Valentine Love Birds

Hi friends! Just wanted to share really quickly with y'all my Valentine's door from last year in case you were looking for last minute crafts for your kids. This was one of my favorite doors and the kids loved it. I had planned on creating a mustache valentine door with my fifth graders, but life has been too busy with my grandmother to accomplish this. Maybe this idea will be something you can use in your classroom :)

#LAeveryday2014 Weekly Recap

I've gotten a little behind recapping each week's worth of #LAeveryday2014 Instagram posts. Follow along on Instagram: msleslieann01

 Let's get started!

Day 18- Working in my classroom, cleaning and rearranging 

Day 19- Finished the classroom's mini makeover

Day 20- Main idea charts in the making

Day 21- We discussed main idea in depth!

Day 22- My sweet Reese :)

Day 23- Water for the diet...thanks for your suggestions on spicing up water!

Day 24- Since my grandmother has been in the hospital, I've been passing the time by creating!

Day 25- More creating and hospital stays

Day 26- Creating Continues

Day 27- My grandmother has a heart cath this morning...which means a lot of waiting and working

Day 28- Snow!

Day 29- Some of my favs

Day 30- My assistant fell asleep on me!

Day 31- Drugstore beauty always makes me feel better

Day 32- House hunting and planning!

Day 33- My favorite way to unwind from a hard day

Day 34- House Hunting! 

Day 35- Our newest novel study arrived!

Day 36- Jewelry prep

Day 37- Kate Spade paper clips make grading paper just a little more fun :)

Follow me on Instagram! msleslieann01

SALE!!

I may not know who's playing in the big game, but I'm always up for a SALE! Everything in my store is 20% off today! Click here to shop! :)

Update

Hi y'all! I haven't blogged since last week because I've been crazy busy and on the go. Thursday night we had to take my grandmother to the hospital for the second time in a week with a high fever. After a bunch of tests they found an aneurysm in her stomach. They had to do a heart cath yesterday to make sure there weren't any blockages before they did the surgery for the aneurysm. Those results weren't that great, so she has to have bypass surgery Thursday. Please say a prayer for her!

Needless to say, my life has been busy, busy, busy since Thursday night. On the upside, I've been able to work on several projects which you already know if you follow me on Instagram (msleslieann01). I wanted to share with y'all some of my new valentine's creations as well as some golden oldies.

My newest project should be finished tomorrow! I'm so excited about it :) Stay tuned!

Just wanted to update y'all on where I've been. One of my new year's goals was to blog 4-5 times a week and I failed on that last week. I'm working on getting back on track :) 

task cards brought to life, a mini classroom makeover, & a good book

I have become obsessed with using task cards in my classroom. I absolutely love them and I think I have purchased every single one of Rachel Lynette's and Teaching with a Mountain View. It's so easy to just pull out a set for a particular skill that kids are struggling with. While I love using these in centers and during my small group instruction, I thought they would also be great for whole group instruction. I decided to take a few of the cards and write them on chart paper.

 I displayed them around the room and the kids got into groups to figure out the main idea of each passage. I also added two other choices to pick the main idea from, so when they were finding the main idea, they also had to tell me why the other two were wrong. 

Once we finished determining the main idea of each passage, we color coded our answers. I think it's so important to teach kids how to highlight. If we didn't go over this in class, every kid would be highlighting every single word that they had written. This way, it's much easier to find what they're looking for when I call on one of them. We highlighted each main idea in the same color and their reasons for why the other two choices weren't the main idea in another color.

Lastly, we filled out a graphic organizer where we named the main idea of a passage, along with details that supported the main idea.

Tomorrow we will work on a slightly harder passage where we will identify the main idea and find supporting details within the passages

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I spent a little time in my classroom this weekend and rearranged some things. The room works so much better now and I'm loving the new areas. My kids were thrilled too :) We all need a little change every now and then, right? 

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Have you ever read this book?

How wonderful is this book? Soooo good! I posted a pic on Instagram (msleslieann01) and I had several people say they read it aloud to their 5th graders. I would *love* to do this and actually had one student ask if we could do this with the book today but since I only have each group of students for around an hour and 1/2, I simply don't have time. I'm still struggling with fitting everything in, so a read aloud just isn't possible. Instead, I talked about the book with each group and asked if they wanted to read it. If they did, they put their name on a piece of paper and placed it in the green bucket. At the end of the day, I randomly drew a piece of paper and that person got to read the book. When that person finishes, the book will be passed on. There's also a copy at the library that they can check out. If you haven't read the book, you definitely need to. It was so good!!

Happy Tuesday, y'all! :)