We’re wrapping up our amazing animal research and starting our rough drafts this week, but I’m just now getting around to sharing this penguin freebie with you. I start our amazing animal unit with a week-long study of penguins each year. At the end of the week, students make penguins that look like the species…
I think I might have mentioned this before, but I sort of have a thing for penguins. Seriously. This is the top shelf in my office. That doesn’t include the pillow pet I received for Christmas last year. {Sidenote: I asked my husband for it and he said no so I asked my dad. Once…
Cynthia’s blog is near and dear to my heart because it was the very first one I made through Design by Christi so of course I had to join her linky party of freebies. My favorite freebie so far is my writing innovations pack. It’s my favorite because I love, love, love writing workshop. It…
Johnny Appleseed’s birthday is this month! We celebrate by doing reading, writing, and social studies activities all about Johnny Appleseed and apples. We’re actually celebrating a little early in our classroom because his birthday falls right in the middle of my Amazing Animal unit. I’ve promised the students he won’t mind an early celebration though….
As many of you know from Facebook, we were at the beach last week celebrating our first wedding anniversary. I think I’m just now getting back into the swing of things at home again, but I had to take a little trip down memory lane and look at a few of our wedding pictures. Aww……
I saved our writing pictures for last because writing is one of my favorite things to teach. Our writing center is an important part of writing workshop. We publish projects once a month, so students need access to “fancy” paper, stencils, and fun scissors. I’ve organized a variety of writing paper by theme in our…
My Writing a Poem A Day Poetry Unit was a huge hit this month, both online and in our classroom. In case you missed it, here’s the video that tells you all about it. We’ve completed all the poems at school and are in the process of publishing them. I realized that I had a…
I had so much fun sharing my innovations with you. I actually learned about the concept of mentor texts and genre studies from a Katie Wood Ray workshop I attended several years ago. She inspired me to create a mentor basket of books to help teach writing workshop. Using the mentor texts to teach craft…
Today is the fifth and final day of my five-day series on using innovations in your classroom during writing workshop. For today’s post, I’m highlighting My Teacher’s Secret Life by Stephen Krensky. I always save this innovation for the end of our series because it provides the least scaffolding. Like many of our kiddos, the…