Five for Friday: Finding Balance

Tomorrow morning Spring Break '16 is officially over and I will be returning to work. I am excited to see my kiddos and hear all about their week off.

Confession: I love my job but I did not work over break

I do not feel guilty. I feel refreshed, relaxed, and like an actual human being! So here is a snapshot of my week that had nothing to do with teaching!

I saw an article about 21 things teachers should do over break. I didn't quite do all of them, but I did finish a book, get a massage (and facial OMG it was amazing), spend time with family, road trip/ field trip, eat ice cream (such an easy one), and start planning summer break! This is going to be my must do list every break from now on! 

Speaking of spending time with family.... I caught a flight back to Michigan and spent a long weekend with my wonderful family. I can't even begin to describe how much I miss them when I'm away, or how myself I feel when I'm back with them! My mom decided to spring a weekend trip to Chicago on us and it was time well spent! Museums, yummy food, silly selfies--- a great visit! 

After I returned back home, the hubby and I took the boys all over. They loved all our trips to the parks. We took care of some needed errands ... overall wonderful break! 

Which leads me to where I am currently at mentally. There are a lot of things up in the air and decisions that need to be made in the next few weeks. This is when I usually end up talking myself out of heading home... but I'm not obsessing. I'm just letting what happens, happen. 

Last night we were supposed to have an end of spring break date night, but I just traveled so much over break that I just wanted to sit on the couch. So my wonderful hubby changed our plans and we spent the night watching Gilmore Girls and Game of Thrones and definitely enjoyed our snacks! 

Going to Med School

Our wonderful 3rd graders have only a few short days left before spring break and testing season. We leave for spring break in 7 days and the day after we get back we begin our week of 3rd grade FSA (Florida Standards Assessments). Perfect timing of course :) 

In order to combat the crazies that come before break and manage the stress of test anxiety, I decided to try something new and transform my classroom--- Okay maybe not totally new, but I can honeStly say this is the first time I have gone all in. #setthestagetoengage #weregoingtomedschool was a HUGE success. Here are some sneak peeks into our operating room last week.....

Operating tables and surgical trays were prepared for the kiddos when they entered Monday morning. Each student had a syringe needle pen, bandaid post it notes, surgical mask and cap, along with a patient file (their work for the week) and their surgeon badge. All of the little props definitely made the week so awesome for them. They weren't too expensive either. I have a mom who works in the medical field that donated the caps and masks. I bought the pens and band aid post it notes off Amazon for about $10 and made the badges myself then just printed, laminated, and cut them out. Parents donated white or light blue bed sheets or table cloths and cookie sheets for us to use for the week. And the little yellow man (Carl) was kindly cut out from butcher paper by a talented parent.  

 

 

The first item on their agenda was to read "What to Expect if You're Having Surgery" an article from ReadWorks. They got right to work with their syringe pens, taking notes and making sense of this passage. When they were done reading and take notes with their partners, we read it together as a class and discussed our thoughts. I was so proud listening to their conversation, about how they noticed that part of the article was organized using sequence because it was giving the information of having surgery in order from before you go to recovery and they used signal words like before, first, then, finally. Or how there was a word they didn't know, but they looked for clues to determine what it was and noticed that after the word there was a comma and a definition. EEEEKKKK! My teacher heart was just thrilled! We used this article as we transitioned to our next activity using the bandaid post it notes to create a main idea and detail web with Carl (the yellow patient on the table). 

 

I found neat candy which the students thought looked like medicine (not my original intention but hey it worked perfectly!) to use with the Distributive Doctor packet I purchased from More-Time-2-Teach which was a great chance to review strategies we can use to multiply as well as hitting that tricky standard one more time! 

 

 

Another fun activity was when the students practiced their measuring to the nearest quarter, half, and whole inch AND creating line plots. These two standards go hand in hand for our 3rd graders. I found a cute clip art of some bones and printed them out in various sizes for the students to measure. They used this measurement data to create their line plots. We also measured each other, because you always get measured and weighed when you visit the doctor! 

 

Throughout the week we read several doctor related articles, save many patients (word problems) thanks to our symptom analysis, evaluations, surgical procedures, and check ups. We learned about creepy medical procedures like mummification, the history of modern medicine, and cool facts about our bodies like how hiccups and our nerves work. We also had lots of fun------ #setthestagetoengage #weregoingtomedschool #testprepcanbefun was a wonderful week that I know both myself and the students will have in our memories for years to come. Who knows I may just have created 20 wanna be doctors? 

Five for Friday: WHAT A WEEK!

What an awesome week!!! Linking up with Doodle Bugs Teaching for another episode of Five for Friday!

