Day 37- Today was a Monday

It really was one of those days. When one considers the laws of probability, having what one would call a "typical" Monday was bound to happen eventually. Maybe now that we have had ours it won't happen again for a while.

Today's story was Jasper's Beanstalk
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This is a really cute story about a cat who finds a bean, plants and tends it then gets upset when it doesn't grow fast enough. By the end of the story a large beanstalk has grown and Jasper gets to live his literary dream of finding a giant at the top. ( we have to use our imaginations from there)

The skill for this week is story structure: characters, setting, problem, solution and ending. Of course we had to pull our out handy-dandy 5 Finger Retell strategy for today. This is another one of those times you get to pretend that I am a better artist than I really am.

Next to the Where we put verbs that Jasper did in order to plant his bean outside. We are working on nouns this week, but a noun is nothing without a verb to keep it occupied!

My major find of the weekend was a rockin' awesome idea for centers. For those that don't know me extremely well, I LOVE FREEBIES! I love surfing though my favorite blogs and finding out what other teachers are doing in their classrooms. Well, last night I found a wealth of information and teacher-helps at www.teachertipster.com. This classroom teacher has made printables, songs and chants, and videos to help other classroom teachers. My favorite find was a Spelling Texter.

 

http://www.teachertipster.com/printables4.html

What you're seeing is a Blackberry-style phone with lines where students can write their spelling words, then text the words as practice. Isn't that the coolest idea?! Of course I printed them out on cardstock, laminated them, and created a reading center for them.
The kids loved them!

 The first direction was for students to practice their spelling words for this week. Then they were allowed to walk around and Read-and-Write the room. It was a hoot! They were looking for the biggest and most impressive words in the room. Most of them stopped at the Science/ Social Studies wall to get vocabulary words.
The other teams are anxious to get their hands on them. :)

In math today we took our unit 4 test. This was a big mistake. I should have taken a day to do some massive review, but since this is a 4 day week, I didn't want to get behind. I shall never allow a 4 day week hinder me from doing what is best for my students again! After talking with my first grade team I found that we are actually a lesson ahead. Math practice, here we come! Tomorrow is going to set aside for some good Math Talk. I'm thinking a 4-square is on order.

Here is a picture of our calendar- all decked out for October. Obviously this picture was taken before we updated it for the day.

If you'll notice, this Friday is a special day. NO SCHOOL FOR STUDENTS! It is a teacher Professional Development and Records day. The next week is one of the students' birthday. The following week, October 17-21 is FALL BREAK.

Our Daily Brain

p.s. if anyone reading this knows how to embed a Google Document into a blog, please share the info! I would love to be able to share my documents with parents and other teachers!