Monday Made It and a couple Freebies

I am linking up with Tara from 4th Grade Frolics for another Monday Made It. 

I have been working on some more products for my TpT store.

Safari Classroom Decor - You can find it all broken down into different items here.

Pirate Classroom Decor  - You can find it all broken down into different items here.

I did make a couple things for myself, too.  (Next week, I hope to finish some more beach decor and paisley decor as well.  I can't decide if I want to decorate with a beach theme or paisley and owls).

Claire at Live, Laugh, Love, Teach made these plastic bag dispensers out of Clorox wipes containers for a previous Monday Made It.  I thought this was a genius idea.  We always use plastic bags for all sorts of things since we have pets, and we have the bags stored all sorts of places. The original tutorial calls for using fabric and mod podge.  I covered mine with my Xyron and scrapbook paper.  It works.  It dresses up the container a bit.  I want to keep one here at home and one at school.

I wanted to make the bucket labels for sharpened and dull pencils.  I know there are probably lots of these labels out there, but I made my own.  You can get your own copy below if you like. I used the Dollar Tree containers again.

Pencil Sharpen Labels

For keeping track of grades, I found I hated using a gradebook because I did not want to write students names over and over.  Plus, the little boxes were too tiny in my opinion. For me, I found it works better to make a little table and either write or print the students names and then copy it.  I use one each week and record the grades on the paper while grading and then move it over to the computer system as I have time. I keep the sheets with the grades in my teacher binder in folders for each six weeks. You can get a copy of this little grading recorder below.  It's simple, but effective.
Grading Recorder

Tell Me More...

I was out of town Thursday and Friday.  Yesterday,  I was trying to get caught up on lots of things.  I feel like I am so behind on blog reading and commenting.  Oh, well.  I had a great time spending the day with my dad.

Normally, on Thursdays I try to share some Science text suggestions.  I actually have a giant stack of books on the rainforest to share with you, but I want to read them first.  In the meantime,  I am going to suggest you check out a blog called The Science Penguin.  I am linking up with the Science Penguin for the magical product swap and am excited because this will be my first year to teach science (or be self-contained).  Thus, I definitely will need Science resources.  She has shared several science pictures books over the last couple posts that look great.

Now, there have been lots of great linky parties going on.  There are several I wouldn't mind going back and joining, but for today I would like to link up with Amy and Janis.

Newbie Blog Hop

1) I live in Dallas, Texas.

2) Tomorrow I start training at a private school where I will be teaching a 4th/5th grade split class.

3) I taught at a private school for two years where I taught grades 3-6 English and Social Studies.  Classes were small, but I had a different grade or subject every 30 minutes. It actually was a lot of fun, and I learned a lot as a new teacher. Then, I taught 5th Grade ELA and Social Studies at a charter school for 2 years.

4)  I started this blog in February, but I really did not start blogging consistently until June.  In the beginning, I only blogged about once a week and spent most of my time blog-stalking and learning the ropes.

5)  Lots of people have given great tips.  I think the main thing is to leave comments for others when you can.  I think we all love feedback and like knowing others are reading.  Sometimes I don't quite get to comment as much as I would like, but I intend to keep trying.

Tell me more, tell me more

1) My favorite color is green and it has been since kindergarten.

2)  I hate April jokes.  Every time someone makes a joke about my name, they think they are the first person to make the joke.  So annoying.

3)  I moved probably at least once a year growing up.  Nope, no oil or military.  My mom likes adventure.  I went to 6 or 7 elementary schools,  but actually moved much more than that because for grades 4-5 I went back and forth between 2 schools multiple times.

4) I love going to hot yoga.  I am an overly serious, tense person so it helps me to deal with the tension with stretching.

5)  I also hate seafood.  It's not the smell or taste.  It's the texture.

6) I got married a month before my 20th birthday to my high-school sweetheart.  I was Valedictorian, and he was Salutatorian.  We were the first in our class to get married, and we will probably be the last ones to have kids.

7) I am an Aggie, but not a very good one.  My husband only owns Texas A&M t-shirts.  There is a maroon truck sitting out front of our house.

8) I love historical fiction.  Ann Rinaldi was my first favorite author.

