Remind 101--FREE Service

I was perusing through my Pinterest account, and came across this text messaging service for teachers. It's called "Remind 101".

Do you mean that there is a way to send out a mass text message to my parents without giving them my cell phone number?!?! Yes there is!!!!

All you have to do is sign up and create a class name. Then you can have your parents sign up just like they would for texts from stores. There is a number to text and attach the tag line that connects to your account.

Anytime that you have a message for parents, just go to the site (or the app on your phone), type up the message, and then send! They do not know your phone number but are able to get those reminders that are on those newsletters that they never read. You know what I'm talking about....you spend all that time creating a cute newsletter then it never gets home or gets put directly into the trash can.

Did I mention that you can attach this to your class blog?? You create a widget from the settings and place it anywhere on your blog. This way your parents not only get your text messages, but they are able to see the messages you send on the blog! 

I'm SUPER excited about this!! I can't wait to use it in my classroom next year. Most of my parents could care less about newsletters or blogs, but I know that they will check their phones. Whoot Whoot!!

Here's the link

The Chocolate Touch with Download

      Spring break is almost upon us. I just can't believe that it's almost the end of the school year! Where has the time gone? The 4th quarter has just started, so it won't be long before we are testing, take up text books, and have field day. In the mist of all this excitement, I am in the middle of planning a trip of a life time! I am sure that you all are wondering what we have been doing these past few weeks. Let me tell you.

We have been slaving away at our book Chocolate Touch by Patrick Skene Catling.

It's a story about a boy, John Midas, who is greedy and selfish. He desires chocolate more than any thing else. John finds a mysterious coin and buys a box of chocolate. This is where the trouble  begins. Everything that he touches turns into chocolate. This could spell trouble or it could be the "touch" of a lifetime.

Week 1: 

We looked at the copy write date and compared 1952 to 2013.

They LOVE seeing how things were different, especially when they get to see how much things cost back then compared to now. My lovelies scramble to find the food that they like and see how much they could have bought it for in 1952. I always hate having to stop them to move on, but if I don't then we'll get nothing else done.

"What is greed?"--This was the question that I had them ask themselves. 

They wrote their answer on a sticky note and placed it one the chart paper. They had some pretty good ideas about it too.

In order to get ready for our book, I read them the story of King Midas and his "golden touch". They LOVED this story! This did give me hope that they would love Chocolate Touch, but I was wrong. Some of my kiddos didn't like it surprisingly. All well, you can't win them all I guess.

We read half of our book doing character analysis along the way and trying to find out what was going to happen. In order to help my students with comprehension I allowed them to name each chapter keeping the main idea of each chapter in mind, and I had them create 4 visualizations about their favorite parts. We have talked a lot about visualizations and how they help us understand what we are reading. When we can see it in our minds, we have better idea what is going on in the story and it makes the story more real. 

Week 2:

      We finished the other half of our book in our second week. Many of my students talked about things that they would love to be able to eat all the time until we got to the end of the story. Ha ha ha. By the time we got to the end, my students created many text-to-text connections on their own. Here are a few:

• The Dr. Cranium was just like the doctor from Charlotte's Web. Whenever the parents are worried about their kids then takes them to the doctor, nothing happens. The doctors never seemed to help the kids ever!
• The shopkeeper was just like Mr. Wonka from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Both of them worked in a place with chocolate and were trying to teach children a lesson about greed and selfishness. 
• John Midas was just like King Midas. The kids made this connection before I was able to start our comparison with these two stories. They saw that both characters had a greed problem even though they looked a little different.

Dr. Cranium give John Midas an Elixir to help try to help him eat better, so I had my students create their own Elixirs. 

Once we were done reading our book, I had the kiddos compare King Midas to Chocolate Touch (a little more deeply than their previous connections) with their tables. After a few minutes, we came back together and made a Venn Diagram to display our thinking.

Since we discussed the theme of "wants and needs", "greed", and "selfishness", I thought that it was a good idea for us to make a chart paper that made us think about things that we need and want. There were different types of people wishing for different things and we had to determine if it was a "want" or a "need". Everything was going okay until it got to a 3rd grader wishing for a vacation, LOL. of course they felt that it was a NEED even though we discussed that one a length. All well, ha ha ha. 

