Island of the Blue Dolphins

I just realized it has been a little while since I've posted! My to do lists and planner haven't been more full! Between the wedding planning, extra work duties, and family functions. I'm wiped out! And to think report cards are around the corner….ahhhhh! I'm officially counting down to my spring break!

So I wanted to share what we recently finished reading, one of my all time favorite books, Island of the Blue Dolphins.

Every year this book transforms my reluctant readers and they ask for more after each chapter! I LOVE it, as well as the great connection it has to our social studies curriculum. We do a ton of activities throughout the book, especially with response to literature, reading strategies, etc. but I thought I'd share the last activity they completed.  They created a flip book report and I love how they turned out, especially those bright colors that pop on the black bulletin board! There are sections for character, setting, summary, and reflection. I had the students respond in a packet then cut and glue onto the book. It's a pretty simple project but looks great up! It also involves a bit of art which they were thrilled with.

I recently posted the packet (as well as the measurements for the flip book that it fits in) to my store.

Does anyone else read this book? Do your kids enjoy it as much as mine? I'd love to hear about more projects if anyone has any!

February Currently

It's already that time again for Farley's currently!

Listening: I'm enjoying this lazy Saturday catching up on all of my favorite shows! A little Grey's Anatomy, Nashville and Modern Family are what I'm loving!

Loving: Antibiotics are amazing! Those germs spread so quick this year in my classroom no matter how many times I sanitized EVERYTHING during the day! I had up to 8 kiddos absent in one day! :(

I'm finally feeling better and hoping the end of cold and flu season is near!

Thinking: I have a feeling I will be a huge procrastinator this weekend and not even touch my stack of reports. That doesn't happen often so I think I might be okay with that!

Wanting: I'm doing my first 5K tomorrow! Maybe I'll make a quick run out to go shopping for some new workout clothes! :)

Needing: I've been so busy lately that I just realized it has been forever since I just stayed in on  Saturday to relax! I really need to do this more often!

Pet Peeves: Complainers who don't see how much they have right in front of them! I'm trying to continue my resolution of surrounding myself with positive people! 

I hope everyone else is enjoying their Saturday!

Super Sale!

I just wanted to let you know I will be joining many others in participating in the Super Sunday Sale! You can purchase all of the items in my store for 28% off by entering the code below!

I'm so excited to purchase all of the items that have been on my wish list! I hope everyone enjoys their Super Bowl Sunday and finds some great deals! Go 49ers! 

A New Product Giveaway!

I've had several blog posts in the last couple months about the personal essay unit I was teaching. My students LOVED it and have mastered the structure of an essay because of it! After we finished the unit, I took some time to bundle all of the student handouts, rubrics, sample essays, and unit plans I've adapted for my class! I've bundled them together into my new 32 page Personal Essay Unit which is a great resource for upper grade teachers! It's great for grades 3-5 and is easy to modify for what your students need!

I've included many student handouts that can be used with or in the place of writer's notebooks depending on how you run your writer's workshop.

I've also included many pages of my entire unit plan for each day and the examples that I have created!

The pack also includes a detailed rubric and much, much more!

Since this is a new product, I'd love to give it away to the first two of my blog followers who comment below! I'd love to hear what you think after you receive it! Please be sure to include your email below so I can send it to you!

Freebie Friday: Writer's Workshop Planning Sheet

I'm linking up with Teaching Blog Addict today for the last Freebie Friday of January!  I'm sharing a planning sheet that I use for several of my writer's workshop units. I use it for Response to Literature, Personal Essay, and the Persuasive Essay Unit. Even though I have my students use writer's notebooks, I use this sheet as an extra page that students copy their planning on. It is much easier for me to take a stack of these papers home for a quick check to see if my students have an appropriate thesis with three supporting reasons. Click on the picture below to download the freebie!

Happy Friday!

Word Work Organization

I finally feel like I've mastered organizing my Words Their Way files! All of the files I use are now neatly combined into this small hanging file rack. I prefer this tiny one so I can pick it up and move it around to the group that I am working with.

I finally have a system in place that helps me organize my files and is easy enough that my parent volunteers can copy and organize ALL of my copies for the current week and weeks to come.

I shared in an older post HERE how Words Their Way looks in my classroom.  This post is more on just how I organize things. Since I have four groups in my classroom, I have four different files, one for each group that is labeled with their group color. These four files are labeled, "Current Set" for the words we are currently on that week. This makes it easy for me, my volunteers, and my students who are absent to pull the words they are on that week.

In my file crate I also have a different set of folders but labeled, "Next Sets". This is simply where my parent volunteer places the stack of next word sets for the remainder of the month, in order. Thanks to this system, I am able to have only ONE parent volunteer in charge of making all of my Words Their Way copies and she only has to come once a month, or even once every two months! Since she is the only one making these copies, the post-its are clearly marked for her that tell her where she left off. I only had to tell her where to start the copies at the beginning of the year, and that's all the help she has needed! I sure got lucky this year!

Here's a pic below just to show how there are stacks of the next sets, also copied in the same color paper as the group's color.

This system has made Mondays stress free when it comes to pulling out the new words for the week! 

Information Reports

We recently started our unit on information reports so I thought I'd share how I introduce them! I'm having my fourth graders complete their first one on a California mission. In order to prevent the often common "parent report", I take my students through the ENTIRE research process before even assigning  their individual reports. Yes, this can be time consuming, but it does in fact make them much less reliant on their parents for help at home. Many parents have told me that their children aren't even asking them for help anymore. Yay!

For this report I chose a mission, San Rafael, that I will not assign to any of my students. This is the one that we are completing right now, whole class. We first discussed the ways in which we collect research information and I spent some time on the projector modeling how to research online.

Then I photocopied a packet I made from a book on Mission San Rafael and we went over how to determine which information is important. We discussed methods of highlighting and using brackets. See example...

Next, we had a few lessons on paraphrasing and learned how to put the information into our own words. I also created a notebook for each student that they could use to take notes in during our research process. (I also later created one that they could take home for their individual report).

Inside the notebook I just have blank pages with a box for the topic. Students can simply write the title of the report section in the topic box and take notes on it.

I then model how to transfer the notes into complete sentences as well as methods for making sure they include all of the required info. At the end of this process, students have an example of research, note-taking, and a report that they can use as a model at home when they complete their individual mission report. The quality and research in the reports have improved so much since I started taking them through every step of the process! 

I know not many teachers out there assign mission reports but in case you are interested, I bundled all of the research templates, report requirements, rubric, and more that I use for my mission reports! Click below to check it out in my store. What kind of reports do you assign? I'd love to hear what steps of the process you take your students through!