Daily 5 and CAFE

Okay, I have a question for you!  I've heard sooo many good great things about Daily 5 that I have to wonder about using it in my classroom.

     

So here's my question...my school uses the Scott Foresman Reading Street series.  Could I still do the daily 5 or parts of it with my basal?  Do you have a series and use the daily 5 with it? 

I've seen a few blogs that are having book studies on these two books this summer, and I'm really thinking about joining in.  I just want to make sure I can incorporate it into my reading class.  One of those blogs, We Read, We Blog, We Teach is brand new, and this is the first of many book studies they will have!  A few great blogs are giving away a copy of each book, so if you're planning to participate and don't have your books yet, go check out Lessons with Laughter, Corkboard Connections, and Adventures of a Sixth Grade Teacher!

 

Owl Things First and Fun in 1st Grade are having a giveaway too...a totally awesome 80's giveaway!  And I love it!  They're celebrating 80 followers!  I have just over 80 now, and it's exciting stuff!  Go over and enter on each of their blogs!  

So, back to my question...help me out...

is the daily 5 something I could do with our basal?

Technology in the Classroom

I'm linking up today with 3-6 Free Resources and Run! Miss Nelson's Got the Camera to tell you about my favorite websites and you tube videos to use in the classroom!

Websites for the Classroom

1. I love using Wallwisher with my kids!  Teachers can create an account for free and create walls.  Students can post short messages on the wall on "sticky notes".  You can set it so that you have to approve each post before it shows up on the wall.  The best part is, they don't have to remember any log-in info!  I used this to have the kids post short reviews of the chapter books they read.  Here's a screen shot of one of those walls!

2. We use Spelling City at my school, and my students use it at home, so it has to be on the list!  We can add our weekly spelling lists to the site and the kids can practice by playing games at school or at home!

3. Waltke's Web is a great website for teachers who use the Scott Foresman Reading Street Series!  There are lots of resources to print and use and links to websites that are related to the stories.

You Tube Videos for the Classroom

1. "The Tale of Mr. Morton" and all of the other School House Rock videos!  I love School House Rock, and my kids really like it too!  "The Tale of Mr. Morton" is a video we watched about subjects and predicates.

2. The "Helping Verbs Song" and similar videos!  Near the beginning of the year, we learned this song and sang it while we were learning about helping verbs.  Then we made our own video.  My kids still remembered it and could sing it in May!!

3. The History Teachers have some great videos for older students (high school or maybe middle school), but I just had to include one!  They take popular songs and change the lyrics to tell about historical events and people!  Definitely not suitable for my little kids!  Here is a video about Henry VIII!

Go over to  3-6 Free Resources and Run! Miss Nelson's Got the Camera to link up!  And don't forget to enter my giveaway!  Just a few days left!

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!

Getting Artsy

Our third graders just read Elena's Serenade from our Basal.  It's a story about a little girl from Mexico who wants to be a glassblower even though everyone, including her papa, thinks only men can be glassblowers.  She doesn't let being young and a girl stand in her way, and she follows her dreams!

I saw the perfect opportunity for an art project to go along with our story and began searching for ideas.  I found some great art teachers' blogs and ultimately found our project at Miss Oetken's blog ARTASTIC!  We didn't have any of the Graphix Shrink Sheet or anywhere in our small town to buy it so we went with the plastic punch cups.

After taking our reading test for the week we watched two videos about glassblowing.  First, we watched a PBS Kids video telling and showing us how glassblowing is done.  As if that wasn't amazing enough for my kiddos, we then watched a video about renowned artist Dale Chihuly.  We saw many of his famous pieces such as a tree in New York City's Botanical Gardens and explored his website looking at more examples of his art, like the ceiling of the Bellagio in Las Vegas!  They were truly in awe!

The kids wrote a paragraph about Elena and her glassblowing.  Then they wrote a paragraph about Dale Chihuly's work and made sure to use lots of adjectives and descriptive writing!  Finally they wrote about and drew what they would make if they were glassblowers and could make their own piece of art.  Fast forward to after lunch and each student gets to decorate a clear punch cup with colorful permanent markers.  I popped them into the toaster oven on broil for a few seconds to make our "glass sculptures".  They turned out great and the kids absolutely loved it!  Take a look at a few of our finished projects!

I'm so thankful to Miss Oetken for sharing this wonderful idea!  I think this is a keeper for next year too!  Have any of you ever done this or a similar project in your classes?  Our kids don't get to have an art class at my school so if you have any great ideas for incorporating art into the regular classroom please share!

Now, on a side note, make sure that you head over to Stellar Students and check out her 200 follower giveaway!  She's choosing 2 winners when her giveaway ends on Monday, April 30, at midnight to win items from her TPT store and more.  Click on her button below to go to her giveaway post!