Hello again! Happy Tuesday! Today our book is a chapter book. This year my class had a really hard time settling down after lunch and recess, so I moved my daily chapter book read aloud from the end of the day to right after recess. We read several books this year (which will be featured in upcoming posts) but this one was our favorite this year! Almost Super by Marion Jensen is about a family of superheros (The Bailey’s) and their archenemies (The Johnson’s).  Every leap year the children who are 12 or older in these families get super powers

Hello all! Happy Summer Vacation. I am starting a new series called: Book Talk Tuesday. Each Tuesday I will be featuring a book that I love with a freebie to go with it! This week I am talking about: A Porcupine Named Fluffy by Helen Lester. This is an adorable book about a porcupine who has some trouble with his unusual name.  I mean really, who names a porcupine Fluffy? He is pretty upset about it until he meets a friend with an equally amusing and unusual name! This book is adorable!  My students really enjoyed it.  We talked about

I love fun, decorative gel clings for my classroom door. You know what I don’t love?  The kiddos touching them, taking them off, dropping them on the floor, and putting them back up! I don’t like it when I can’t get them to look like they do in the package. I have a solution! Leave the plastic backing on! This is a picture from the back. Everything stays right where it is meant to be and if the kiddos touch it, they won’t be touching the gel! You could even cut it into the shapes of the objects so you

Hello all! Sorry for the hiatus, but you know how busy life can be! So, I’m back with a WONDERFUL book! The Day the Crayons Quit!  (affiliate link) If you don’t own this book yet, you really need to. It is super adorable and the kiddos love it! It is about a child named Duncan who comes to school one day and instead of finding his crayons,  finds a stack of letters explaining why each color was quitting! Duncan learns to “color outside of the box” and try new things! You could use this book to teach point of view,

So, I don’t know about you, but the Santa who stops at our house prefers Oreo Truffles (and a good craft beer) as opposed to cookies and milk! Oreo truffles are sooooooo easy to make, and my boys LOVE to help make them!  So, here we go! Click on the recipe above to take you to a printable version! Hop on through to find some other amazing cookie recipes from: An InLinkz Link-up

Hello all! This week I want to talk about another great Young Hoosier Nominee: Crankee Doodle by  Tom Angleberger (he wrote the wonderful Origami Yoda Series)  my boys LOVE the Origami Yoda books, but that is for a whole other post!) This book is a play on the Yankee Doodle song (which of course we all had to sing at the end). In this fun story, Pony is trying to talk Mr. Doodle into going into town. Mr. Doodle is not interested. We talked about how Pony is trying to PERSUADE Mr. Doodle.  He tries a lot of different ways

Welcome back!  Thanks so much for stopping by! This week I am sharing how I am using the Young Hoosier Book Awards Nominee Mo’s Mustache by Ben Clanton.  We are working on making Connections. We read Mo’s Mustache and Stephanie’s Ponytail by Robert Munsch.  (You can click on the titles to see the books at Amazon). In Mo’s Mustache,  Mo buys a mustache on sale. He shows it off to all of his monster friends and lo an behold, everyone has a mustache!  Mo tries a few other things and his friends continue to copy off of him.  He gets

Hello all! So, this week I am starting a series on the Young Hoosier Book Award Nominees for 2015-2016. If you look at the official website, it says: “The purpose of the Young Hoosier Book Award Program is to stimulate recreational reading among elementary and middle school/junior high school children and to encourage cooperation between administrators, school media specialists, teachers, public libraries, and the community in providing reading experiences for Indiana school children.” You can click on this picture to learn more Every year our wonderful librarian participates in this program. We keep track of the books that the kiddos

Check out what all the hubbub is about over at Classroom Tested Resources!

Congrats Crystal G!  I hope you enjoy your book! Now, for a really quick tech storage tip! This year as a school corporation have gone 1 to 1 devices. So, that means that every kiddo in my class now has a Chromebook. This of course presented a bit of a storage problem. Thank goodness for smart colleagues! She found some storage racks that were meant for big pot lids. Here is a picture of the ones that I have purchased. As you can see here, the chrombooks fit perfectly and neatly into the slots. I labeled each slot by wrapping

Hello! It’s that time of year isn’t it? I don’t know about you, but after I show my kiddos how to Check for Understanding and Go Back and Reread, I start working on teaching my kiddos strategies for figuring out unknown words. A.K.A. Accuracy Strategies! I used to teach each strategy with a different book as I went along with Reader’s Workshop. That was fine, it worked, but then a colleague of mine stumbled upon this little gem. This little book has predictable text, but it does have a “difficult” word or two on each page that make it perfect

 Hello again!  Welcome back!   Today I am talking about my student’s  scary dark mess collectors desks. Now, I am fortunate enough to have newer desks, but that doesn’t change the fact that these babies weigh 70 lbs. a piece.  They are substantial. They are also ALWAYS MESSY!   Aggggghhhh. They eat papers, pencils, books, and an occasional snack. Until it is time to move seats, then all of that junk shows up. On the floor. All over the place! I needed a solution. Thank heavens for Seat Sacks! This year, I turned my desks around so the kiddos couldn’t put