Time to Catch Up

Where has the time gone?!? About a week and a half ago we said we had another major announcment... sorry to leave you hanging!

I'm having a baby!!! Lots of big news on my end this year.  My students are beyond excited! Every day I find sticky notes on my desk with potential baby names.

In the mist of wedding and baby planning I am managing to get some teaching in! hehe... Thanks to my two lovely sisters, of course.

We have our bat unit under way. We have to say we are very excited about this unit because it was our launch into TPT. It's our first Sister Secrets "baby" if you will! Check it out if you're interested in studying bats this year. Here's a writing craftivity from the unit.

We are also starting our Halloween inspired activities and lessons. Today our cuties began rough drafts of scary stories... look for pictures of the finished projects soon! We also have been enjoying Halloween Bump! in our Math Menu rotations. You can grab a year of bump here, for free!

This week we've been doing all sorts of visualizing. It's one of my favorite strategies! Yesterday, I read See the Ocean.. it's such a sweet story. I stopped about half way through and had the kiddies go back to their desk and draw what they saw when they heard the words on the page, in their Daily 5 Notebooks.  Then we did a gallery walk. Here are a few of their visualizations!

And finally the highlight of last week was a visit from Big Boy! Our students had written resturant letters a few weeks ago and Big Boy wrote back saying they wanted to bring an ice cream sundae treat to ALL of us! 90 ice cream sundaes!! Such sticky fun. :)

I'm off to meet a contractor... we're wanting to renovate the bathroom. Wish me luck!
-Sister 3-

Reading Strategies

Daily 5 is our favorite time of the day.  We like to save it for the afternoon because it's such a relaxing way to end the day.  

We have taught many strategies from the CAFE Menu but I'd have to say that making connections was a big hit! We read various picture books throughout the week and talked about how we can make meaningful connections to each.  The kiddies were able to practice by making personal connections, sharing with a partner, with the class, and also writing them down in their Daily 5 Notebook.  To conclude the week we made this cute connections chain... We all wrote down one connection to Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day and linked them together.

Need a quick lesson on visualizing? Try this... Read this poem to your class, without telling them the title, and ask them to draw a picture of what they "see."  Once everyone has their picture complete, do a "Gallery Walk."  This means the kids walk around and look at everyone else's pictures.  Invite them to share some similarities and differences between the pictures and explain why they drew their picture the way they did.  Next, tell them the title and read the poem again. Pass out a small copy of the poem to everyone.  They can glue this in their notebook and then draw a new visualization.  Our classes were so surprised to know that the poem was really about a PENCIL!

      

 

We'd love to hear how you teach the strategies in your classrooms!