Five For Friday….On a Saturday

Okay, so I wish I had a really great excuse for not having this done on Friday…..but, I don’t.  Unless you consider, “I was having a much needed girl’s night watching The Bachelor and Grey’s Anatomy at my girlfriend’s house,” a good excuse.  Which, you probably don’t.  I promise though, it was MUCH needed!  This week was CRAZY with meetings, sick children (and a husband) and one broken arm on the playground.  See….I really did need it.

So, here goes my five for Friday on Saturday night.

One……

Third Grade hosted our first (and now annual) “Famous American Wax Museum.”  It was a huge hit.  The kiddos loved it and had so much fun, the parents were so impressed and we will for sure be doing it again next year.  In fact, we already are working on ideas to make it even better!  Here are some of my cuties…..

Meet Claire Shillace, the first woman to play Major League Baseball, Lou Gehrig, and Sacagewea.

President Abe Lincoln, First Lady Jackie Kennedy, and Daniel Boone.

Two……..

We had a special visit from some cute little two week old baby bunnies. 

Three……

I found these at Barnes and Noble and introduced them during Work on Writing.  My kiddos are loving them.

Four……

This week our church hosted the annual Daddy Daughter Dance.  My amazing husband has been taking the girls to this event for the past 11 years.  It such a great time for them to each spend one-on-one time with their dad and for him to set a great example of how they should be treated on a date someday. 

Five…….

I finally finished reading Practice Perfect.  I have already been applying some of the principles in my classroom and have noticed some differences.  It was a great read and I recommend it to classroom teachers, principals, instructional coaches, and sports coaches.

My goal for the upcoming week…..to get my five for Friday done on Friday! 

Happy Weekend everyone!

Practice Makes Perfect

My husband has turned into a reader!  For years, he couldn’t understand how I could lose myself in a book for hours.  How I would love to sit and discuss books with other people who also read it.  Well, the man has officially read more books than me in the past year.  After finishing this one…..

he recommended that I read it.  He said that it was a great book for teachers to read.  It talks about the importance of practicing correctly and effectively. I am taking it slowly because there are so many important points to think about. 

Rule #2 in the book is “Practice the 20.”  The author says that you should, “identify the 20 percent of the things you could practice that will deliver 80 percent of the value.” 

Then in Rule #4 “Unlock Creativity with Repetition,” he says that we should, “automate skills to free participants’ cognition to be more creative.”

I got to thinking about how this relates to my struggling readers and really all of my students.

I began asking other teachers if they could identify the 5 skills they thought were most important for a reader at our grade level. 

I decided that my strugglers needed more practice with those 20%skills so that they would become so automatic their minds would be freed up to comprehend the text.

That lead me to my newest packs.  I decided that they needed more fluency phrases for practice.  If they can become automatic and fluent with these “Instant Words,”  that will be one step in automating their skills to free up their minds for comprehension.

 

These 2 packs take care of the first and second 100 words on Fry’s Instant Word List.  Sets 3-6 will follow and are in the works!  You can click on the pics above to check them out in my TpT store.  I am also giving away one set to the first person who comments and tells me what they think are the 20% skills.  Which skills can we be practicing that will deliver 80% of the value?  Don’t forget to leave in your comment which set you would like and your email so I can send it! 

Also, be on the lookout for my new Blessed Teacher Facebook page!

Five For Friday

Here are five random things from this week….

1.  Our skill for the week was sequencing. I love chart paper and I REALLY love my Mr. Sketch markers!

2.  For Writer’s Workshop we wrote stories using sequencing and then turned them into small books.  I love foldables (almost as much as Mr. Sketch) and we made these cute little books with one piece of large construction paper!  My kiddos are so excited to read them with the younger reading buddies.

3.  Our ice cream sundaes are coming along!  I have lots of kiddos moving on to their 6s.  They are so motivated right now and have been practicing so hard!

4.  Work on Writing needed some spicing up this week.  I love Daily 5 and so do my kids, but if I am being honest, they were starting to get a little squirrely during Daily 5 time.  I introduced these shared writing journals this week and they were so excited.  Daily 5 time turned around this week!

5.  Unfortunately, it wasn’t all fun learning this week.  We did have benchmark testing in both reading and math.  Ugh.  I know there is no way to get around the testing issue, I just feel like we are tested like crazy, and my poor kiddos are feeling it. (This cute sign is from Amanda Nickerson at One Extra Degree)

Thankfully, next week we have early release days on Thursday and Friday and then Monday off! WooHoo!

A Few Days Late……Currently February

I am going to have to start setting a reminder on my phone.  I somehow always forget that a new month has started and it is “Currently Time,” already.  I love doing my Currently and reading everyones, I am just so bad about the month switchover!  So, here mine is and by the time I link up it will be like the 300th one on there….no joke, it was at 295 when I started this blog post!

