Update... Tumble Towers for 3rd - 5th Grades

Slowly, but surely folks. As promised, I'm creating additional Tumble Towers sets. To see the original post, click HERE. For now, ELA review for 3rd grade is up on Teachers Pay Teachers. Click on the cover to get your copy! It is the eve of Friday. I hope everyone is anticipating a restful and fun weekend! 

I can't wait to tell you when 4th grade ELA Tumble Towers is posted. I really can't wait until I attack the other subjects. Have fun with this one!

Happy day! It is finally here! Fourth grade ELA Tumble Towers have arrived. So that covers all testing grades' review sets for ELA. If you're using these, please let me know how the kids are doing with it. Click on the cover to find all Tumble Tower sets on TPT.

And if you missed out the 5th grade ELA Review Tumble Towers, click below.

Captured Lesson - The St. Patrick's Day Scavenger Hunt

Are you guys still doing leprechaun-themed lessons? I didn't think I would, but leprechauns are just too cute. I wanted my students to do a scavenger hunt through the school. You know, get them to change up their scenery. The reward was entering the classroom full of St. Patrick's Day treats. We just had a few stops in the school. We started in their hallway with a pretty hokey poem....

We then continued to the office, the gym, the reading garden, and lastly, our classroom. At each stop, they had to unscramble words to make a St. Patty's Day sentence. At each stop, one student was the designated QR code scanner who would check to see if the class could move to the next destination by arranging the words correctly. The destination was revealed only then and was underneath the sentences strip that the students made the sentence on. So much fun!

There are tons of advantages of working with a small group, and scavenger hunts are one. I could envision this being possible within a classroom or for an advanced kindergarten class or whatever classes that may have an aide. My heart is broken that every means I could've had to take a photo or record the scavenger hunt was out of commission yesterday, so I only have a couple of photos to share of what they came into the room to. It hardly looks like much at all, but first graders are still young enough to express glee and gratitude no matter how small the gesture.

Go on over to Teachers Pay Teachers if you'd like this set, all ready and made up cute for you.  Please pin it if you love the idea. Everyone have a great week!

Captured Lesson - Idioms Skit "Act It Out"

This week was super busy! I finally got my students back in my class after weeks and weeks of testing. I had a SIOP video observation, and yesterday was our Destination Imagination Tournament. I won't say whether I did or did not oversleep one morning last week, but if I had, I think it was justified. 

Having my students back now means that we're going to be doing a lot of spiraling, a lot of reading practice using the UNRAAVEL strategy, and much more pep talking in preparation for the CRCT. I was pleased that I had my SIOP observation; I'm also pleased that I completed the task and got my videos published on YouTube for my observer.

For my observed lesson, I chose to review idioms and figurative language. I created these skits for my students. For ESOL students, and honestly many students, watching and listening people use figurative language in context is more helpful than just reading it on paper. For SIOP, it was great, because this was a tremendous way to bring in all the language domains - reading, writing, speaking, and listening. I'm working on a video of the students acting out the skits, but I will post that later. Below, find the links to the "Act It Out" packets. One's a teaser, so I'm making it a freebie. Yay for FREEBIES!! For more skits and differentiated answering sheets, please get the full set.You won't regret it! The students will love it every time they see these waiting for them, especially if you have some popcorn popped, too.

My students loved this. I have a director's clapboard, too. Make it authentic for them, they will sure to be engaged!

          

Learn / Play Flash... Introducing Tumble Towers Review Game

Alright, readers, this is the first of many! I finally got around to making the product for a review/game that I created for my classes. I began, first, using JENGA for sight words. With 54 blocks, even using both sides, the same ol' sight words JENGA didn't make the rotation for centers too many times. Kids were bored, and I couldn't come up with enough extension exercises for them. That's when I threw out that box of JENGA and came up with a more sustainable option. This is my new method. I was teaching every grade accept for third last year. I had to get creative so that I wouldn't have five different JENGA sets.

Here you have it, ladies and gentlemen! I numbered the blocks!!! I then created a set for each class for whichever subject I was teaching. Now, I will say the first evolution of questions was front and back of 8.5x11 paper.  For this round, I've decided to make cards. My stock paper sheets got bent too often, and cards are kid-friendlier. 

I hope you will have patience to hang in there for upcoming products if 5th grade ELA doesn't suit your current needs, but that's what I have up, and I hope you grab your own copy. Review of any kind is great for our students, but you'll see that games and interactive activities are sort of my thing! My hope for you is that getting a JENGA set and labeling the block is simple enough. I tend to overdo it sometimes, so I'm glad to offer something pretty simple for you. 

Have a blast with this product, and as I said... Stay tuned. =)

UPDATE: 
Third grade ELA review is available now.  Click on the cover image to get your copy today.