We have been working super SUPER hard this week on our writing. Our current unit is writing in response to literature. This week we practiced with the short passage in the writing books, but then also with our mentor reading text Tops and Bottoms by Janet Stevens. I LOVE this book! It's such a wonderful text that can be used across grade levels to teach characters and character development, sequence and retelling, and also central message or theme. I know my kiddos will be prepared and ready for 4th grade's writing expectations! Quick tip, it takes a little while but I love to type up passages, excerpts, or the mentor text in it's entirety so students can have their own copy of the text to annotate and refer to. 

I saw a post from Teaching in Room 6 a few weeks ago and fell in love with how she used Tagxedo in her classroom with theme. We have used Tagxedo when writing about main idea and details but I just knew we had to use it for our study on central message this week. The students used the picture book Mr. Peabody's Apples by Madonna and wrote short response paragraphs about the central message or lesson in the text using key details from the story as evidence to support their answers. IT WENT GREAT! When they were done they created their Tagxedo pieces in the shape of an apple and printed them for display! 

Besides all of our awesome reading and writing this week we also studied geometry! My students are officially quadrilateral experts. We ended our week with one of my favorite cooperative activities where students take on the roll of teacher and create anchor charts (they love this) identifying the critical information about a concept. Typically I have them present these to the class and pretend to be teachers a little longer, but I decided to switch it up. The anchor charts were posted around the room and the groups rotated around critiquing each other's posters using the "I NOTICED.... AND I WONDERED...." methods. Such a success! 

" I noticed they created a web to share their information. I like this."

"I wonder why they chose to leave out some of the attributes. I think those are important." 

And on Fridays we take selfies! Wandered around the room to facilitate this adventure and just had to stop for some group shots and quick selfies for our end of the year video!

The husband and I went on another one of our planned date outings last week. We did a walkabout or progressive dinner. We started at one location for a small bite, and worked our way around the block or neighborhood, visiting several locations throughout the evening. It was rather interesting. We also enjoyed Monday (President's Day) off from school. Such a nice extra day to get work, errands, and time with our boys in. 

Using Free Resources to Create Standards Based Reading Homework

Reading homework is a challenge. You want the kids to read their own novels or books at home at night, but have no way of knowing if they really do. Your book lovers will, your students with supportive parents will, but you have some that just won't. Over the last several years I have tried many different approaches.

For a while I did a reading log. They had to read so many minutes a night and then their parents signed off saying they did it. This solved some problems, but not all of them. Some parents would sign and not pay attention, and other parents would forget to sign and then the children would cry and reassure you they actually did do the reading. Worst of all, just because they were sitting with a book in their hands doesn't mean they were actually reading.

After running into issues with that, I found an adorable monthly reading "MENU" which had the students choose from different activities to do throughout the week based upon their book. So, I was addressing the problem of parents signing a reading log, and students had to be reading (at least somewhat) in order to do most of the activities on the menu. But, this menu came with new problems. The activities were cute but not necessarily on grade level or standards based. As adorable as a photograph of the story is, for 3rd graders it's not always the best option. My new principal this year is leading the way in the district for standards based instruction, and I have to say while it did seem like a lot of extra work on my part at first, I was fully on board once I understood what she was looking for. And sadly..... this adorable appetizer, entree, dessert just wasn't going to cut it.

So thinking and thinking, searching and searching, and the PERFECT idea came to me. So, now what am I using? I'm so glad you asked? #iwasgonnashareanyways There are so many fantastic resources out there to us as teachers that are FREE. Don't get me wrong I love #TPT and I have purchased some amazing products over the years, but there are some places to get tons of resources by just signing up, most of them are very well known. Read Works and NEWSELA are my favorites!!!! So many amazing passages all available to us instantly.

It's so simple! The students get one passage or article (less than 3 pages) each week. They also get a cover sheet, which has their instructions for the week. I created two, one informational and one fiction, that I tweak slightly depending on what skill we are focusing on that week or something I know they need extra practice in. For the most part though, they look very similar. This is great for us, it provides consistency. Students and parents are understanding what is expected with little assistance from us, and it's a great indicator of how well a student is grasping a concept. BONUS, the article is pretty short so it still allows students ample time for reading for pure enjoyment. My principal loved this so much she took it to her data meeting with the area superintendent, who then shared it with other principals. #YIKES #LOVEIT

It's not beautiful but boy does it work. Here is an example of a cover sheet and article turned in by a student.

As you can see it can be used with almost any non-fiction article, and most fiction stories. I have tweaked it slightly (format wise) throughout the last few months. You can sang your fiction cover sheet by clicking for your FREEBIE HERE and the informational cover sheet by clicking for your FREEBIE HERE. 

Fonts from KG Fonts and Hello Literacy

I hope you enjoy :)