Five for Friday and Big Birthday SALE!

Happy Friday, everyone!  We hope you had a great week!  I LOVE this time of year!  Settling into the school routine, still feeling that back to school energy and starting to notice the bright colored leaves make this girl very happy!  Plus, it's my "birthday weekend" so I am planning to celebrate and have some fun with my family!  Being the only girl in the house has its positives!
I'm excited to be joining Doodle Bugs Teaching again for her weekly Five for Friday linky party.  I love reading these linked up posts every week because they highlight school ideas as well as everyday life!

I had a great start to the week.  On Sunday my family had a chance to go apple picking.  The apples are AMAZING this year!!  Logan couldn't wait  to take a bite right away!  Delicious!  I'm going to try to squeeze-in time to make one of my favorite fall desserts, Apple Dumplings!  I love Trisha Yearwood's recipe from the Food Network.  It's super easy to make and delicious with a scoop of vanilla ice cream!  I'm drooling just thinking about it! 















I was able to find some colorful baskets at the Dollar Store (SCORE) to finish organizing my books in the Reading Room.  I am very fortunate to have an eclectic assortment of titles to meet my student's needs and interests.  When I started the position four years ago, I decided to organize the books by guided reading level.  This makes it easy for me and my colleagues to quickly find appropriately leveled books for students.  Since every minute is precious during the school day, I think it's critical that I always provide my struggling readers with books they are able to read with success.  However, I also try to promote motivation by giving them choice in what they read.  Now that the books are arranged by level, I can offer them several baskets to choose from and still ensure their success.  How do you arrange your classroom library?  Leveled?  Genres?  Authors?

 

A second project that I was able to finish was a Story Retell poster based on a blog post from The First Grade Parade.   Cara explains how she uses sticky notes to record her student's thoughts while they retell a book.  This makes it nice to be able to reuse the poster again and again.  I made a mini-version of her anchor charts and put on a ring for my Reading Tutors to use during small groups.  These would also work great for students to use after "Read to Self" activities.  If you visit Cara's blog, all the resources are available as a free download.

 

In time for the start of football season, our new produce "Punted, Tackled, and Blocked" reinforces the three sounds of suffix-ed.  The bundle includes 3 different games and a week of reinforcing student activities.  I can't wait to put this together for my kiddos!  GO PATS!!





Finally, to celebrate my birthday, everything in our TpT store is 20% off this Friday and Saturday!  LET'S PARTY!

We hope you have a fun-filled weekend, friends!!  Talk again soon!