Yay for the weekend!

Woop woop!  Happy Friday!  For a short week it has been LONG!  I feel like I accomplished a lot this week, but my to do list is still a million pages long.

I finished my focus wall.  I love the way it turned out!  I posted the product on my TPT page.  Click on the picture below to visit my store.

I use “I can” statements since they fit in perfectly with our theme this year…”I can, you can, we will.”  I have headers available for math and social studies, but I don’t teach them…I’m a science gal.

This is a closeup of the learning target statements.  For now I am writing them on strips and taping it to the board.

I post my spelling list on the spelling page with cute Washi tape.  Our book writes the words in cursive and my students can never read them!

This is the genre we are on this week.  I have a bunch of different genre cards to choose from…

…AND here are our vocabulary cards to go along with the story we are reading.

I post a to do list on the board of work that the students must accomplish before the end of the day or they will have to complete it as homework.  I laminated this handy list and posted it on the board.  I love this thing!  It helps keep me organized and is great to keep those fast finishers busy.

  

I have been reading aloud Punished by David Lubar.  It is a quick read and the kids are loving the story.  I picked up a few copies through Scholastic last year.  As I read aloud the kids are completing the comprehension questions that go along with it.  I love doing this because it works on listening skills and keeps the kids engaged with the read aloud.  It is also a great book to teach puns, oxymorons, anagrams, and palindromes.

Next week I am going to move away from our basal reader to begin our first literature circle.  We are going to read Esio Trot by Roald Dahl.  This is a great easy read to introduce the kids to the concepts of literature circles.   I will also be mixing in some questions and activities from my novel study.  I love beginning literature circles!  I have a really wide range of readers in my classroom.  This allows me to challenge my high readers and engage my lower readers.

 

 

 Aren’t these October poems the cutest?  The students wrote about October using sensory details.  We mounted the finished poems on construction paper and attached the arms and feet of Frankenstein.  The kids are very concerned that he doesn’t have arms…but oh well!

Next we will be taking sensory details a bit further to write a personal narrative about a favorite fall moment.

Last, but not least, I joined Dollar Shave Club and got a 6 blade razor and four replacement cartridges for 9$ a month!  I am so excited to get these things…I hate using a dull razor.  I also ordered their shave cream…I figured “when in Rome.”