Five for Friday!!

Happy Friday Teacher Friends!   Kristin here…….

It’s time again to link up with Doodlebugs Teaching for some Five for Friday fun!  Don’t you just love keeping up with teacher friends around the world to see what they’ve been up to each week?  So fun! 

Yay!  Yippee…and Yahoo!   F.I.N.A.L.L.Y. testing is about done and our intervention groups will soon be starting!  Can’t wait to get reading with the kiddos again!  Sooooo….this week it was all about getting ready.

Here are some of my Data Notebooks.  I’m putting in the students’ assessment pages and such for my new groups.  Here is one version of the phonics assessment we use for a student we have served for a few years now.  He’s making great progress as you can tell by the crossed out words!  Love this assessment!  If you want a copy of a similar one, you can grab it here.

“Glossing”…..what do ya think about that term?  I think it’s pretty cool!  No…..it doesn’t me “the art of putting on one’s lip gloss”….although that would be cool too and would fit me to a T!  It is a term that Dr. Mary Howard taught us when she visited the district…and basically means to skim read a text thoroughly and make notations in the margins!  Hah! Check!  Teachers are awesome at that!  But the littles……well how can they do that when we give them library books, classroom books, or other texts and tell them DON’T EVEN THINK ABOUT writing in them in any way, shape or form?  Enter….ta da…..Brain Notes!   Genius and why didn’t I think of that?  You probably already did, but I didn’t.  The idea is that you give them a blank book mark that they can move from page to page, book to book, etc. and write their notes on it!  They can take it home, keep it for reference, and doodle on it! Okay..just kidding about the doodling…maybe…kinda…sorta kidding. Another way to use them is to run on cardstock and put sticky notes on them. Reusable and saves copies…which is an issue at our school.  Check it out!  LOVE this idea!

Speaking of Glossing…….I’m glossing an oldie but goody to remind myself of all the wisdom in it! This book has so much wisdom in it that I just pretty much want to memorize the whole thing. You can tell if a book is a goody by the number of sticky notes in it and by the wrinkled “oops I spilled tea on it” pages, right???  It’s a MUST, MUST, MUST read! 

Here’s another MUST read-every-year to kiddos, book!  Do you know it?  The wolf gets tricked because he can’t read!  A VERY good way to get the message across about the importance of reading well!  Best of all…it’s pretty hilarious and all the kiddos from K-5 enjoy the humor…..and their teacher does too.  Last time I checked it was on Abebooks.com.  Side note – Abebooks.com is THE best place to get cheap books for your classroom! 

Continuing the theme of getting it ready…..here are some of our Fall Leveled Passages that I am getting ready for groups.  They are just awesome for close reading, reading practice at the “just right” level, vocabulary building….AND all while supporting the themes you do in your classroom anyway!  These are “can’t live without” things for my reading groups!  And GOOD NEWS!  Our second Fall passages set called “Perfectly Autumn” will be available this weekend! 

That’s it from Washington!  Hope you all had a FABULOUS week and that you have an even better weekend!   Happy Teaching!