9)  I was the only grandchild until I was 8.

10) I have a half-bother, a step-brother, two adopted brothers, and an adopted sister, but I was raised as an only child for most of my childhood.  I am the product of the modern American family.

11) I am compulsive for sure.  My iPhone has not helped this.  I check my email and google reader all the time.

12) My mom is my best friend.  I talk to her on and off all day long about nothing. However, we haven't lived in the same state for 1/2 my life.

13) I only eat chocolate ice cream wit no toppings.

14) I hate nuts and caramel and coffee.

15) My husband is a gamer - a serious one. 

16) I knew he was a gamer when I married him. 

17) Blogging has finally helped me understand my husband's gaming.  I finally have a hobby that I can get lost in and it requires commitment and consistency.

18) Talk radio puts me to sleep, but I love listening to sermons on the radio.

19) I have three cats and an Australian Shepherd.

20) Nala, my Aussie, is the best part of my day usually. She is my first child.

How do you create a Literacy Rich Classroom?

So from what I have read of Daily 5 and Cafe so far, I really want to incorporate them in my classroom this year.  The struggle with any form of Balanced Literacy is that the recommended block of time is like 2.5 hours a day.  I have always only had about 1-1.5 hours a day for my ELA block. It will be the same this year. 

I have also heard in workshops how important is it to create a literacy rich classroom with lots of types of texts.  Those of us who love literature prefer fiction and want to mainly use fiction.  However, for the majority of the world their interaction with texts on a daily basis is non-fiction. Some of the ways I plan on creating a literacy rich environment are:

1) My weekly writing inspiration wall with a different poem, quote, and picture each week.  This will encourage me to incorporate poetry on a weekly basis.

2) For Science and Social Studies I want to incorporate picture books, graphic novels, nonfiction, and historical fiction as they fit into what we are studying.

3) I will probably mainly use picture books for writing mini-lessons.

4)  I would like to use novel read alouds and literature circles with Daily 5.  I have found it difficult to do a whole-group novel read aloud and literature circles at the same time.  So when using a novel for read aloud, I would prefer to use short texts for groups.  Then, when I am doing literature circles I will probably use other types of texts for mini-lessons.

I have heard some people so they do a Daily 3.  Is that Read to Self, Writing, and Word Work?  The hard part is my 1-1.5 hours has to also include my writing workshop and word study.  I am curious how others use Daily 5 when they have a shorter literacy block.  I would like to have a reading mini-lesson each day and allow 10-15 minutes of daily journaling.  I find this to be a great way to practice writing consistently.  I am thinking I will have to alternate writing and word work mini-lessons.

I would like to incorporate some Spelling but probably without tests, find a way to apply grammar to writing, and study roots, prefixes, suffixes, etc.  I would really like to know how some of you who have used Daily 5 structure your week (especially for teaching writing and word study).  Does it make more sense to teach the grammar, spelling, writing skills in small groups based on student needs?  Then focus whole group lessons on Reading skills and word study skills like roots, analogies, etc.?

On a side note, I went to one of the bigger libraries in my town because they have a larger children's section and had more of the books on my list of what I was looking for. I knew I was driving to Houston, so I decided to look for an audio book.  I found a couple that looked okay, and then ventured over to the children's section.  While looking at the graphic novels, I noticed they had a several shelves of jevenile novels on audio. I had never really thought to look.  I grabbed Gregor the Overlander by Suzanne Collins, Twelve by Lauren Myracle, and Moon over Manifest by Clare Vanderpool.  All of these plus several others are books I have been wanting to read.

I even saw several other novels I usually use as read aloud.  I decided this year I am going to supplement some of my read alouds with playing the audio book. I think is a great resource I had not really thought to look for. At my last school, we had audio CD's that went with our basil and the students always enjoyed listening to the audio version while following along instead of just reading it as a class.

If you had some CD players, this would also be a great way to allow older students to practice a listening station or listen to reading as part of Daily 5 (or for your strugglers who listen better than they read independently).  I know some of you use iPods, which is great.  The thing is I think a lot of us don't have the budget to buy the audio book when we have already bought lots of actual books. So I think the audio CD from the library is a great potential resource.  I know audio juvenile novels is probably nothing new to most of you; I just had never really thought to look.  The library I normally go to did not really have any.  I knew they could be ordered through interlibrary loan, but I just had never really been that proactive. 

