Five for Friday: 7/18

I'm so excited to have time to link up with Kacey for Five for Friday! :) 

Last time I had a chance to post on the ole blog, I was talking about my summer plans/goals. Sadly, summer is quickly dwindling down to about a month left. :( I'm not quite sure what happened, this summer has gone by faster than any other summer I can remember. 

One of the reasons this summer has flown by is graduate school.  I took an education administration class this summer, which is a core requirement for my masters degrees in reading. The only grades in the course were two tests and four outside readings on leadership. So, I really need to stay on top of course material since the tests were 90% of our final grade. The class ended yesterday, so I spent a lot of time studying this week. 

I don't particularly enjoy being a graduate student, I've only had one class that I truly feel helped me grow as an educator.  So even though I don't enjoy graduate school, I know getting my masters degree is important, so enrolled in another class for the fall yesterday.  

I'm an avid menu planner. Having a plan for the week keeps us away from take out/eating out and thus saves us a lot of money.  However, lately I've been in a menu planning rut.  Even though I have hundreds of food related pins, it would take forever for me pick out recipes for our weekly menu. Last week, I stumbled on a new to me blog, Peanut Blossom.  The author, Tiffany, shared that she gives each day of the week a theme and it allowed her to come up with a meal plan for the week in minutes.  

I tried it this week and loved it.  I gave each week a theme and creating this week's menu was a breeze! :)

Certainly I have more time to cook in the summer, but I do feel that this system is easy enough for me keep going during the school year.  If you are looking for recipe ideas, I'd love for you to follow me on Pinterest.  

This summer I've been doing weekly Wish List Wednesday deals.  Every Wednesday, I put one of the most wish listed products in my store on sale.  :) This week my spelling contracts are 30% off. :)  I announce the deals on Facebook and Instagram mostly, so make sure you follow Fourth and Ten on Facebook and Instagram. :) 

Spelling Contracts Throughout the Year on TpT.

You can see how I use these contracts with my class, here. 

I've been sneaking away a few minutes here and there to work on a new project that I'm so excited about, warm ups for my guided reading groups.

 These quick warm ups are short activities that spiral review CCSS standards, or skills like PQA that I feel are important for success with the CCSS. They are perfect for the first few minutes of guided reading, while I'm scanning the room to make sure everyone else is doing what they are supposed to be doing.  

I've mapped out the first set of warm ups and hope to have them ready for you next week.  

This past week, I finally tried Jamberry for the first time.  I would not consider myself to be super girly and never do anything with my nails because when I paint them, it looks like a two year old did it.  I tried Jamberry because even though I'm awful at painting my nails, I do how nice they look when I get the occasional manicure. 

I will be the first to admit that your first application is a true learning experience, but I was so happy with the final product that I decided to join Jamberry as a consultant.  My blog will always remain dedicated to my teaching adventures but if you see a picture of a manicure here or there on Instagram, that's why.  If you've never tried Jamberry, you can check out my consultant page here.  

Five for Friday: January 10th

 

Hi, friends! I am so happy to be linking up with Doodle Bugs this week for Five for Friday.  One of my goals for myself this year was to blog more.  I love blogging.  I love sharing ideas with other teachers, collaborating with you all, and I feel it makes me a better teacher.  Blogging has helped me become so much more reflective as a teacher, and I feel that my instruction has been so much more effective and purposeful since I started blogging two years ago.  Holy Cow, I'm just processing that for a minute...two years. :)  

 

Our week started off with two cold days.  The windchill had temperatures in the -25 range.  Now it is raining and it's 51 degrees outside.  #thatsohioforya

Even though we started the week a few days late, we were extremely busy this week.  With a few reminders, we jumped right back into our Daily Five routine.  For that I am extremely grateful.  We did a chapter book study for two weeks before break and it was awful.  I mean the book itself was good, but the disruption in routine really did a number on my kiddos.  When I announced Daily Five was back in action on Wednesday they all cheered. :) 

Rather than tweaking my plans, I just started my plans for Monday on Wednesday.  

