Catching up...

I'm playing Saturday morning catch up--lots to share about what we've been up to the past month. Life has gotten in the way and I haven't been able to post recently. So expect several posts from me today!

First up? Valentine's Day! We did a few things that week to celebrate the holiday. To start, I found a cute idea from Laura Candler on TpT for a cinquain writing activity. The students interviewed each other following her format and created very sweet Valentine's for that person. They turned out pretty cute!

I also remembered finding a cool idea for making Valentine mailboxes on Pinterest and I thought I pinned it but cannot find it. The only idea I actually used from it was having students use empty cereal boxes for them. We then tore pieces of construction paper to create a mosaic look to the boxes. The students took them home, decorated and returned them on party day.

Lastly, I was excited to share my Valentine's for the students with them. I borrowed an adorable idea from The Teacher Wife as part of it. I found the cute V-Day pencils and gift bags at the dollar store and filled a couple little other goodies from Oriental Trading (bought during a free shipping weekend!). They turned out really cute!

It was a week of love in C107!

Class Writing Journals

These are our class writing journals.

We do writer's workshop each day that is separate from our Daily 5 stations. Work on Writing is still an occasional weekly station. These class journals are great for that station. You can download the sheets for FREE from my TpT store. The students add entries and we read some aloud. They are a simple and fun addition to any writing classroom!

Literacy Night Goodies!

Literacy Night is being held here at Harding tonight, Thursday 9/20, from 4-5:30 in the cafeteria (following a short PTA meeting)! A note went home earlier this week! I can't wait to see our families there. Every grade level will host some kind of literacy activity for students and their families. Our grade level will have a bookmark making station. Students can decorate a bookmark that includes a sticker reminder about the "Five Finger Rule". Here is an example:

And here is a close up of the sticker--I always encourage the students to use this in my classroom (in addition to keeping track of their Lexile and F&P reading level).

Finally, each family will receive one of these handy dandy little bookmarks as a parting gift:

These are great for parents or older siblings to have when working with a child who is reading. If they come to an unknown word, use one of the prompts to help them!

**If you are a teacher, you can get the templates for the stickers and parent bookmarks in my TpT store for FREE!**

Literacy Strategies

I love these posters that are now a feature in our literacy rich classroom! We refer to them often and we talk about when and how to use these strategies. I found them linked to Pinterest and they can be downloaded here for use in the classroom.