It was a fun book, and I can't wait to do it again next year. If you have the book and are looking for some tests to go with it, you can look on my TPT, just click on the picture below to get your copy!

 

 

Charlotte's Web Freebie!!

Over the past few weeks, we have been reading Charlotte's Web. It's been a blast!!! It's so nice to see my students enjoying reading again. To celebrate my classroom's good time, I have put a functional text piece with questions about the county fair on TPT. Click on the picture to grab your FREE copy!

The free Copy will be in color;)

 Just as Fern and Wilbur enjoyed going to the fair, my students enjoyed reading about the fair. Not only did we complete this functional text activity--we also created our own flyers about a fair. Some of them were pretty good. Here are a few....

You all can go to TPT to get the whole unit which includes vocabulary words, "pig" questions, and tests!! Whoot! Whoot!

Journaling Expectations and Newsletters

It's the middle of my summer and I have to tell ya, that I am READY to go back to work!! To most people that have lives, it sounds crazy. But I am one of those people that doesn't have a life and gets bored after a few days of vacation. I have been trying to do some recreational reading; however, it doesn't sooth the thoughts of all the things that I have to do before school starts. Even though I have a huge list of things still yet to do, it doesn't replace my desire to go back to work to teach some kiddos.

I figured that I would share with you some of the things that I worked on yesterday. I am a journalling freak! My kids need to have a journal for everything. Last year, we talked about our expectations for each on, but it they didn't always abide by those. Therefore, I came up with a new plan to glue the expectations inside their journals. Maybe this will help them remember what kind of work they are supposed to do.

(The pictures will take you to the files)

Morning Journal Expectations

Each morning we have RTI time and the kiddos are working at stations (mainly reading stations)

Writing Journals Expectations

My kiddos use a journal to go through the stages of writing until they get to their final drafts. They write their final drafts on pieces of loose leaf paper.

 Reading Journal Expectations

During our reading block the kids go stations so I can pull small groups

Math Journal Expectations

 During our math block the kiddos have math workshop time

Last year I put all of the newsletters on the class blog, but I don't think as many parents visited the blog to get the newsletter as I had hoped. To try to keep that from happening again, I created an introduction newsletter that shows the parents what to expect on the newsletter and where they can find it. Also, I tried to make it clear that they can request a hard copy since I know not all homes have internet. 

If you want the DOC file, just leave your email address. Otherwise, the picture is to a PDF.

My list continues to get smaller, but it still a long one. I have other things that I will share latter, but I figured this could be a start. I really need to slow down my pace since we don't go back until middle of August. 

Outerspace Craziness with FREEBIE!!!

We have been working a lot with the planets over the past couple of weeks. They were having so much fun that they were surprised to hear that their projects were being graded. They were just under the assumption that they were just having fun. Now if that doesn't make someone's heart melt then I don't know what well. Any way, we spent a lot of time looking in our science books and looking at power points. Some of my students dug out the books from my class library on space and devoured them like there was no tomorrow.

One of the firs things we did was write from a writing stem....

Then we had a chance to create our folders about our planets. We took all of our knowledge that we gained and poured it into these folders or lapbooks.

Below (complements of abctech) you can grab the templete to create your own space lapbook. All you need are some old file folders to fold into thirds and the templete pieces, and you're good to go!

Spelling Fractions--FREEBIE!

We have been working on fractions this week. Fun, fun, fun! So, I was thinking about how I could get my kids to work with their spelling words in conjunction with something else. Well, I found it! Spelling Fractions. They had to write the a fraction for the number of vowels and the number consonants in each of their spelling words. They even get to color code their words, and nothing is more fun than getting to color during the school day ;) It took a lot of thinking. They even had to use their functional text skills on this one!

Click here to download: Spelling Fractions

Now, since I am not about to spent ten years to make boxes to around the letters on the computer, I just drew them after I printed the page. It took less than on minute.