#LAeveryday2014 Weeks 2&3 Recap

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Day 6: Snow day! Perfect excuse to shop the HUGE Lilly Pulitzer sale. I got so many things for an amazing price!

Day 7: Reese's afternoon walk was a quick one! It was FREEZING cold here in Alabama

Day 8: I spent the night cutting out my new winter Language Arts centers, which you can find here.

Day 9: I found these amazing chervon pillows at the Dollar General store of all places! Perfect for my classroom.

Day 10: After an exhausting week, Reese and I curled up and enjoyed a good book. Who else loves Mindy Kaling?

Day 11: Grocery shopping at Publix!

Day 12: I spent this day working on my project for Jo-Ann Fabrics. You can read all about the finished project here.

Day 13: Rainy day! Finally got to wear my favorite Christmas present :)

Day 14: Shopping for a new desk chair. The one I have now is SO uncomfortable and kills my back. This one pictured was perfect, except for the price tag! I'm still looking! :)

Day 15: Double bows.

Day 16: Blonde Appointment made for a LONG day, in which I left my cell phone at school after having a dead battery all day. Jo Ann Fabrics project was shared on the blog. You can see that full post here.

Day 17: Stop the presses: I worked out! I absolutely hate working out! I hate it while I'm working out and I don't feel better afterwards. I'm trying to work on this! :)

Be sure and follow along with me on Instagram to see my daily posts for #LAeveryday2014. My username is msleslieann01

Teacher Creativity Blog Hop

I didn't realize just how much I love craft stores until I became a teacher. I could seriously spend hours looking at everything and getting inspired. When I found out there was a Jo-Ann fabrics store close to me, I was thrilled! There's so much you can find there that works wonderfully in your classroom. Several of my blog friends are sharing their creations, which you can find links to below. Here's mine!

One of my number one goals in my classroom is to get my students excited about reading! If you've been following me for awhile, you know that I was a first grade teacher for 4 years and I moved to 5th grade Reading/Language Arts this year...quite a change! I LOVE teaching 5th grade, but boy is it hard to get them excited about reading! All they want to read are short picture books to take an AR test on and get "points". I hate that! I want all of my kids to have a love for reading and I want them to get exciting about reading. Thus, recommendation boards were born.

I have one particular student who just doesn't like to read. I had some extra time last week to sit down at our bookshelf with him and search for a book that I thought he'd like. I decided to pull out The Westing Game, one of my personal favorites. This is sort of a lengthy book, so I had my doubts but I decided to give it a go. He excitedly came into class the next day and said, "Ms. Leslie Ann, I'm obsessed with this book!" How great is that?! 

In order to share some of my favorites with all of my students AND let them share their favorites with their classmates, I created recommendation boards. I went to Jo-Ann Fabrics and bought 3 square boards, which were on sale for $8 each! I also bought 3 different patterns of fabric and some scrapbook paper. 

I used hot glue to cover each board with fabric

Then I typed up my headings for each board, glued them onto the board and done! Super Simple and easy. One board will display my recommendation, while the other two are featured recommendations. For these, I'll pick a boy and a girl each week to choose a book that they would recommend to their classmates. They will type up a short summary of the book and search online for the cover. I think this will really help create a little excitement about reading in our classroom :)

Are you ready to get crafty?! Here's a 25% off coupon to help get you started on your next project! 

(Just click, save, and print!)

Also, be sure to sign up for their teacher rewards program, which is pretty great!

Want to check out more projects and get inspired? Visit these fabulous girls to see what they created in this #teachercreativity Blog Hop! 

This review is part of a Jo-Ann Fabric and Craft Stores® campaign. I received compensation for this review; however, this is my personal, honest opinion based on my experience

Chinese New Year

It's almost time to teach about the Chinese New Year! Do you teach this in your classroom? A few years ago, I created a unit filled with activities for this and recently I decided it needed to be updated! I redid the entire pack and I feel like it's so much better! If you've already purchased this unit, go grab your brand new pack. You can find it here.

You'll find pages like these:

But my favorite part is the animal sign posters.

Still haven't created a title, so that's why there's a big blank space. 

You can check out the packet here, or head over to Facebook for a chance to win! 

Winter Language Arts Centers in action (upper grades)

Hi y'all! I've had these winter language arts centers finished up now for a few days, but I had uploading issues so I'm just not blogging about it! :) I'm showing these on Life in Fifth Grade, but I decided to post here because I know not all my followers are 1st grade and they would work wonderfully for grades 3-6ish. 

Y'all probably already know this trick, but I recently realized you can use velcro to close your centers. Love!

You can find these centers by clicking below :)

Teaching Alliteration

I absolutely love teaching figurative language! We studied alliteration before we got out for Christmas break and the kids loved it. We did a snowy alliteration activity for our door, but I forgot to take a picture to show y'all. Here's the chart I made as a refresher for my 5th graders.

You can find lots of reproducible activities that are ready to print and copy! No prep needed. There's also a set of task cards as seen below.

You can find the unit by clicking the pic below :)

Eskimo Pattern Freebie

Hi y'all! Is it freezing where you're at??? It's been way too cold for Alabama. We had a snow (cold) day yesterday and a two hour delay today. I simply can't wait for summer to be here. I'm just not a fan of winter. 

Today I wanted to share with y'all a fun little winter craft that I did with my sweet 1st graders a few years ago. I figured now was the perfect time to do it since the weather's been so cold. If I still taught 1st grade, this would definitely be on Friday's plan! Maybe some of y'all can use it :) You can find it here.

Be sure and check out my newest post on Southern Belle Inspired. It's my first product review :)

Stay warm, friends! :)

Displaying Objectives

It's a snow day everyone! My favorite kind of Monday :) :) :) Since I'm currently snuggled under a fuzzy throw, I thought I'd share with y'all how I've been displaying my objectives this year. It's been working really well for me so maybe it will help y'all too. These objectives are for my fifth grade class, but the way I display them will work for any grade. I teach reading/language arts/spelling, so that's why there's no objectives for math, science, or social studies. I have one objective and one essential question for each day. When I start planning for my week, I start out by writing the objective for each day of the week. This helps me plan activities for the day and I'll know that if I have a surprise observation, my objective and essential question directly correlates to what I'm teaching. 

I struggled early this year with finding a way to displaying every common core standard that we would be covering each week. I don't know how it is with other reading series, but with Scott Foresman Reading Street, there's a TON for each week. After talking about it with our instructional coach, I decided to use the target skills and strategies. These are laid out nice and neatly for each story on the very first page of each TE of Reading Street (Common Core Version)

I sectioned off boxes on my whiteboard and labeled each box. Each week I write the target skills and strategies and also include the CCRS in each box. 

I use to display my objectives on this pocket chart, which I LOVE. It fit perfectly between my target skills and strategies and my SmartBoard, but it was just too much trouble to drag out the sentence strips, write the objective and essential question for each day and place them in the pocket chart, then change them out each day. So, I sadly took the pocket chart down and simply wrote the objective and essential question on the white board next the the titles/headings. It doesn't look as pretty, which I'm trying to forget about it because it is MUCH easier this way. 

I've started writing my essential question on this little pink white board that's magnetic. I can quickly write the question and display it and the kids know exactly where to find it since it sticks out. 

(I used my beloved Cameo to create the title)

Maybe this helps you get a little idea of how I display CCRS correlated objectives and target skills in my classroom. It's working really well for me so maybe it will for you too!

Happy Monday!