ANOTHER UPDATE: 
Fourth grade ELA review is available now.  Click on the cover image to get your copy today.

They're Here! Brainy Bottles Class Sets

Insomnia makes me super productive. I was able to put together the Brainy Bottle classroom sets and divide them by grade levels for you! All sets are available on TPT. The classroom sets include:

• Kindergarten - 1st (5 sets): Plural words, rhyming words, and syllable counts
• 2nd - 3rd (6 sets): Rhyming words, plural words, homophones, synonyms, and antonyms
• 4th - 5th (5 sets): Homophones, synonyms, and antonyms

Please visit my previous post for more details, including the bottles I love to use by a drink company called NEURO. There, you will also find a link to the dyed rice recipe I use. I've included two grade levels per set with differentiation in mind, and I hope you find that useful. Glad I could bring this to you so soon. Now, the question is.... sleep or Netflix? 

What's Developing: Brainy Bottles (A Hunt for Words)

Today, I want to share one of my favorite DIY classroom tools. I made these last year after seeing bottles in my mentor's classroom. As soon as I saw them, my urge to craft and create was awakened. I could think of tons of categories to make for the bottles, especially since I taught so many grades. This is exactly what I'm sharing with you today. You will also get a glimpse into my hoarding tendencies and love for the Neuro line of drinks. I digress.

I call these Brainy Bottles, and my classes have used them to find words and strengthen their language arts skills while experiencing a touch of kinesthetic learning. These are wonderful for centers and for partner work. The possibilities are truly endless, but I've created bottle sets for antonyms, synonyms, verb usage, homophones, rhyming, and plural words. For extension exercises, I have the students write sentences using (blank number of) words from the bottle or write new word pairs.

I get tons of inquiries on these perfectly eye-catching bottles when we've packed them up for conferences. I don't remember which came first - the love of the drinks that came in the bottles or the bottles themselves. They have certainly served a purpose for Brainy Bottles. NEURO DRINKS is the line of drink, and hopefully you can find them at your local convenient or grocery store. Any bottle will do, though, but I couldn't resist the colors of these.

Here is the link I used for coloring the rice. HOW TO DYE RICE. I prefer the neon food coloring colors over the primary colors, and for these bottles, they were a perfect match!

I'm putting up this freebie today for synonyms. I will put up complete sets soon. Keep your eyes peeled as I hope to run a contest so that one of my followers can win a full set, already-made! I love the drinks so much, that I have bottles waiting to be won!! Seriously, you have no idea how happy my husband would be if I got rid of a couple sets.

Happy crafting, and I hope you find uses for these bottles for years to come. You only have to make them once! I can't wait to hear how you do.

Captured Lesson: Contraction Surgery - The Doctor is in! (Updated)

My Contraction Surgery lesson is the first of my Captured Lesson posts. These are lessons that I have felt quite proud of, from planning to implementation to student reaction. I can't claim all these plans as completely original, but I have been inspired.  At any point, if I can recall the origin and link it, I will be sure to credit the inspiration. I found the gist of this lesson while student teaching, but I added my own spin to it. I also wrote this plan using SIOP, which is great for English Language Learners in a variety of ways. You are welcome to grab the lesson plan and graphic by clicking on the I Share...You Grab icon.

For a follow-up lesson about contractions, students entered the room and were immediately addressed as doctors. I wanted this to be a bit performance-based. This is a great way to boost engagement without adding too much time to the lesson, and it is possible to turn any number of lessons into performances. Each "doctor" used their desk as an operating table... no sitting, they had surgery to perform! Wearing surgical masks and rubber gloves, the doctors used scalpels (scissors) and stitches (tape) to join their words together as contractions. They had to call out for these supplies. Doctors would say, "Scalpel," and I would present them with scissors. "Scalpel." Actual band-aids were used as the apostrophe. Perhaps you've seen this online or on Pinterest before.

I added an extension activity so that the students would have to use their contractions in writing. What comes after surgery? Well, a prescription, of course! In this case, our stu....er, doctors wrote prescriptions to their patients about what to do and what not to do in order to get better. Here are some of the pictures of their work and the resulting bulletin board. Of course, I have to include a photograph of my second grade doctor staff!

A little programming note: I'm still new to blogging and green as I'll ever be when it comes to self-promotion, but I'm trying. My mentor is keeping me accountable and has recently shared the blog with her network. So if you're new here, thanks for stopping by. If you think that anything I post is worth sharing, I would welcome and love any pinning, sharing, posting, linking, tweeting that your heart so desires!

UPDATE (05.04.14)
I finally created the unit plan that I've wanted to create for the past two years. I now have two packets on TPT. The link for the freebie is still available, but if you want a complete set of anchor charts or a full unit packet, click on the images to follow.

I hope you've enjoyed this post! Happy following.