Read Alouds and Centers

Do you do read aloud chapter books with your students? I mean, of course read aloud picture books, but I also try to read aloud chapter books every day too. It's our calm-down time after recess. It works really great for the transition. After I finish reading for the time that day, I pull sticks and that person gets to pick an M&M (or sometimes I have Skittles) and then whatever color the Bloom's Taxonomy question is (they are leveled), I ask them a question from that level. If they answer correctly with a valient effort, then they get a few more M&Ms. It's AMAZING what kids will do for 2-3 M&Ms - ha!

This last week, I read My Father's Dragon to my students - it was a GREAT book! and a QUICK chapter book read! I actually have the 3 Tales book, where all 3 books are in one, and my kids were begging me to move to the next book!



Here's how I have my posters hanging up....on the side of one my bookshelves. I just don't have any wall space this year for some reason...it's driving me BONKERS! lol. BUT, this works out great because my reading rocking chair is right there next that bookshelf, so all I have to do is reach over and grab the posters off the shelf (they are hanging up with magnets).


When we finished reading the book, I "test" them with doing one of the higher level questions on paper...I print up the page and the journal prompt, finish writing in the prompt, they cut it and glue it on the paper and then they answer the question. 




Click on the pictures of the books to check them out on Amazon.



****Update!*** I just got the brilliant idea to print them 4 to a page, glued them to black paper, laminated them, and made a ring of them to hang on my board!



You can check out {THIS} post to see more on my Bloom's Taxonomy!

I'm now reading Gooney Bird Greene - I just LOVE this book!! She's like the older version of Junie B. Jones! The kids love to just see how she's dressed during the whole book and our memorized by her stories.



Yesterday we made our new names using the formula that Gooney Bird Greene used. My name was Mrs. Beatrice Wynonna. All day I heard "Mrs. Wynonna!" This is an activity found in my Gooney Bird Greene activity pack. You can check it out at TpT or TN.


Yesterday, I was able to sneak around the room during centers time to take a few pictures! It's always so hard for me to do that because my small group time is always so jammed pack, I barely get through everything I need to get through. BUT, I got a few pictures so you can see some of my January Menu Centers being used.

Math - Roll and Add


Measure and Compare


Mixed up place value - I don't know if you can see, but the expanded form is mixed up to make them really apply their place value knowledge.


Spin a word - silent e edition


Missing adjectives - love this one! It's amazing what they come up with... they really need to use their context clues to figure out which ones belong there. 






I know January is almost over, but I also have my February ones posted now!

TPT 



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Tacky and Non-Fiction Penguins

I've already posted on how much we've been having with penguins {HERE} We've also been having some fun with Tacky the Penguin (this was last week). This is my attempt at drawing Tacky.... how did I do?? HA! Don't laugh. My drawing skills are still a thing of work. lol


You see? This is why I love NOT teaching out of the book....I literally hit EVERY single standard and skill that our pacing guide told us to do in the 3rd nine weeks JUST doing the last 3 weeks of my penguin activities!! We've done character traits, sequencing, comparison, Main Idea and details of both fiction and nonfiction, author's purpose....whew! I LOVE that my admin lets me teach this way!!

Worked on character traits using clues from the book. 


They compared fiction and non-fiction books...using proof from the books. 





The last few weeks, we've been working REALLY hard on our penguin research books. 



Today, they have FINALLY started to come together! About half of the class is finished, and the other half SHOULD finish tomorrow!  Take a look at the video to see what's inside the books.





Check out my Learning with Penguins pack!






Also, just wanted to let you know, that I JUST uploaded my February Common Core Menu Centers!


15 Common Core Aligned Literacy Centers!


WITH book responses activities added in!


And 16 Common Core aligned Math centers!


Each pack comes with a teacher menu which is already aligned for common core for you! There are also 3 different student menus for you to use!


Check them out on TPT or my Shop on the Blog store! You can buy as a bundle, or buy separately!

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February Literacy Menu Centers and Freebie Calendar Cards

They're up! My February Literacy Menu Centers are up! I don't have the math ones started finished yet, so I put the literacy ones on sale for what you would get them as in the bundle - they are 20% off!!! They'll be on sale until Monday night.   I wish I was able to take picture of my kids doing them during our centers time, but my small group kids are very greedy with my attention - ha!!


Our admin told us the other day at a meeting that EVERYthing we do needs to be standards based. Ok, I get that. Makes sense....she said even our centers. At that moment I was all proud of myself because that's EXACTLY what I've BEEN doing - all I need to do is staple my center menus to my planbook, and BOOM! Standards are documented for my centers. 


Here are the skills included for this month's


And there are book response activities added in at the end!

And I just want to say - THANK YOU for the BEST responses on my menu centers!! Every time I read them, it bring joy to my heart that you love them!  Here are a few feedbacks that just SERIOUSLY made my day when I read them. Some of them came from my January Centers and some of them came from the February centers.  Seriously, you make me all squishy inside!


Check them out on TPT or my Shop on the Blog store!

One last thing! Make sure you go the Fab Freebies Tab on my blog's Facebook page! I've uploaded the LAST installment of the calendar cards (February) and I'll be taking ALL of the cards down Monday night! 



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Working Hard in Math

I'm about a week late on posting this, but I just have to show you this....


Last week (like 2 weeks ago), we had our celebration for our Math Fact Winners! They have been working hard on building their ice cream sundae papers (passing their addition fact quizzes) and we finally had our celebration!

They built their sundaes on paper, I crowned them (the crowns were left over from Brooklynn's birthday party, but I think I actually really like it, so I'll probably keep doing it. lol), and then they built their REAL ice cream sundaes!


You can see that they are ready to work on their subtraction party! I even have some kids that are on their multiplication already!! So exciting!



You can check out {THIS} post to see how I organize and "handle" my daily math facts quizzes. Check out {THIS} post to see how we celebrate for our Subtraction facts!!




Click any of the links below to purchase these packs - separately or as a combo!


Also, last week (2 weeks ago, since I'm way behind...lol), we were working on our subtraction with regrouping skills. They are doing really well with them, I'm super excited how easy they've learned it this year, this is always one of those scary skills to teach. EEK! But they did really well. 




Check out the packs in this post 







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