Five For Friday

Hey there everyone!  Yep, we are still here.  Nope, we didn’t fall off the planet.  We have had the most amazing summer packed full of family time. Isn’t that the way it is supposed to be? Well…okay…we might have squeezed in a few school and teaching things, too.  After all, that’s what teachers do, right?  We’re checking in today with our “What we did this summer”  Five For Friday report. Thank you Doodle Bugs Teaching for hosting!

We kicked off summer this year by flying down to Texas to attend the amazing “Get Your Teach On” conference with Hope King, Amy Lemons, Deanna Jump and Cara Carroll.  What an amazing experience!  We were so inspired!  Click HERE to read about some of our big take aways. And bonus….it just happened to be 30 minutes from my son, daughter-in-law, and grandson’s house!  So we got to have some wonderful family time, too!

Next up on our summer family adventures, was a wonderful trip to the ocean.  We live on the Puget Sound, but we also spend several weekends a year on the coast at the ocean.  We had such a great time, even though Lindsey and the grandbabies almost got eaten by a giant shark!  I keep trying to tell her….don’t go in the shark’s house!  Daughter’s never listen.  Shakin’ my head. Ha!

The B.E.S.T. thing of the entire summer happened next.  My son, daughter-in-law and grandson flew up from Texas to surprise Great Grandma…aka G.G!  Boy was she surprised to see her great grandson at the door!  The best surprise ever!

And of course since the family was up from Texas, we HAD to go to a Mariner’s game to remind them that the Texas Rangers are nothing compared to the Mariners!  The weather was perfect and the Mariner’s won….so take that Texas Rangers. Ha! We also went to Eastern Washington to watch my husband and my son race.  So much fun!

Well the time came when the family had to go back to Texas…sad face….so we got right to work to distract ourselves, and made two new reading sets for the upcoming school year.  If you are like us, you want to get to know your new students as readers right away.  Our official assessments sometimes aren’t finished until October.  Well we just don’t have a whole month to waste by not knowing our students as readers, so we made our Back to School set.  It has leveled passages for levels A – I/ DRA A – 16, activities to go with, and a Quick Check checklist you can use when you listen to your new students read. It is PERFECT for getting kids up to speed with their reading in those first few weeks of school.  Also, because we’ve had such great feedback on our Ready, Set, Go-Guided Reading Set 1 (texts are also leveled for A – I), and LOTS of requests for more, we made our Ready, Set, Go – Guided Reading Set 2.  We can’t wait to use them this year. To learn more about our guided reading sets and how we use them, click HERE.  If you want to check them out in our store, just click on the pictures.

That’s all for now from the beautiful Pacific Northwest!  We are off to check out your Five For Friday posts to see what you all have been up to.  Then…it’s down to the beach, because we still have 2 weeks of summer vacation left.  Woot, woot!

Smiles,