Five For Friday

Happy Friday friends!  Can you believe it is the middle of November already?  Time flies!  Here is a little Five For Friday for your entertainment. Thanks to Doodle Bugs Teaching for hosting! 

G.L.A.D. makes me…..well….glad!  And this week we had a refresher training from our fabulous G.L.A.D. trainers.  If you know G.L.A.D., you’ll recognize this as a pictorial.  We have a new ELA curriculum this year, so our fabulous trainers gave us wonderful ideas for using pictorials about the comprehension units. That makes this teacher’s heart happy.  You know what doesn’t make me happy?  That they say this is for ELL students…NOPE!  It is GREAT teaching and GREAT teaching is for everybody!

Ahhh….

And the groups keep marching on….In my reading intervention groups this week, we practiced a little cvc word blending with the firsties.  They are making great progress, and were going up and down these word ladders like nobody’s business….well…maybe like a snail’s business because it was a bit slow at first, but by the end of the week…they were zipping up and down these ladders I tell ya! These are part of our Guided Reading Sets which include stories and everything else you need for guided reading, making my teaching so much easier.  You can see them here, if you would like.

After zipping up and down the word ladders, we did some extra phonics reading practice with these great passages by The Kindergarten Connection.  Her stuff is fabulous for my firsties that are not quite to first grade level yet. 

A teacher is always a teacher, right?  While babysitting the grandbabies this week, we tried out some new, fun things that might find their way into school.  First we made some adorable owls, which would be a great addition to any owls theme you might be teaching. A few pinecones, some cotton balls, some googly eyes, and voila!  Adorable!

“Watch out big sister…I’ve got a cotton ball coming your way!” We also made these catapults.  They would make a great STEM activity.  In fact, in my fifth grade intervention groups, we are about to read a story about a trebuchet, and you can bet that we will be making these, too!  So much fun! You can find the directions on Pinterest. 

That was our week this week.  Hope your week went well, too!  Now I am off to read all of the other Five For Friday posts.  They always have such great ideas and laughs to share.  Have a great weekend everyone!

Smiles,

Kristin