Map Skills, a Brain Break, and a Journey

So today I had my real first brain break of the summer.  It was nice.  I slept in and lounged all day with a book.  (Then, I went shopping for shorts because only one pair fit.  Got to love hypothyroid and a slow metabolism.  But that is another story.  I am going to focus on the more fun part of my day).

After enjoying my brain break, I figured I should return to the world of blogging for a bit.  So I know I will be sharing Social Studies and Science texts with you each week, but I may not stick to the Tuesday/Thursday schedule.  If I'm honest, Tuesday/Thursday will always be Wednesday/Friday.  So I might as well just plan on sharing but not limit myself to a specific day. I do want to try to stick with sharing my writing inspiration on Wednesdays for the consistency if you decide to use this feature in your classroom.

This week I am combining my Social Studies text recommendations and my writing inspiration in one post. For the next couple weeks, I want to focus my Social Studies texts on geography and map skills. I did some research Monday and checked out tons of books yesterday at the library.

Social Studies Texts

Text 1: Are We There Yet, Daddy? by Virginia Walters
The AR level for this book is 2.2. This story is written in rhyme and describes a boy's 100 mile journey to Grandma's house with his father. Every 10 miles he asks "Are we there yet, Daddy?"  His dad's constant response is to look at the map.  The book describes everything he sees in the 100 miles and has different pictures of maps to show the journey's progress along with what he sees at each moment. What I like about this book is that I think it helps illustrate the point that maps show real places.  I think it can be difficult for students to understand that we can use maps to show one place from multiple perspectives. I would pair this book with my second recommendation.

Text 2: Me on the Map by Joan Sweeney
This story is very simple, but is shows all the ways one place can be mapped: a girl's room, her street, her town, her state, her country, the globe, etc.  I can't tell you how many fifth graders have no clue what the difference between a city, state, and country are. So this is a story I plan to read even with 4th and 5th graders.  I would follow this up by having students draw a map of their room, their street, maybe their journey to school.  Then, you could follow that up by studying maps of the state and country. Before students can really jump into studying history, they need these foundations of perspective, geography, and map skills. One of my goals the next week is to work on some map skills activities to share.

Writing Inspiration: A Journey

My writing inspiration for this week is inspired by this idea of geography and map skills. 

Poem: You could easily use my first text suggestion as your poetry for the week as the book is written in rhyme.  You could always have students write their own poem about a journey they have taken and pair it with drawing a map of that journey. Or even consider describing a journey a character in a book took and drawing a map.

Another obvious poem suggestion would be The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost.  I have actually shared this poem before, but it is one of my favorites so I will probably use it more than once a year in my own classroom. This poem lends itself to such great imagery and discussion.

Quote:  I liked this quote because I think we all live such busy lives it is easy to be so caught up in everything we are trying to achieve.  Sometimes we need to slow down and enjoy the moment - the process.  I also find it a great reminder as a teacher to remember that for students it is about teaching them a thinking process and not about creating a final product.

Picture:  Last year I went to Napa with my mom and got to take a hot air balloon ride.  This is one of the pictures I took.  This to me is full of such great writing potential it does not need much explanation. The sky is the limit!

Tomorrow morning, I am going on my own little mini-journey to see my dad for the day in Houston, equipped with young adult books on CD from the library. (I finally am going to read listen to Gregor the Overlander.)  I hope you have a wonderful Thursday.  I am going to try that whole scheduling a post thing for tomorrow, so let's see how that works. :)

Must Have Picture Books and Winners

So lots of bloggers have been linking up with Lindsey to share their favorite picture books.  I haven't taught with picture books as much as some of you, but I do have some favorites.

1) Wilfrid Gordon McDonald Partridge by Mo Willems:  I found this book through Writing Fix.  It is about a little boy who makes friends with an elderly lady who has lost her memory.  It is a very sweet story and great for inferencing.

2) Junkyard Wonders by Patricia Polacco: I have blogged about this book before, but I love it!  It is about a class who has an amazing teacher who makes them feel special when they rest of the school thinks of them as misfits.

