I am so excited to start our newest novel Sign of the Beaver on Tuesday.  I loved reading this book when I was in school and my boys are already so excited about it.  Since the STAAR Reading test has come and gone, yippee, I now have more time to do novel studies.  This was the first year that "The Test" had me stressed, since we didn't exactly know what to expect.  I am making a promise to myself right now that I will not slack off on novels studies around "The Test" time.  I am reevaluating and re innovating my novel studies so that there is even more higher level thinking than before.  I am also going to try and infuse more writing aspects into them.  (I heard I will only teach Reading and Writing next year, so I am trying to get a head start. No more Social Studies... YIPPEE!! Darn it!)


Enough of that.. I hope everyone has an awesome weekend! (Come out sun, I need some pool time!)  I will post some activities we are doing with the novel next week and if you have any ideas on things for me to add let me know!
5th Grade Rocks, 5th Grade Rules  is having a survey linky party... I am linking up and so should you!! So head on over...


Here goes...

1. Are you married, do you have a bf, or are you flying free as a single lady/man?

Flying Free!! :)

2. Where did you grow up?
the big town of Sweeny, Texas

3. Do you have any pets? If so, what kind and what is his/her name?
None, but I LOVE my sister's dog Monty

4. What is a favorite tv show you are embarrassed to admit to watching?
I love reality shows, but especially Mob Wives... yeah, I know.  lol!


5. Are you a saver or a spender?
I'm a spender, but I'm on a budget right now...

6. What is your favorite children's book?
Too Many Tamales

7. Were you the class clown, teacher's pet, or neither?
I could be both... it depended on what day of the week it was. lol!

8. Who is your favorite athletic team?
the Houston Texans and my Baylor Bears!

9. Where did you go on your last REALLY fun vacation?
The Frio River.. I go there EVERY summer! :)

10. Who is your favorite actor? Actress?
I don't really have one...

11. Tell about the last time you cried because you were happy.
Hanging out with my bro and sis and we laughed so hard we cried... they are good people!


12. What is your favorite season?
Football season... just kidding! not really though.  I love summer... I am a pool and beach kinda girl.

13. What is your biggest regret?
Not organizing things as I go ALL the time... I am quite particular about things, but can also be a procrastinator.

14. What food do you just NOT like at all?
Onions.. ewww!!! I can't stand the smell or taste of them!


LAST BUT NOT LEAST FOR MY TEACHER BLOG....

15. Who was your most memorable teacher, and why?
Mrs. Smith, my 4th grade teacher... she is the only teacher who I can remember having fun educational experiences with.  (I interviewed in my hometown when I first graduated and she sat in on the interview.... that was interesting!)
Well, we have our obnoxious lovely state testing beginning tomorrow for my 5th graders.  Tuesday is Math and Wednesday is Reading.  I wanted to do something fun today that would also be a review, so we are going to be playing SCOOT!  This is definitely NOT something I came up with... I found it somewhere on the Internet several years ago and have been using it ever since.  Basically, I read aloud an old TAKS passage to my students and we discussed it and did the strategies that we usually do.  Then, I put a question at each desk in my class. Each question is numbered from 1-25 and they are in numerical order of course.  The students answer the question at their desk and when I say SCOOT! They move to the next question/desk.  This is a quite simple review activity and my students love it!  I think they just really enjoy the moving around.... :)  I know that there are SCOOT! recording sheets out there, but I just have my students use notebook paper... seems silly to waste use copy in that way.

P.S. - I used my TAKS Busters book for this activity.  This book has several stories, but each story has about 30-40 questions to go with it and they are sorted by TEK... this made it easy for me to pick questions/TEKS that the students need more review on.  (This is what the cover looks like except mine in the 5th grade version.  This is the best $40 I've ever spent.)


Hope everyone else has a Marvelous Monday!!!  (Ugh... I just thought about having to cover my room this afternoon! lol.)
So... our fabulous state test, the STAAR test, doesn't it just sound glamorous. Lol!  I got an idea from Lindsay at My Life as a Fifth Grade Teacher.  My students have talked with me about struggling with inferencing and drawing conclusions, so I decided to have a fun reteach/review activity on this lovely Friday.

I had the 2 other teachers in my pod bring in bags with items that would help describe them.  So.. the students had three bags filled with items and their jobs was to travel as a group to each bag and make inferences about the person that the bag belonged to.  I didn't even give them any clues at to who had given the bags to me... I must admit that I was trying to trick throw them off.  After they had gone to every bag, we came back together as a class and discussed some of the inferences they had made.   I must admit that some of my kiddos are quite clever! :)  Finally I revealed that the bags belonged to their 3 teachers and had them infer, based on what was in the bags and what they had learned about us this year, who the bags belonged to. 

They thought that this activity was awesome... When they left my class, the math teacher said she had to spend the first 5 minutes talking about her bag.  Cha-ching!! Success!!

