A little bit of this, a little bit of that...

We have been learning so much this last month that I just wanted to share a few things from our classroom's neck of the woods. 

We just recently finished up a unit on South Carolina Geography and Regions. One of the activities we did was a circle graphic organizer to help us learn about types of communities. This picture is from the first slide of the flipchart I made. 

Click the image to download the flipchart. (I've never linked to a flipchart file before so I don't know if this will work. If you don't have Activ Inspire Promethean or SMARTboard software on your computer, it will not open.) I realize that not everyone learns about South Carolina, but you can just change it to suit your own needs.

Here are some pictures of the kids completed circle graphics. 

(I just love Francisco's corn! HA!)

I am also giving you the circle graphic organizer to download!  Just click the image below for access to the file.

In writing, we have been doing descriptive writing. I was visiting Abby's blog, the Inspired Apple some time ago and came across her Pop Rockin' Descriptive Writing mini unit and I thought it would be a fun thing to do in honor of Halloween. I purchased the unit, which you can buy, here.  

Here are some pictures of what we have done so far! First, we talked about what adjectives were and I gave students the pop rocks and adjectives sheet. They tasted the pop rocks and wrote down adjectives to describe the experience. 

This is definitely my favorite picture. Just imagine you him laughing hysterically...This little guy was hilarious!  

Can you guess what flavor she had?? =)

Clearly these little cuties have never had pop rocks before! I just love their faces! 

Then we made this class chart to close the lesson.

The next day, we learned what a simile was and we made this anchor chart. 

The students then went back to their seats and completed this simile sheet.

If you like the materials, please visit Abby's TPT store and snag your copy! Your kids will love it and YOU! 

In Math, we have been doing subtraction with regrouping. Today, we played this spinner game. I had my students work with a partner, but this would also be a good individual activity. Just have the student use a paper clip and pencil to use the spinner. First, they spin a top number, then a bottom number and just subtract or add. 

Here is the copy of the spinner. Just click the image to download. 

Needless to say, we have been having tons of fun learning these last few weeks! 

More to come soon!

Reading Workshop Book Recommendation

I have only about an hour to conduct Reading Workshop in my classroom and I have been finding it hard to squeeze in Independent Reading and Guided Reading groups, and still have time left over for individual student conferences. 

I am also noticing that several students are having a hard time completing their weekly letters and book recommendations on time. So, I decided to split the class and have half do their letters one week, and then the other half the next. That will give each group two weeks. I also don't have the time to be writing 20 letters each week...

Another change I decided to make today so that students are correctly completing book recommendations is to have students fill out a prompted sheet with information to fill in about the book they wish to recommend. I am also requiring that these be due every two weeks. Here is the book recommendation I created.

This is the first year our school is doing Reading Workshop so I have been learning an awful lot about what both my students and I can handle being that this is all new to everyone! The good news is that next year, students will already be familiar with the program! I am hopeful that it will really change the way our students think about reading while also improving students' reading! 

I would love any recommendations or ideas you may have for conducting Reading Workshop in your classrooms! Leave some love!

Need some Halloween-spiration?

This is just a reminder that my Halloween Linky Party is still going on through the end of the month! There are tons of great activities linked up, so go check it out! I have been seeing a ton of great Halloween ideas and activities around the blog world, so if you have something, free or not, I encourage you to go link up! 

Click the icon to visit the link!

Properties of Addition Activity

We worked on properties of addition last week. We talked about the three properties and to help them remember, I taught the kids that the Commutative property could also be called the flip flop rule because the numbers just flip around and you still get the same sum. 

To help them remember Associative, we talked about the word "associate" and how it can mean partner or buddy. We called this rule the buddy rule because the parentheses make the numbers have a partner or buddy. 

For the Identity rule, we called it the Me rule because these numbers don't like change! They like being themselves. So, when you add zero to a number, this is exactly what happens. The number doesn't change, it stays the same! 

To to help my students practice, I made this little game/activity. All that is required is a set of three dice per child and copies of this sheet! 

I am currently working on our next science unit on Animal and Plant Adaptations. Stay tuned in the coming weeks for the finished product! 

Parent Conference Pack!

I have been meaning to post the parent conference resources that I use in my classroom all week, but just haven't had time due to other posting! 

The pack includes a parent conference guide to fill out during the conference, a parent conference reminder slip in English and in Spanish, and a missed conference slip in English and in Spanish. Click the first image to download the entire pack!

Important Note: You will need to have the following fonts on your computer in order for it to look this way:

Pea Shelley Belley
CK Higgins Handprint
CK Fill In
Kindergarten
Jokerman
ABC Print

Let me know if you have any suggestions for improvement or what ideas for things you do for fall conferences! I would love to hear them!