These are a few (or 7) of my favorite things....

1. I love to window shop on Etsy. I actually shop occasionally, but I’d be further in debt if I gave into buying all my favorite items I have on there.

2. I love coffee, white chocolate mochas are awesome. I'm not addicted like my hubby but some days they just hit the spot.

3. I love my warm cozy bed, it is one of the comfy spots at home.

4. I love sushi. Fresh sushi from the sushi bar puts a smile on my face.

5. I used to collect angels but not so much anymore, still think they are peaceful and serene. I still have one that is a small version of this one on my dresser.

6. I loved to watch detective shows, I miss Monk and Law and Order Criminal Intent- Vincent D'Onofrio I miss you. The other shows that are just too gruesome. Now I’m stuck on reality t.v. Andy Cohen is my best bud at BRAVO.

7.Disney Pixar movies are a big favorite of my son, for some reason he just isn't into regular old cartoons. I have watched almost all of the Pixar movies at least 20 times.



I don't believe any of that was school related. :)

Thanks Katie for holding this linky party.
Don't be left out, join in.

Reading Strategy ~ "Chunking and Visualization"

We are familiar with teaching students to chunk word parts to read words. We are also familiar with chunking words in the sentences so a student can read the sentence. If you add visualization and a picture representation the student will better understand the thoughts behind the written words. So have your student chunk a thought from a part of the sentence and illustrate that thought. They should continue until they understand what the sentence means.
Here is an example and then a blank copy for you to use as you wish.




I used the kid graphics from Kristen at First Grade Teaching.

Reading Strategy ~ *Spot and Dot*

I've just learned a few new reading strategies and thought I'd share.

This one is called Spot and Dot.

We can use Spot and Dot to decode longer words. To Spot and Dot, we find the vowels and put a dot over each vowel or each group of vowels. Since every syllable has a a vowel, we look for the syllables around the vowels.

*If the syllable ends with a vowel, usually the vowel says its long sound.
*If the syllable ends with a consonant, we know the vowel makes its short vowel sound.
*If the vowel ends with a consonant, we know the vowel makes its short vowel sound.
*We also know, "When two vowels go walking, the first vowel does the talking."






This one is great for reading and can be used for spelling too!

Main Idea

My students have been working on Main Idea. They have enjoyed Brain Pop Jr. and some fun Smartboard activities. Here are a few activities I created.



Is there anything else you use to teach main idea?

Countdown to Summer Giveaway

Hadar of Outfitted and Inspired is having a giveaway for a countdown board. Don't miss out.

If you win you can even specify the colors you want.

Happy Birthday Cupcakes!

I've been playing around with my recently purchased clip art and Publisher. I was able to make my version of a Birthday Poster to use for next year. I thought I'd share it. I wanted to make it a banner but I don't know if that would convert to a PDF.

Spelling

I have had the wonderful opportunity to Co-Teach this year. My class is the inclusion class even though we don't have anyone identified as Special Ed in my class. My co-teacher has given me so many great ideas and she will be retiring this year, so I'm a bit sad about that, but happy that she will be able to focus on being creative outside the classroom.

Well she gave me one way for the students to easily learn to spell could and should. Then, this week I took her strategy and used it for spelling cough and rough. Here are the posters I came up with. The kids just need to remember the saying, "Oh, you little donut." or "oh you giant hamburger."

My students took to learning this without these posters but I thought I'd have these on hand for next year.