 The producer of the movie spoke to us about the making of the movie.

The visuals in this film were beautiful, and it had a cute story, too!

I would highly recommend it.

If you are looking for a pack of fun and engaging activities for Earth Day, check out this pack, which is available in my TpT store!

 Hope you had a great week!

Happy Easter!

BEST MARKERS EVER - Five For Friday

For the first time this summer, I'm able to join Doodle Bugs Teaching for Five for Friday!

First up, are you looking for the BEST MARKERS EVER?

Well, these beauties could earn that description.

I used them this summer at a workshop I led for teachers, and I loved the bold, vivid colors.

 They are a bit pricey - I found this pack at Office Max for just under $10.

But, Office Max/Office Depot is running a 25% off sale this weekend (July 30 - August 2), 

so hurry on over and pick up a pack.

Does your district use Words Their Way?

We do, and I've found these pouches to be perfect for storing weekly word sorts.

These are also from Office Max, and these happen to be our school colors - blue and gray!

In the light, the polka dots reflect rainbow colors.

I am looking forward to attending this technology workshop next Tuesday.

More on that in next week's Five for Friday.

Last week our Book Club took a 2-day trip to beautiful Door County, WI.

One of our book club members has a condo in Egg Harbor.

This is what summer mornings are made for - having a cup of coffee or tea while enjoying that view.

Ahhhh......

This was our view of the sunset later that day outside a favorite restaurant called The Waterfront.

Are you getting pumped for the Olympics??

I created a product for the Winter Olympics 2 years ago and it become one of my best sellers.

So, I revised it and created a similar project for the Summer Olympics in Rio.

Students do independent research on current athletes.

This product includes links to projected medal winners from the U.S.A.

You can check out this product at this link.

Five for Friday - Fables for Third Grade and More

Hi Friends!

What do fables, Lakeshore Learning, subtraction, hand-washing, and Donors Choose all have in common?

Well, they're all a part of my Five for Friday week!

Hurray!  My Donors Choose project was fully funded on Tuesday morning, by the parents of students in my class!  And, this was before the big announcement from Donors Choose about the #bestschoolday.

So I posted another project on Wednesday night to obtain iPads for our room.

I was lucky enough to have that project posted on the Caring Classrooms site.

It has actually been the #bestschoolweek ever !

We completed our traditional literature unit this week.

Fortunately we have quite a few books in this genre for our students to read.

I created a reflection book for the unit that can be found in my TpT store for only $2.50.

Here are some sample pages from the reflection booklet:

There are more "I Can..." posters and reflection sheets that directly relate to the Common Core standards in reading.  You can find this product here.

Our school nurse did a lesson on hand-washing this week.

She used a black light to show them how dirty their hands really were.

Yuck - I think she made her point about using soap!

We used these clips from Lakeshore Learning while reading some Tall Tale books.

The kids loved using these while they read in small groups.

After they finished the book at our Book Club table, we went back and discussed where they had put the clips and why.

Since we were using these for the first time, I only took out the "New Word" and "Question" clips.

Do you use the box method for subtraction?

My students are really loving it.

To subtract from 100 or 1000, box all the digits to the left of the ones place, and think of how many 10s there are.  For example 100 is 10 tens, and 1000 is 100 tens.

Then cross that out to ungroup the tens, and you can subtract much more easily.

See the sample problems in the picture.

Hope you had a great week!

Check out all the Five for Friday posts on Doodle Bugs Teaching!

Five for Friday - EPIC Reading App

It's Saturday. So...here's my Five for Fraturday (as Kristin would say).

Do you know about the free Epic Reading App?

An educator can sign up and have access to TONS of books for their students to read.

The cool thing is, you can see just what books your students selected, and how long they spent on that book.

And look at how many pages this boy flipped??

My students LOVE the app, but are almost overwhelmed at the choices.

There are options for searching and rating books.

Parents can also get the app, but there is a cost of home use.

I posted this on Instagram, and someone from Epic commented on my post!

We are working on using text evidence to support our answers when reading, as I'm sure all of you are.

I saw the EAT strategy on IG a couple of years ago, but can't find the original person who posted it.

Thank you, if the source happens to be someone reading this.

My students have really gotten the idea of restating part of the question, telling the answer, and then citing the spot in their book that supports their answer.

Our local minor league baseball team (the WI Timber Rattlers) sponsors a reading challenge

 for children in our area.

The team mascot, Fang, came to our school to kick-off the reading challenge.

If the students read enough minutes, they earn a ticket to a game, as well as a hot dog and soda.

What a great deal!

My district is part of math study being conducted by the 

Harvard School of Education.

Those teachers that are part of the study have to video tape lessons for review.

This is the second year of the study, and I was lucky enough to work with a math coach from Harvard last year.  We skyped about twice a month to chat about my math instruction.

My coach gave suggestions and goals to work toward during the skype sessions.

This study has made a big impact on my students' understanding of math concepts.

We use a Samsung Galaxy to videotape lessons.

Yes, it is a bit intimidating.

I was honored to have one of my products selected for an e-book that is now available on 

Teachers Pay Teachers.

Thanks to Tamara and Naomi for putting this together.

You will find many wonderful products for observing Black History Month!

You can find my Snapshots of History project here.

Thanks for stopping by this week!