Bloglovin' Giveaway Winner!

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Congratulations Karen!  You should have a gift card in your email right now :-)

Now I have two very important questions for you all.  I'm working on a set of Back to School Math Centers for Fifth Graders, based on the major work of fourth grade and a really great end of year conversation my grade had with the fourth grade.  Our principal allotted some time on our last conference day to talk to the grade below ours to find out about strengths and weaknesses.  I took a TON of notes so I can start planning some center activities for my new friends for the beginning of the year!

One area of focus for fourth grade is place value of whole numbers, so I wanted to include a place value game.  I'm just curious what you call this:  (Everyday Math calls it s a long, EnVisions calls it a ten rod)

 And what do you call this?  Everyday Math calls it a flat.

  Thanks for your help!

Vacation! Finally! And a bloglovin giveaway!

I'm finally on vacation!  Woohoo!  And what's the first thing I decided to do this morning?  Catch up on teaching blogs of course!

Here is a quick run down of my end of year....

First, my big guy went to his pre-k prom.  Stop it.  It was so cute!

Then we went to his graduation ceremony.  

Then my students had their fifth grade graduation.

They also had their prom and school festival.  No pics; I'd have to edit out too many faces. :( We spent the last few days of schools playing games (I lost EVERY round of Clue I played) and signing autograph books.  We had a great last day of school and now I'm SO happy to be home with my littles for the summer.

We celebrated our early dismissal with some ice cream.  Or rather, THEY celebrated with ice cream.  I had water.  We will be spending a lot of time at the beach and the pool, so I'm trying to cut back on the snacking.  Although, as fate would have it, the next few days have a rain/thunderstorm forecast!  Boo!

Also, I'm sure you've heard that Google Reader is disappearing on July 1st.  Bloglovin is a really easy, user friendly and attractive way to continue to follow all of your blogs.  Check out all of these bloggers who are also doing a bloglovin giveaway at their blog!  You have a chance to win at each blog!  If you'd like to do your own giveaway, grab our button for your post, link up, and then get the inlinkz code to insert into your post so that the link ups will also be visible on your blog.  :O)

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And thank you Collaboration Cuties for organizing this massive giveaway!

Earth Day Poetry Activities - Giveaway!

We finished ELA testing today!  Woohoo!  What a huge relief!  Come what may with the results, I'm just so happy to have it behind us.

I can honestly say that nearly all of the kids I tested today (I only test ELLs who receive extra time), they really worked hard.  I was so happy to see them using the strategies that I taught them.  And for many of them, their writing was excellent :-)  They read the prompts and use text evidence.  Awesome.

In little bits, here and there, I've been trying to stick in some poetry.  I'd hate for April, National Poetry Month after all, to end without having taught a little bit of poetry!  And next Monday is Earth Day!  So I kind of mushed the two together with  Earth Day themed poetry activities (available on TpT).

On Wednesday, we worked on sorting Earth Day themed similes and metaphors.  The kids sorted the metaphors and similes and talked about the two things being compared.  Then they went to work on writing their own similes about the Earth.  I made this set differentiated and when I read "the river was as wet as water," I was really glad!

For my independent students, they received 8 cards with the frame of a simile (the river is _____ like a _____).  For students who need a little more structure, they received a set of characters with the characteristic included (the river is as fast moving as _____). And for students who need a LOT of support, they received cards with a place to brainstorn and scaffolded questions to guide them to write a simile.  For a couple of kids, I mixed two of the sets.  I gave one of my girls a highly structured page and the medium support page.

We also built some sentences with personification!  This was a fun activity!

To complete this activity, the kids picked a noun card, a verb card and a preposition card to help begin their personification.  I had to work on this in a small group with some of my ELLs to help them think creatively.  They built personifications such as "the flower laughed when the grass tickled her."  I was pleased!

Next week, we will start drafting cinquains and haiku.  I'm purposefully keeping it simple because we still have three more days of math testing at the end of next week and I hate to start something we can't finish!

I'm so relieved that my ELA testing is over, and pretty proud of this package, so I want to give away two copies of my Earth Day Poetry Activities product!

Leave me a comment with something exciting.  Did you finish testing?  Are you going on a field trip?  Is school over soon?  (Jealous!)  Be sure to include your email address and I will pick two people randomly during my lunch period tomorrow (sometime between 10:20 and 11:10am on April 19th)! 

So....tell me something exciting!

Teaching and Tapas Giveaway!

I've linked up with Teaching and Tapas' amazing giveaway!  She's giving away 100 products and there are lots of ways to enter :-)

I'm giving away my Common Core and Commas.  I had really great success teaching my students how to use commas with this product!  The students learned to use commas and semi-colons to separate items in a list, to offset yes or no, direct addresses, introductory phrases and tag questions.

Be sure to head over to Teaching and Tapas to enter! You have until March 3rd to enter!