We are hitting prefixes and suffixes hardcore over the next few weeks.  So I tried to do a fun game or activity with them before starting reading groups this week.  On Wednesday, we played a fun prefix/suffix decoding game from Deana's Read Like a Champion Pack.  Even though my kiddos are bigger, they still love fun games like this.  Every week, I try to do a Find the Evidence sheet from my friend Jenny's Text Detectives Pack for January.  My kiddos love them.  The passages are highly engaging and it's a great concrete way to reinforce the fact we need to use the text whenever we answer questions about the text, even "right there" questions.  Our main story this week was My Brother Martin from our reading series.  In our small groups, my students read about Coretta Scott King or Harriet Tubman, which they loved.  We also broke the ice and did my Winter Break Find Somebody Who sheet and my teaching partner did my Snow Day Find Somebody Who.  Fourth graders are very social and love any opportunity to socialize with their peers.

Thursday was another busy day in language arts.  Each group started with another activity from Deana's pack.  They matched up works with prefixes with their meaning.  Most groups finished reading their biographies on Coretta Scott King or Harriet Tubman and we started working on non fiction sharing boards, which are available from Laura Candler here.  I tweaked what we did in each box a little bit, but it was a great way to practice lots of informational text standards!  Some of us started working on the outlines for their fictional narratives and some of us finished up the story lines we planned on using for our fictional narratives  The organizer seen above is from Third Grade Doodles.  We also watched the video of the book Martin's Big Words.  After we watched the video, we did some shared research by taking notes on what we learned about Martin Luther King.  

 

Friday kept us busy as well.  Since we didn't give a spelling test this week, we used the extra time we had to watch and discuss the Brain Pop video on Martin Luther King.  It's a free one in their library,  and you can find it here.  We also read My Brother Martin together and took notes on what we learned about Martin Luther King together.  On Monday, I will print off the notes and my students will use them to write short essays on Martin Luther King.  Hello, RI 4.9. :)  My afternoon class needed a little inspiration/break in the middle of the day, so we watched this Kid President video.  My kiddos love Kid President, and so do I! It was the prefect mid afternoon pick me up.  Most groups finished up their non fiction sharing boards.  I was SO IMPRESSED with their work.  They did a great job using the text to support their answers and their answers were AWESOME.  It was hard to find an example because the paper we used was darker, but I was super impressed with this gal, who is actually in one of my lower reading groups. :)

This year I want to take better care of myself.  I got frequent migraines due to stress last semester, so I am taking a semester pause from graduate school.  Even though I've only been back to work for a few days, it has already made a huge difference.  Classes will be there in the summer, and I'm loving the extra time to spend with my little family and being able to be creative again in the classroom.  It makes a huge difference.  When you are excited about what you're doing in the classroom, so are your kiddos. :)  

I've had more time to cook dinner at home, which I've loved.  I've focused on eating more whole/natural foods this year and I've loved it.  I've had more energy and I just feel better. 

Though this picture makes the former food blogger in my shutter, this chicken sausage jambalaya from one of my favorite cookbooks, was a hit this week!

 

Since winter break is over, I am back to writing lists and making routines to keep my sanity.  

 

While parts of me hates that I'm tied to lists/routines, part of me knows that without them, I'd be doing laundry and cleaning my house all weekend.  Or being left to my own devices while shopping and buying all kinds of things I want but don't need. :) 

I'm off to savor one last cup of coffee before tackling that closet and making my grocery list for the upcoming week.  I've finally been struck with some creative inspiration for some new resources and I can't wait to share them with you. :) Happy weekend!

Pass the Tardy Sauce...Five on Friday on a Sunday

So every week, I have great intentions of joining up for Five for Friday and well then Friday slips away from me. I'm sure falling asleep on the world's most comfortable coach at 8:00 doesn't help. ;) I'm serious, I have the world's most comfortable couch. I fall asleep on it pretty much every night and head up to my bed at about 2:00 in the morning. 

