Sunday Smorgasbord

This summer has been flying by so fast. I can't believe it is coming to an end in less than a month. One of my goals was to work on blogging this summer. Well I haven't been great about that, but have spent some time catching up on some of my other goals like sleep, reading, swimming, and working out. To catch up on my summer I am joining Fabulous in First's Linky Party: Sunday Smorgasbord.

Working Out:

As many of you know I'm getting married in January and HATE the idea of wedding dress shopping. I decided the only way I would even begin to want to shop is if I knew I was working on making myself feel more comfortable in my own skin. This summer I have started taking Zumba classes with some of my favorite girls. I've been having such a blast going to class that I actually bought the DVD's so I could do it on my own. Let me tell you, I am by far not coordinated and have no rhythm. However, I am loving Zumba and can't believe how fast time flies when you are having fun!

Reading:

I have visited the library several times this summer, and the book store more times than I should admit. I get so busy during the school year, that I feel like I go months without reading a new book. I have greatly enjoyed catching up on my reading.

I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE Janet Evanovich! After catching up on her Stephanie Plum novels, I moved on to her Wicked series. She has two books in this series so far, but I hope there will be more soon. These novels are silly and make me laugh my head off. A little bit of magic, hilarious characters, and a monkey make me not able to put the books down.

I love books that are part of a series, so I randomly picked up Bared to You when I was at Hastings one day. There are three books in this Crossfire series, though a fourth is set to come out sometime in the future. Once I started reading this book, I could not stop. I had to go back to the bookstore two days later and get the other two books. If you liked Fifty Shades of Grey then you might really enjoy this series. The books present a love story of two very complicated characters with a whole lot of border line too steamy parts. This series has me rooting for the two characters to find their happily ever after...

Summer School:

Summer School started last week. I am teaching Vocabulary. I have forty minutes every day to teach Vocabulary!  I have been using the Reading Olympians to teach Greek and Latin roots, prefixes, and suffixes.

 

 

This is the first time I have used The Reading Olympians system, but I am really liking it so far. This is kind of my test run before I start using it this school year.

 

I have also pulled in some fun games like Blurt and Apples to Apples. They love these games and are quick and easy to use once they know how to play them. I have also introduced using vocabulary cartoons to learn a new word every day. We are not using the premade ones, but are making our own to go with the novel they are reading in another class.They really enjoy making these cartoons.

 

I have never had this much time in my day to focus on just vocabulary. If you have any cool activities you use to teach vocabulary, I would LOVE for you to share them with me!

 

Well, my time for some random catching up is over. Hope your week and summer are going great!





Must Read Mentor Texts: George Washington's Socks

Today I'm linking up with the Collaboration Cuties- Must Read Mentor Texts. I'm super excited because this week is Social Studies Mentor Texts. Since I started teaching Reading last year, I have found tons of books to use in Reading that fit perfectly with what we are studying in Social Studies.

One of my favorites that my students just finished a few weeks ago is George Washington's Socks by Elvira Woodruff. In this book a group of kids travel back in time and wind up right in the middle of the American Revolution.

My students love that is isn't just a simple Historical Fiction, but has an element of Fantasy with the time travel.

This book does have a second book called George Washington's Spy about the same group of kids. One of the activities I have my students do with this book is to create an idea for another book for this same adventure club. They have to pick an event we have learned about in class, create a short plot, and a title for their new book.

 

I love the teacher and student guides that came with the novels. They have activities, comprehension questions, and vocabulary study from the novel.

 

 

 

I number all my novels I use in class, and the students have to use their number. It helps so much in tracking down who has each of my books.

I would greatly recommend this book for any wanting to get kids interested in novels about history.

Genre Tweets

I saw an idea on Pinterest for a classroom Twitter board. I loved the idea of incorporating "Twitter" into my classroom. I decided to give my Twitter board a theme: Genre. One of our school's lowest reading areas is Genre, so I thought it would be perfect. The students are required to submit at least one Genre Tweet a nine weeks. I also allowed them to submit more for extra credit. They loved being able to make up their own names to tweet under. They tweet had to include the name of the book, genre, and why. All correct tweets with all three items included were posted.

 

 

Our Genre Tweets board is in our hallway so the 4th, 5th, and 6th grade classes get to see it. By having it in the hall more kids are getting to see it and hopefully learn something. I love anything that gets them excited and talking about books.

Lesson Learned:
Next year I think I'll make it open to all grades to tweet on it. I will also try to update it more often.

Marveling at Main Idea

I just found this post that I wrote back in September and only saved as a draft, I think I hoped to include some pics, but I think it's time to post it. Better late than never?

Main Idea

This week my major reading focus was on Main Idea. After deciding that what I did last year would simply not do, I went on a search for new ideas. I came across the best idea at the Little Literacy Learners blog. This wonderful gem gives you the instructions to do the lesson and the worksheet she used with it. I used this lesson to "introduce" main idea to my fifth graders. By fifth grade most students have a clue what main idea is, but have a terrible time identifying it in their reading. We did the lunch bag activity as a class. I also had several other bags made up. They then worked with partners to examine two other bags. After that I took it a step further and had the kids use their bag organizer to write a paragraph about the bag. Most students simply used the main idea as their topic sentence and the supporting details to create their other sentences. However, I had some who really got into the creative writing side. These students took the same main idea and supporting details and created a story about the day the bag was used. I was pleasantly surprised how creative some of their stories were.

The second Main Idea lesson I did was based off an idea I got from an anchor chart on Sub Hub. I designed a Main Idea House worksheet. The students then read a biography from our Social Studies textbook and had to complete the house. For the first house, I gave the students the main idea. They then had to read the text to find details that would support that main idea. This took some trial and error, but I think most of them caught on pretty fast. For the other three houses I gave the students the person's name and page number. My thought was that they would create their own main idea, and then list their details that support it. I quickly realized that they were nowhere near ready for this step. I will definitely do this activity again next year, but I will make sure to give them the main idea or use shorter passages so there is less information to sort through. Even though the lesson didn't quite go the way I wanted it to, I do feel like the kids are starting to grasp the concept. This looks like a topic I will need to revisit several times throughout the year.