My Summer To-Do's and a Giveaway

Summer has arrived!  Sort of...I'm still packing up my classroom for our big move.  I did take a couple days off last week and went out of town for the weekend, but it's back to work this morning!  Back to cardboard and packing tape and stacks and stacks of boxes....

I have a lot of plans for this summer to make the next school year even better, and I thought the best thing to do was blog about them!  Accountability, you know?  So here goes...

Summer To-Do's

1. Make my plans for writer's workshop!  We wrote so much more this year than last year.  However, I want my kids to write something every day!  So next year, I want to do writer's workshop in my classroom!  I really wanted to this year, but just didn't get to it last summer with the class I was taking...excuses, right?  Anyway, I have already been reading up about it and taking my notes!  Corinna from Surfin' Through Second left me a sweet comment with a couple of suggestions for good resources on my last blog post too!

2. Create materials for Flat Stanley literature circles and a unit to go with Muggie Maggie which I hope we can get!  My kids this year loved chapter books and I hope know my kids next year will too!  We'll be reading Flat Stanley by Jeff Brown as a class next year (we did that one this year too), and then doing literature circles using some of Flat Stanley's Worldwide Adventures.  I'm hoping we can get a class set of Muggie Maggie by Beverly Cleary for next year because that book is just too cute!  If you haven't heard of it before, it's about a little girl (Maggie) in 3rd grade who does NOT want to learn to write in cursive.  When she tries writing her name in cursive, her teacher says it looks more like "Muggie" than "Maggie" so she decides she will never read or write in cursive.  But then Maggie is appointed class messenger and suspects that some of the cursive notes are about her...how will she solve that problem??  It's a super cute book, for my third graders especially, because we work on cursive!

3.   Design a class website & new labels and beginning of the year activities to go with our new theme for next year.  Our elementary school decided to use a school-wide theme, so I'll be decorating with tie-dye, peace signs, hearts, and smiley faces.  Our 2012-2013 school year theme is Peace, Love, & Dogs (our mascot).  Any great ideas floating around out there to go with our new theme?

4.   Create units, centers, and activities for math and cross-curricular journal prompts for reading!  I want to develop lots of fun and useful activities to supplement our math series this year and make our learning even more hands-on!  I've already started working on a place value unit!  For reading, I'm working on cross-curricular journal prompts.  They will each include sentences with grammatical and/or spelling errors, and those sentences just happen to be math problems, gasp!  Aren't they always so shocked the first time they see a math problem in reading?  I have the prompts for the first week ready and for free download in my TPT store.  We use the Scott Foresman Reading Street series, so this set of prompts goes with the story Boom Town by Sonia Levitin.  If you use Reading Street as well, I'd love to know what you think about the prompts as I finish up the first unit!

5.   Get organized...as much as I can in the midst of the move!  I am trying to pack smarter and put together the things that I will need to be together.  I have lots and lots of pins on pinterest about organizing your classroom.  My mom even has some pinned for me...she knows my weakness!  So this summer I want to scour through those and get some ideas for my room!

I think that's a pretty good start...Wish me luck!  If you have any suggestions I'd love to hear them, and remember, if you have any feedback on the Boom Town journal prompts please let me know what you think!  Come back tomorrow for a post about writing in my classroom (what worked this year and what I'll try next year)! 

Before I leave and head to work this morning, I'm checking out Jen's awesome giveaway at Hello Mrs. Sykes!  You should too!  She has reached 200 followers and is saying thanks by teaming up with some other great bloggers to give away lots of items from their TPT and TN stores!  Make your way over to her blog and enter to win! 

Happy Monday!  

Hope you have a  great week ahead!

Changes and Chapters!

We took a two week vacation from our reading series recently! Rather than continuing with our weekly story and same ol', same ol' routine, as a class we read a chapter book. I chose "Sideways Stories from Wayside School" by Louis Sachar for my reading group! Mrs. Gorf's apple antics and all of the other humorous characters had my kids hooked from the beginning! Over a two week period we read the book aloud, built our comprehension and improved our extended response answers with questions about each chapter, learned many new vocabulary words and built our dictionary skills, and completed a writing task at the end of the book.

Special thanks are due to The Teaching Bank for their novel units from Teachers Pay Teachers. This was the first novel for both my students and I, and needless to say I wasn't sure exactly where to start. The unit I purchased from The Teaching Bank really helped me know where to start with this chapter book and saved me quite a bit of time too!

Of course I added to the materials I purchased! Each of my kiddos wrote a 31st chapter for the book with themselves as the main character! In my reading group we've really been trying to work on reflecting on our own work and helping our classmates edit their work. So, with that in mind, I created a peer review and self-assessment checklist. In addition to that, I created a teacher assessment rubric to evaluate the students' work based on criteria that we have been working on in class. I also created a simple exit slip or bell ringer with an answer space similar to what will be on the KPREP test.

Peer Editing and Self Assessment Checklist

Sideways Stories From Wayside School - Ch. 31 Writing Assignment Rubric

Sideways Stories from Wayside School Exit Slip or Bell Ringer With KPrep Template

My kids have loved reading this chapter book and were so upset that they didn't get to read another one this week! They moaned and groaned when I told them to bring their text book to class on Monday. But I love how much they loved it! Hopefully someone out there can use these documents!

Check out Adventures of a Third Grade Teacher for an amazing giveaway!  She'll draw for a winner this Wednesday at 8 PM so hurry on over and don't miss your chance to win everything from her TPT store!





I would love, love, love to read another chapter book with my class soon! At the very least, we will be reading more of them next year! What chapter books have you read with your classes? Any recommendations for my 3rd graders?

I've linked up with "Manic Mondays" at Classroom Freebies! Head over for a look at lots and lots of great blogs all offering you freebies!