 
So let's get started! :)

ONE: We changed seats this week.  PTL. :)  We do A LOT of cooperative learning in my class and my kiddos are always talking and working together.  Which is great but after a few weeks, the bickering starts, which lets me know it's time for a change. :) Since I don't want to change seats again before the end of the year, we did lots of talking about what we wanted from our group members and each group made little promises to each other that I hung up in the room. 

  

 

They've been great for solving little bickering that has come up.  "Do you remember that you said you would be _________ blank?" was all I had to say and it stopped. #magic :)

TWO:  We went on our field trip to Great American Ballpark, home of the Cincinnati Reds, and had a great time on Thursday!

 

We had a great time touring the stadium and creating our own baseball teams.  Each group of students was given a budget and they had to create the best team they could.  Then we toured the Reds' Hall of Fame and Museum.  I have lots of baseball fans in my room and we all had a great time!

THREE: The weather has been super nice lately.  So my yard and grill has been getting lots of attention. :) 
 

FOUR: We started our Mother's Day Cookbook project last week.  I have to say this years' class is a huge fan of spaghetti and brownies!  It's always fun to put these cookbooks together because usually some kind of theme unfolds. One year it was very appetizer heavy and then next pretty much every recipe was sometime of sweet! You can check this project out on TpT {here}.

FIVE: Fourth and Ten is now on Instagram! I have had a personal Instagram for a few years now and LOVE it. :)  So I'm excited to be have one for the blog as well. :) 

 

 Click {here} to follow Fourth and Ten!

Have a great week! 

Five for Friday Time and an Annoucement!

Woohoo! So excited it's Friday and to link up with Kaci! :)

 

1) Next week, I'll be participating in interviews.  I've been waiting to tell y'all some big news, now that it's official, I can!  Next year, my little school will be adding an extra class to my grade level, so I will no longer be self contained.  While parts of me are sad, I do love getting to know my kids really well and the community that develops throughout the year in a self contained classroom. However, I'm really excited to focus on one area and teach it well. 

So, what will I be teaching? 

   

I will really, really, really miss teaching math BUT teaching reading is my passion and I just couldn't deny that. :)  Since I LOVE creating math materials, I still plan on sharing and creating some math goodies for y'all...just not as often. :)

2) We are still loving our fluency tubs but I've implemented a change in the fast few weeks.   Mainly, switching our fourth tub to task cards on skills I feel we need extra work on, which has been great so close to our state assessments. I own a lot of task cards, so this change has been quite easy for me. :)  This week, we worked on Rachel's Context Clue Task Cards.  The kids have responded really well to this change and have really benefit from the extra practice.  I check them right away and am able to clarify any misconceptions immediately!

 3) Blank Walls

We take our state tests in reading and math next week, so I spent some time after school "OAAing" my room.  My focus wall looks so lonely with the one rogue fourth quarter book report that was turned in early this week.  

4) Our school mascot is stars, so I took that theme and ran with it this week as we did our final surge of test prep.  My kiddos loved it. :)  I don't think anybody enjoys test prep, but it doesn't have to be ugly! We made these stars today as fun final way to remind ourselves of good testing strategies and I customized a Walk of Fame Star for our themed online and hung it up outside our room.  They really loved this extra touch!

  

5) Crafty Test Prep 

We need a little bit of extra reinforcement on some important terms that will appear on the vocabulary section of our state test, so I tried to do some crafts to make the topics stick.  The anchor charts aren't pretty BUT my kiddos really did enjoy these activities and I think served their purpose quite well!

The cinammon rolls were inspired by the sweet Cara at The First Grade Parade.  For the antonyms activity, I just used some flip flop clip art I had and had them list pairs of antonyms on the flip flops.  We also did my friend Jen's Rainbow of Similes, I just forgot to take a picture of them!

I'm off to enjoy House Hunters!  :)  HAPPY FRIDAY!