3) The Pain and the Great One by Judy Blume:  This book is about how a brother and sister view each other.  Very cute.

4) First Day Jitters:  I know many of you also love this book, but it is a great story with a fun little twist.

5) A Base Case of the Stripes:  This is one I like reading multiple times.  I enjoy using this story to teach plot.

I look forward to reading about every else's favorite picture books. Funny story - I was trying to describe to my husband the picture book display idea where you use gutters.

(Source: Pinterest)

He was very confused.  He had no idea why you would want the books to face forward.  His response was: "what's a picture book?"  In his mind, all children's books are children's books.  I guess he makes no distinction between picture books, juvenile chapter books, and young adult novels. I promise he has seen a picture book before.  Apparently, he just never realized they had a separate name. Maybe if I had described the shelves as a place to display video game covers?

And I also wanted to announce the winners of my writing giveaway.  They have all 3 earned credit to my TpT store for writing or word wall products. (I got the super cute gift certificate idea from the 3am teacher.) I will be emailing them shortly.  Be on the lookout. My 300 follower giveaway is also in the works.

Monday Made It: Writing Prompts and Shared Writing Journals Covers

Yay! Monday Made It.  I'm so excited to be off today, too.  Friday the 13th marked the end of my career 3 (technical writing).  Next Monday I start training at my new school.  So this week is like my "summer."  I'm excited.

Remember my Back to School writing prompts?  (Thank you, Katie, for the original inspiration for prompts in a jar.) Well, I finished putting them together.  Thanks to other people's Fantastic Friday Finds and lots of bargain shopping, I got what I needed to finish putting stuff together. I went to Michael's and got one of those paper trimmers 40% plus the teacher's discount. (Thank you, Tonya, for telling us about the sale.) I also found two packages of 250 sheets of card stock for $7.99. 

I got some jars and containers at Dollar Tree.  (I am proud of those craft caddies.  Target has some for $2.50, but these were $1.00, so after like 3 Dollar Trees I found 10.  I will use them for something!)

I had a Xyron from my monther-in-law I had never used.  Thank you, Elizabeth, for recommending it. (The laminator function did not go very far, but I tried it out.  The adhesive sheets are cool though.  I made my jar label stickers this way, and am also going to redo the labels for my teacher toolbox this way.  The glue dots are not sticking.)

So after printing on my speckled card stock and much cutting and more cutting.  I still need to finish laminating.  That is on the to-do-list for today.  I also made the jar labels a little cuter. You can get them here.

I made some persuasive writing prompts, too.  I intend to make some narrative ones as well.  You can get my 100 persuasive writing prompts here.

I also love this idea Tara and some others have for shared writing journals.  I want to pair them with my writing prompts.  So I made journal covers for different kinds of writing (like persuasive, descriptive, letter writing, stories, poetry, newspaper articles, etc.) as well as topics (like sports, movies, video games, pets, music, family/friends, etc.)  I will have to wait and see which ones I want to use.  I made 26 covers, but I don't think I will actually have that many shared writing journals.  I was trying to decide which ones I wanted. You can get them here.

In case you missed my "Connect the Faces" freebie activity from my guest post at Learning is something To Treasure on Saturday, here you go.


Connect the Faces

Don't forget to enter my giveaway that ends tonight!  You can earn up to $15 worth of my writing products, including the ones above. (I also am planning my 300 follower giveaway.  If you would like to contribute to the giveaway, email me at ideabackpack@gmail.com.)
a Rafflecopter giveaway

Back to School Activities and a Guest Post

Happy Saturday!  Today I am doing my first guest post at Learning is Something To Treasure.

 

Stop by and say hello.  I have a free back to school writing activity for you. It is one that I have used for several years and I love!

 

I also have a classroom community building activity called Classroom Faces.  It is a Facebook type profile activity where students can send each other smile status updates.  It normally is $4.00, but for the month of July it is Free.  So go ahead and download it as a fun bulletin board or classroom activity for back to school.  Leave me some feedback if you download it. I plan on using it with my new class. :)

 

Don't forget about my writing giveaway.  It ends Monday.  I am working on some more writing prompts this weekend besides my back to school ones.