Five for Friday Linky Party

I know it's saturday but that's ok! I still want to share about my week with you. 

# 1

Graduate School is taking over my life and I haven't had time to blog in the last two weeks which is why I'm blogging twice today! But I will say that I have been learning so much and I get so excited every week when I am reading and learning. I also getting super pumped to try new ideas with my students. 

# 2

I officially started my 1st vocabulary cycle with my students this week. I read the book "Word Nerds: Teaching All Students to Learn and Love Vocabulary" this past summer and got my inspiration from it. I absolutely love this book and approach to vocabulary. So far my students seem very engaged in the vocabulary activities. It has taken much longer than I anticipated to introduce the words but I think once the students get used to it things will go quicker. If you want more information on this book, this blogger had a book study on it this summer. 

# 3

I started my own TPT store two weeks ago and just made another product. Come check out my new product and store! I am pumped to use these task cards with my math group. I have been trying out Daily Math this year and plan on using them during my "Math with Someone" time. I love Daily Math as much as I love Daily 5. So if you have been nervous to jump into Daily Math just take a leap of faith and try it. You will get great results. I don't know how I managed to get by before without it!

# 4

We started to work on making observations in writer's workshop on Friday and my students were really getting into it. They were walking around the room smelling, touching, and listening to objects and people all around the room. I loved seeing them working with their partner to describe things around the room. I got this idea from the book "Notebook Know-How" by Aimee Buckner. It's great for setting up writer's notebooks and getting students interested in writing. Another book I'm beginning to pull lessons from is called "Study Driven". I have to read it for grad school and it is changing the way I look at writing. It says you should teach writing from an inquiry stance. And so far I am trying to do that with my students and implement what I'm reading into my classroom. For example: for students to be able to revise a paper they first need a vision. But they can't have a vision without good intentions and passion! Wow that's deep! If only I knew this when I was in school! Maybe I would have liked writing more!

# 5

Lastly, I did this AMAZING activity on the first day of school. But I have just now added the pictures to my computer. We had a "Book Tasting"!!!!!!! It was so much fun! We asked our media coordinator to help us out and she went over and beyond what we expected. She got table cloths, genre signs, cookies, and hot chocolate. The kids spent about 3-4 minutes at each table to "taste" a book. It really exposed them to all the different genres and gave them an idea of what books they want to read this year. I would strongly suggest doing this to introduce the different genres. My students loved it!

I hope everyone enjoys the rest of their weekend!

Thanks for tuning in this week! I love comments and new followers!!

~Susan

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Now that I'm back in the blog world...... I figured I should join Bloglovin so that I could follow all my favorite bloggers out there. Here's the link to follow my blog as well!

On to Five for Friday...... I know I am a couple days late but I figured better late than never! 

1. I have been having a very crafty sunday and am super ready for fall! It's my FAVORITE season! So I decided I would try to make a wreath for our front door. I feel pretty good about it. What do you think? 

2. I bought the book "Have You Filled a Bucket Today?" this summer and wanted to try it out with my students. It went very well this past week. The students were all giving each other compliments and filling each others buckets. This is my bulletin board where students can actually "fill" their bucket.

3. Let me start off by saying that this year I am teaching the "low" math group in 4th grade. Boy, it is quite a difficult class. There are 14 students in this class but 9 of them are E.C. I do get the E.C. teacher for an hour and our fourth grade assistant but it is still a challenging adventure. So far they seem like very sweet kids and I'm excited to work with them.With that said, I found this resource on TPT and laminated it. I am going to use these next week to practice writing numbers in different forms. This group needs lots of repetition and this is just the activity for them! 

http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Place-Value-Picnic-Freebie-292077

4. I have started my own TPT store this weekend! I'm super pumped! I have already put up four products this weekend. I hope to continue to make some throughout the year. Come on over and check them out. 

http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Store/Adventures-In-Fourth-Grade

Here are some samples of the resources I have made!

If you have any tips for me, I would greatly appreciate it! :)

5. On Friday, I introduced my class to "Fluency Friday". What is Fluency Friday? you ask. Well every Friday I break my students up into groups and we work on reader's theaters. We practice every Friday for the whole month. Then on the last Friday of the month we perform the play. I have four rotations so that I can work with each group. 

~Read to Self

~Work on Writing

~Making Words

~Teacher Time

This week during Work on Writing I had my students write a story about the picture below. 

I can't wait to read what they came up with. Normally I would let them share but we were running short on time.

Well that's all I have for now! Catch ya on the flip side :)