Well, in other news, this teacher sure is glad that Monday is over.  It was a rough one.  I think everyone had a late night with the big game.  It is time to go veg out and watch my guilty pleasure….yes, I am a Bachelor fan.  I get together with a friend and fellow teacher every Monday night to watch together.  it sure makes easing back into the week a little more fun!

Good Night Everyone!

A “Super Bowl” of Savings!

Click on the picture above to hop on over to my store and check out the sale!  Don’t forget to use the promo code at checkout!

  My cart is already loaded up and ready!

This is one of the items I am excited about downloading

It’s by the sweet Stephanie Ann at Sparkling in Third Grade.

Here are just a few of my products that will be on sale:

And one of my top selling items…..

Head on over to TpT and fill your cart! I know I will be!

Happy Shopping Everyone!

Rain in the Desert….What’s a Teacher To Do?

Let me start off by saying that I love rain….really I do, but I love it best when it happens on the weekend and we can avoid rainy day schedule!  So, this weekend was a much needed rainy weekend here in the desert.  It rained, and rained, and rained.

Here is a photo that my daughter took of the puddles in our backyard. 

So, what is a teacher to do with a rainy weekend?  Well, it meant lots of extra cups of coffee and lots of laptop time!  I worked on several new products for my TpT store.  Here is a sneak peek. Just click on the pics to see them in my store

My school kiddos have been begging for new centers so here they are for Valentine’s Day! 

It is almost time to switch out the Brain Boxes. 

And last but not least, one of our skills this week is compound words.  So I made this little pack for a fun way to practice.  I would much rather do things the “fun way,” than the “worksheet way!”

So, that was my weekend in a nutshell.  Lots of relaxing rain, coffee, work time, and now I hope to add a little nap to the list!

As a thank you to my small group of faithful followers, I will give away one of my new items (your choice), FREE to the first follower to comment and one to my first new follower! Be sure to leave me your email address and let me know which new item you would like!

Until next time…….

Mrs. Wood

Our Week in Rewind

Whew….sitting here on Saturday morning, laptop in front of me and a cup of coffee in my hand.  I am so thankful for our 3 day weekend.  This week was exhausting! 

Friday

My kids are all fired up about “Fast Fact Fridays.”  One of our biggest goals for the year is to be automatic with our facts by the end of third grade.  Unfortunately, I have yet to come up with a way to assess and motivate them to practice that doesn’t involve a timed test.  So, instead of calling it a timed test, I call it “Fast Facts,” and we do them every Friday.  As they pass their facts they earn paper pieces to build an ice cream sundae.  The 2 facts are the bowl, the 3 facts a banana, the 4 facts a scoop of ice cream…etc…  I don’t have a pic of them, I will take one this week and post it.  In the spring we have an ice cream sundae party and they get to make a real sundae that looks like their paper one.  It is the best thing I have found to motivate and encourage them.  I would love to hear what my fellow third grade teachers do!  Anyways, if they finish their fast facts early, I have them check their answers and then they can turn the paper over and write me a note.  I found this one yesterday…..

He is “again a winner,” clearly we still need to work on spelling! :)

Thursday

We wrapped up our multiplication unit this week and moved on to division. We started slow, just learning about division as making equal groups.  We used these task cards……

I gave a set of 8 to each table group.  Each student also got a cup of beans to make the groups on their whiteboards.  They had fun and were able to really see what division is all about.  The cards are in my Tpt store if you are interested.

Wednesday

I did quite a bit of reading over break and implemented Morning Meeting in my classroom when we returned from break.  My kiddos LOVE it.  We already have students leading it and they are having so much fun.  On Wednesday, during the “How Are You Feeling?” portion of the meeting one of my kiddos shared that she was feeling “sleepy.”  She said “Mrs. Wood, I had such a hard time falling asleep last night because I could not stop thinking about our read aloud book.”  While I was sad to hear that she was tired, how great is that!  They have been begging me for read aloud time every day this week.  Here is the book we are reading.

My third grade teacher, Mrs. Raum-Fisher, read it aloud to my third grade class and it quickly become my favorite book that year!  Now, I read it aloud to my classes.

Tuesday

Tuesday was one of the most anxiety filled days of the year for me, and it wasn’t really related to school.  My husband is the Men’s Varsity Basketball coach at the high school down the street from us.  We also have another high school, like a mile away!  Yes, that close.  Anyways, needless to say that because of the proximity and the fact that many students choose which school to go to, they are rivals.  They call the rivalry game “King of the Court,” and there is a traveling trophy and everything.  The gym is packed, you can’t hear a thing over the cheering, and it is STRESS filled for the coach’s wife!  The game this year was incredible.  And……..yes, my hubby’s team won by 2 points!  So fun watching his team receive the trophy after the game.  Now….we get to do this all over again in 2 weeks, ugh….they have to play each other again!  For now, we will enjoy the victory!

Monday

What can I say….it was a Monday.  But, sweet notes like this make getting up in the morning and coming to school that much better!

Enjoy the weekend everyone!