I have to idea how to attach documents, but here is a picture of the sheet they turned in for a grade.  Let me know if you would like me to email you a copy! :)  - Thanks to Amber from Adventures of a Third Grade Teacher I have now uploaded the document to google.... so download away!! :)  




Hope everyone has a fantastic weekend and I am ready to watch my Baylor Bears tear it up in some basketball tonight and this weekend.... Sic' Em Bears!! :)
Ok ok ok... I know I said that I was going to post Saturday and to be honest things were crazy... My flight from Florida came in late Friday night and then I had to turn around and head to San Antonio the very next day for my cousin's wedding.  I am totally exhausted right now, but I can sleep this weekend, right?

Astros Spring Training in Florida!!


My sister and I before my cousin's wedding in San Antonio.



On the Friday before spring break, I had my Reading classes perform their reader's theaters that they had been practicing over the last few weeks.  I must admit that I love grand productions, but the week before spring break is not the the time to do them.  I would have loved to have lots of props, costumes, and backdrops, but we just didn't have time for that.  The students actually got together to practice when they had finished their classwork.  We had begun studying poetry and drama over the last few weeks, so this was a perfect opportunity for them to get a closer look at drama.  They also worked on their fluency and working cooperatively with others. 

I had my homeroom class perform when they had me during class and my next period came in the be the audience and complete their participation guides.  I have an awesome group of teachers that I work with so of course the science teacher went over and explained the participation guide before they arrived in my class.  Here is what the participation guide looked like... If you would like a copy, just send me your email and I will be glad to send it to you.


Now onto the fun.... Picture Time!!  Here are some pictures from our fabulous performances...




Fabulous 4th Grade Froggies is having a 3rd, 4th, & 5th grade linky party... I have already found some AWESOME blogs that I didn't know about previously.  So.... LINK UP!! :)

On a side note, I know I have not been blogging lately and I promised pictures and explanations about our reader's theaters we performed Friday.  I will be uploading and blogging about that Saturday.  Loof forward to it... I just wanted to build up the suspense.  (Actually, I've been Spring Breakin it in Florida with pool time, spring training, and Universal.)
Gosh.. this week has been SUPER CRAZY BUSY!  We have been continuing poetry... I promised to continue talking about my poetry unit so here we go!



Tuesday - Students read the poem Kaleidoscope.  They were to label the stanzas, lines, and rhymes scheme.  Then they completed a STAAR-style worksheet that I made over it.  Finally, they chose one of the stanzas to write in the middle of a page and draw the imagery around it.  This poem was filled with some awesome imagery and the students did a FABULOUS job!




Wednesday - The students completed a packet that contained a story and a poem.  They had 10 questions to complete.  These were taken from the benchmarks on Study Island.  They continued working on their imagery stanzas.  (I know they seem to be doing lots of worksheets, which I HATE, but I want them familiar with the lingo and the way it will look on the STAAR test. - We take it on Wednesday March 28th.)



Thursday - We went to the computer lab to work on Study Island.  They completed the Poetry & Drama lesson for a grade.





TODAY....... drum roll please!!! We are presenting our Reader's Theaters that we have been reading through the last few weeks for another period.  Pictures and explanations to come... get excited!!! :)

I am stumped... I saw that another teacher had the same Blog name as me.  She had it first so I am trying to come up with new names... any ideas?!?!
I received the Lovely Blog award from Apples and ABCs
So excited!!

Here are the rules:
1. Link back to the blog that gave you this cute award.
2. Pass this award to 15 other lovely bloggers. ( I must admit I am cheating bending the rules a little and only passing it on to 9 people)
3. Follow the person who sent it to you! :)
Here are the blogs that I want to nominate for the One Lovely Blog Award:
 


I also received the Top 10 award from Emmy at Daydreams of a Student Teacher .  She is so awesome and always leaves me positive feedback and comments!

So today we began our introduction to Poetry... I was nervous.  Why you ask?  Because my experience with poetry isn't all that much.  I sucked it up and did some research and found some ideas.  Here is day 1 of our mini Poetry study.



First, we made foldables to go into our reading spirals. I only had them do 4 terms but we talked about a lot more than that.
Then, we read two poems.. one silly and one serious.  We looked at the number of stanzas, lines per stanza, rhyme scheme, and imagery/figurative language.
 Silly Poem... LOVE Ken Nesbitt!!! (I totally mispelled his name on the student copy but we fixed it.)
My anchor chart on the board.  The students always have examples in their Reading Spiral....
 Serious Poem.... The students were very surprised how much of an impact a poem so short could have.
We also talked about the Theme to this poem... Never let go of your dreams!  Always believe in yourself!
Tomorrow the poetry drama mini study continues....
If you have any ideas, let me know!! 
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