Five for Friday!!

Yippee Skippee, it’s Friday again!  Oh how I love you, Friday my friend!  Here’s a Five for Friday update with a giant thank you to Kacey at Doodle Bugs Teaching for hosting our favorite linky party!

This week started off with the sweetest surprise from a little kiddle that I work with!  She made me this beautiful birthday card!  Hallmark has nothing on a handmade card by a child, right?  This shall sit on my desk for the rest of the year!  It makes me smile every day!

You know spring is here when…….your oldest grandbaby plays her first ever T-ball game!  T-ball is my most favorite sport EVER because it is so hilarious to watch, and to have our oldest grandbaby playing…well that is just the best!  Never you mind that she played shadow tag out in center field for a good part of the game, or that she is still practicing her professional stance….check that stance out in the pic!  I mean they are only 4, for goodness sake! AND evidently her little brother, our youngest grandbaby, is going to be a professional sports photographer!  Oh yeah…he’s practicing that already!

And in groups this week?  GLAD strategies abound!  They aren’t just great for ELLs, they’re great for EVERY learner.  First up this week, we used the Picture Card strategy with second graders to learn vocabulary, think about how things are connected, and predict what we might be reading about! (Fighting Fires)   The kiddles LOVE this strategy and I am always amazed how it develops language and vocabulary almost better than anything we’ve ever used at our school…with apologies to Mr. Marzano.  Eek!

The second GLAD strategy we were using was the Key Word strategy.  We use this all the time, but this week it was for the word “opinion.”  Firsties are working on that CCSS this month, so we are practicing in group too!  Here are two of the firsties using their hand signals while saying the definition….”opinon – how you think or feel about something.”  We say it to the ceiling, we say it to the floor, we say it to the teacher, we say it to the door!  Another great strategy for helping to learn vocabulary!

Now I’m off to prep for Earth Day!  Ginsey is ready, are you?  If not, we have a freebie for you!  You can get a copy of our Earth Day Leveled Passages set here.  Go get it and you’ll be ready for guided reading groups next week!

Have a great weekend everyone!

Smiles,