Thank you to everyone who participated in my 1000 Follower giveaway, we have a winner.....

 

I emailed you so you should receive your winnings shortly!

And now for the freebies!! I've been so busy and haven't been able to blog much. I'm working on some larger units that I hope to get up soon and I've got several lessons I really can't wait to share! But for now here's what I have gotten done...........

Hope your all enjoying your weekend! Hope to be back soon with lots more to share thanks again for following!

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Hurry guys it ends tonight at midnight, enter to win $25 to Target plus $150 worth of awesome TPT products from my blog hoppin friends!!! I'll be back tomorrow to announce the winner and share a fabulous freebie with all of you :)

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I am so excited that 1000 of you enjoy my blog! I'm having a big giveaway celebration in honor of each of you who have contributed to me here! Take a look at what you could win!!

       

        

 

 

 

       

  

 

 That's $25 to spend at Target, and $150 worth of fabulous products from Amazing Bloggers at TPT! 

Enter using the raffle copter below, PLEASE be HONEST! I don't want to police this thing! This giveaway will close at midnight Friday September 28th, I will select a winner at random on Saturday September 29th!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

A Special thanks to all my Blog Hoppin' Friends for donating their Amazing work! And Thanks again to all of you for following along, stay tuned for more great ideas and resources including my first TPT product that will be free for one day only this Saturday! Good Luck Everyone!!

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My 5th graders have been studying text features! We started off last week by looking at an article about a giant toad that had no text features, only words, lots of words! Then we looked at the same article with text features added and made a chart of the differences we saw!

 I got the lesson plan from the Link 2 Literacy blog, you can find it HERE!

I paired them up and gave each group a paragraph from an article about firefighters (I got the article from the above link). Their task was to add appropriate text features to make the article more interesting and easier to read.

They used the computers and books to find pictures, maps, charts, graphs, and inserts to add to their piece of the article. Each pair had to add a heading to their section and find one word that should be bold. They loved it!!! Everyone worked hard all week long to find just the right elements.....

 At the end of the week I gave them each a yellow index card with the name of a text feature on it and the question "how does it help me" they had to answer the question on the card. We placed their paragraphs together to create one long article and then they added the index cards with arrows pointing to the specific text features. The finished product is proudly displayed outside our classroom!

This turned out to be a great activity, the students were so engaged!! This week we are digging deeper into specific features and how to find important information using them. We are reading charts, graphs, and maps. It really helped that they now have a solid understanding of what text features are and how they can help us find information when we read!

 

In other news, I have a question of all of you! I have $200 to spend and I just can't think of what to spend it on, I have a lot of games and activities already, I just don't know what 5th and 6th graders really enjoy so what would you buy??

AND......I reached 1000 followers!! WHOOOHOOOO! I am so excited that so many of you care to read about what I do as a teacher. I love my job and I love sharing with others! Look for a fabulous giveaway in the next couple days and a couple of huge freebies this Friday! Thank You for following me!!!

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It is officially fall and I'm loving the change of season! I love summer but it's always nice to pull out the sweatshirts and feeling the crispness of the next season upon us. I love the beautiful colors and warmth of treats reserved for this time of year!

So my daughter and I pulled out the fall decorations and spruced up our house a little.......

 

I got this cute felt basket at the target dollar spot last night! And some yummy Carmel apple milky ways! Yes I do love fall!!!

I'm sharing my favorite fall pins from Pinterest over at Endless Pinabilities! Come on over and check them out!!

I'm also working on some fall activities so stay tuned! Hope your enjoying your fabulous fall weekend!!

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I don't know if everyone  has such a store in their area. I didn't when I worked in Michigan. I researched it, there was not one. Here in northern Indiana there is!! I went is August before school started and waited in a VERY long line for a VERY long time, and when I got inside they didn't have a whole lot left. I was so excited to go again and check it out this month. I was able to get there early and I got some great things! Everything at the store is donated and once it's gone it's gone so not everyone gets great stuff every time, but this month I did! Take a look....

 all of my goodies!! I was very excited with this months finds!

 magnetic whiteboard, has a ledge on it for holding markers- very important, and came with magnets, markers, and an eraser. Our store has one section for large items and you can choose one large item each time you shop. This was my large item this month.

 Cute notebook with hard cover, binders, and page protectors!

 Sharpies and colorful pens!

 Velcro and command hooks for hanging things!

 rechargeable batteries and a charger!

 Lots of sticky notes, labels, and tabs to keep things organized!

 Calendar numbers, I think I am going to use these for making some games as well!

 Pink stapler - matches my classroom perfectly!

 reusable travel cup an iPhone case!

 laptop bag! (did you notice the phone case is pink, the bag is green - they match my classroom!!)

 Some great books! Hard cover, very nice books!

and a tub of foam dice that have dots, numbers, and math signs on them for playing a number of games!!

You can shop once a month at our teacher store, you have to have a teacher ID and your school has to be registered. I know there are others out there who have a store near them - it is defiantly worth checking out!!
I can't wait to see what they have next month!

And I just found out I have $200 to spend on my classroom. Of course I need some things like ink for my printer and chart paper, but what else should I get?? Any suggestions for a 5th/6th grade classroom? I would love to hear what you would buy!

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Here's a few of the things we've worked on in reading over the past couple weeks. First I have a group of second graders for half an hour a day, we are working on story sequence. We read this brand new book...

as you can see we used the pocket chart to put the events into sequential order! Then we completed the sequencing worksheet I got from Sharing Kindergarten!

Today we looked at sequence using a wordless book! Or almost wordless anyway. I took apart a copy of Goodnight Gorilla and gave each student a page, they had to work together to put the book back in order. It was a lot of fun and they did a great job!

They then wrote a sentence for each of the headings, First, Then, Next, Last to show what happened in the story!

I created this poster to use with the activity......

 

We read aloud this wordless book in guided reading groups.......

I love the pictures! We added our own words to create a first, then, next and last for this book too! We used these folders to record our own thinking.

I created the headings for this as well as some graphic organizers you might want to use!

My sixth graders are moving ahead with the Comprehension Connections book I've blogged about. We worked on making connections. Here's our anchor chart using our scheme as a background we added connections to self, text, and world.

 

Making connections was the most difficult concept so far so we spent a couple of extra days working on it. I made this poster to help us organize our connections and we practiced one type (text-self) (text-text) (text-world) each day.

Once I was confident they had the concept they used these folders and read in pairs recording their connections.

 

Here are the labels to make this folder as well as a graphic organizer for making connections!

 My fifth graders are working on text features, we've done a fun project I can't wait to post about! I have parent teacher conferences tomorrow!! I know already!! This year is flying by. Happy Wednesday everyone!

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