Five for Friday

Fridays are tough for me! I eagerly run around the room at the end of the day try to get everything 'just so' for the following week. I'm going to better utilize my time eventually, but until then I'll have to do my Five for Friday on Saturday mornings! Here are some pictures I've taken this week that never made it over to Instagram! I'm linking up with Kacey from Doodle Bugs Teaching!

I just finished my first full cycle of vocabulary and it went pretty well. You can read about it here. For my next cycle, I will implement some online tools to help the students study at home. I'll post about how that goes next week :)

I always write my lesson plans on a printable planner I use each week. A few weeks ago, Leslie Ann from Life in Fifth Grade posted about how she uses a Day Design Planner to pre-write her plans. I loved her idea so much that I went out and found me one... Only I didn't! If you saw this picture on Instagram then you know I was pretty disappointed! Luckily, my sweet friend from Not Jane had an extra she wasn't using. She mailed it to me and it's the best thing ever!

This past week I broke out my Intro to TBE unit. 

I used it to teach TBE to my students and how to support our answers with evidence. We only focused on one question because that took long enough! This product contains explicit directions on how to use TBE, bookmarks, anchor chart example, anchor chart student printable, 5 passages with 5 TBE questions, and many more! It's a huge timesaver! Anyways, the model lesson is a 'scary' passage about a mansion that two friends are dared to enter. It ends with the girl character walking through the door and getting a chill down her spine. Oh my! I had no idea 5th graders loved a mystery so much! In fact, they loved it so much that after we did our lesson I have them 10 minutes to continue the story. IT.WAS.UNBELIEVEABLE! You know the students that will not do any work?!? They were writing! It was amazing. These are pictures of the 10 minute free write. I'm thinking we will work on these this entire 1st quarter since they loved them so much! Then, we'll hang them up in a 'spooky' way!

Yesterday we had our first reading response day. Each Friday my students will have an reading response assignment waiting on them in Google Classroom. I {LOVE} this! Not only is it a great outlet for reflective writing and reading, but I get to know each student a little better! I add comments and they can comment back to me. This is one of my four classes working away!

Lastly, I can't wait to join in on all the fun! I'm hoping I will have time to post each day. This is going to be my goal(s) once I get all my papers graded this weekend!