School's Out!!

I haven't blogged in oh let's see 5 months and 19 days, so I would indeed consider that failure.  Or perhaps not so much since I wasn't a regular poster before?  In case you're wondering what I have been up to you just check out my Instagram account.  You can catch up on my kids and things I've done in class.  I love Teacher Talk Tuesdays don't you?  School end for my firsties last Friday. I was so sad to see my crew go.  Thankfully my teammate had the great foresight to get 4 of us tickets to see NKOTB, B2M and 98 Degrees that night and I wasn't sad for too long!  I got to tell you if you have the chance to see this show its amazing!!! Sadly this week I am back to going to school to clean up and pack my room up, though I am confident today will be my last day!

Since my last post was about New Year's Resolutions it seems fitting that today's be about...  My Summer To Do List and boy do I have a lot planned for the next 2 months.

Book Studies:

• Growing Readers (with my coworker Sharon)
• Reading with Meaning (with Sharon)
• The Next Step in Guided Reading (with my schools 1st-4th team and on Freebie-licious)

Book Clubs:  This will be my third summer offering summer book clubs for the students or HR.  This year we will have two groups.  Basement Bookworms meet once a week for an hour in the basement of the church.  

• Grades 2&3
• Grades 4&5

Books to Read:

• Finish Reading Reflex (required school reading)
• Finish The Honest Toddlers Guide to Parenting
• The Art of Teaching Reading
• Lemonade Wars (with my 8 year old)
• From the Mixed Up Files... (for our summer book club)
• Stink (for our summer book club)
• Fourth Grade Rats (summer book club)

Class:

• Words Their Way (online training)

Class Organization:

• Level Classroom Library
• Declutter and organize all my binders

I'll throw in some fun non-school related fun stuff as well!

Fun Stuff

• Go to the pool often
• Teach Koey to swim
• Participate in the ROC race in Baltimore
• Take kids to the zoo
• Go to the beach

I promise to be back later with my response to Freebie-licious's Chapter 1 post!  

Something old, something new, something borrowed, and a giveaway

I can't believe my break is pretty much over!  I had a great time milling around with my kiddos and spending time with my family.  Today my 3 are excited about eating lunch at McDonalds with my Grandpa. We never eat in McDonalds do you?  Regardless my terror squad will be making an appearance.

Anywho I am sitting here planning for next week and realized I have five more actual teaching weeks left!  EEEK!  Not sure how I will get everything I want done but the pressures on!  We actually have 7 weeks left but my school does an arts festival in May and that is 3 days gone and then the last week is half days so that's a wash too. So here is what I've come up with as my plan to finish the year...

Something Old:  Our story next week is The Kite (chapter from Days with Frog and Toad), we always use this as an intro to reading chapter books.  I will do this again this year but read the whole book as the first book club for my on level readers.
Something New:  I have never done book clubs before but have wanted and with my principals approval I am going for it!  I am going to use Jenn Bate's Save the Earth Packet  with my above level readers.  With my early on level readers I will read Mercer Mayer's It's Earth Day! and move into Days with Frog and Toad.
Something borrowed:  While looking through blog land for book club ideas I found this post from the fabulous Cara Carroll Brown Bag Book Club and am borrowing to use on Friday.  I may try and find a way to include our buddies on this but I don't know yet.

We will still read our HBR (hardback readers) and focus on problem and solution in all the stories we read.  I have two craftivities planned to use in reading this week.  We will also make a toad peak over to answer a problem and solution writing prompt.  To incorporate poetry they will use a kite template to write an acrostic poem.  In March my firsties had such fun coming up with  Limericks using Abby's unit I am sure they will love writing the acrostics.

The Giveaway:  If you read my blog you have realized I don't come up with much original stuff.  Honestly there is such great stuff out there and why not use other peoples stuff from TPT or blogs?  It leaves me with more time to spend with my own kids.   But I do want to thank everyone who has helped me by sharing their awesome ideas so I am going to give away a copy of this book:

AJ and I picked it up at BN last week and fell in love!  It is by the same author of Alexander and the Terrible No Good Very Bad Day  and the illustrations are hilarious.  I read a couple pages to AJ and then she took over.  It would be a great addition to any library and also a be a great chapter book read aloud.  Lulu is a not so nice girl who is convinced she wants a brontosaurus for her birthday and wont' take no for an answer.  I asked AJ what her favorite part of the book was and she said two things; that she could pick from 3 endings and that the author let her read a chapter from the next book in the series.

So if you'd like to enter here's how:

1. follow my blog (leave a comment)
2. blog about the giveaway (leave a comment with link)  

Since things get 12 kinds of crazy for me when school starts I will end this on Saturday at 10 pm and announce the winner on Sunday evening.  

Good Luck!