M is for Moon

The Moon center resources are now available. Click the picture.

Also, there is still time to enter my HOPE giveaway!

Have a great Thursday! Two more days until my Spring Break.



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R is for Reading Block

I've had a fellow Treasures user ask me to explain how I use it in my classroom. Some of the things I do might work for other programs as well. I wish someone could have broken it all down for me back when I was new and using Houghton Mifflin.

So here goes!

For those of you who use Treasures as your Reading curriculum, you know there is A LOT to get into the 5 days "suggested" plans. I feel that as teachers, we know what our students need and have the right to pick and choose which things to really focus on and which topics to quickly cover.

We have a mandatory 90 minute Reading Block, so we have to be creative on how to get all of the skills/standards taught.

This is my focus wall that keeps us on track.

The Whole Group portion of my time is usually the same every week:

Monday - Phonics skill and activity, Oral Reading cards
Tuesday - Vocabulary Words/Story
Wednesday - Read Main Selection with comprehension graphic organizer
Thursday - finish Main Selection if needed/Vocabulary Skill
Friday - 3rd Selection with Text Feature/Literacy Skill/Weekly review

This is an example of the Vocabulary page we do on Tuesdays:

We turn those words into a word splash:

We take pictures of our things on the board on our iPad.

We draw little picture clues and relate it all to the topic. Do you see the double lines on "muscles". My darlings had two different connections to the word and topic. The dotted line was their connection that aroma and scent mean pretty much the same thing. (And that came from my lowest darling!)

I also use the free smartboard lessons for each week that the wonderful Mrs. Fox created a few years ago. I hope I never lose mine, because she was asked to take hers off her website. Boo.

After Whole Group comes Centers.

Now, this is where things get crazy fun. I found that the center flip-books provided with the series were leaving some serious gaps in practice for skills. This post by Serenade to Second Grade inspired me to created some Treasures specific centers.

This system was born:

This is what it looks like on my board. Students pick their own partner each week (with my discrection of course) and do two centers each day. I just simply take off the top center card and push them all up. The top one goes to the bottom. There is always an empty center since I have 10 centers and only 18 kids.

The colors of the sign borders match the center bucket that holds all of the materials. The colors also match the skill on the Focus Wall. The colors around the student pictures match what reading group they are in. (Call me color-coding crazy...I know!)

The front of the folders have Must Do/Can Do directions on them.

Students have a center folder (color of reading group) and a To-Do list which I initial at the end of center time (while they work on the grammar skill...Writing time needs its own post!).

I've created files for each of the stories since Unit 3, Week 5 (aka the week we came back from Winter Break) and they can be found in my TPT store. UPDATE: Over the summer, I will be working on the beginning and catching up. Stay tuned!

I hope that helps some of you "bored" Treasures users to jazz it up.

I will work on a post for what I do during Reading Groups and Writing/Grammar.

Let me know if you have any questions! I love to answer questions!


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H is for Hope (Results and Giveaway)

I wrote about HOPE back in February and I just want to fill you in on how our Relay for Life went.

Well, we earned this:

Gold level is $5,000. We hit that goal on Friday morning before Relay even started. We ended the night at over $6,000.

Now you need to understand that I work at a Title 1 school. That means we have a high percentage of students from low to very low income families.

That doesn't mean that we don't have smart kids. We have some of the brightest kids you'll ever meet.

It just means that we don't have as many monetary resources as some of the other areas in our county.

We, however, make due with what we have really well.

I have found that the families and staff at our school go above and beyond when there is someone in need.

Relay for Life is no exception. We managed to raise a lot of this money for the American Cancer Society by doing things around school (jeans month, rummage sale, Parents' Night Out, face painting, Mystery Eggs, etc). Our staff and students' families donated what they could for a great cause.

I believe this generosity comes from having hope.

Luminaria Ceremony during Relay for Life 2012

We have...

hope for a chance to reach our goals.

hope that our families stay healthy and safe.

hope for a cure from a terrible disease.

hope for a better future.

Some of our students may not be able to see the bright side of things right now, but our school does a great job at instilling hope in their hearts.

We started the year by reading this book to our staff and then to our classes (with quite a few tears):


My students really related to it and it opened up a lot of discussions.

I would like to pass this book on to two of my followers who would like to inspire some hope in hearts around them.

You can enter this giveaway below. This is a new giveaway platform for me, so we'll see how well it works. =)




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