I LOVE books!

For the past two weeks my class has been enthralled in some amazing books! We have been working hard on comparing and contrasting different elements of text. I thought I would share some of the books we have been using and what we have been using them for. (Some of these I may have posted about before)

We used this book to compare and contrast character dialogue. Before we even charted using a simple t-chart, I read the book. Then we went back through noting the dialogue. They were shocked to realize that one of the characters didn't say a thing in the beginning and middle...but when he did speak it was important and the climax of the story!

This book is SO powerful! I used it to talk about how setting can affect and change a character, also how a character changes, we compared and contrasted how she felt in the beginning versus the end.

I know that I talked about this next book before, but I love it...and so do the students! There is so much to discuss about in this book. We first used it to compare and contrast the two characters.

We then read Teammates and compared the two characters. The next day we compared and contrasted the two stories (Pink and Say with Teammates)...it was AMAZING some of the things the students came up with: "they are both battling the same thing even though they are decades apart", "the both wore uniforms". Great discussions!!!

We then compared and contrasted stories written by the same author (how the story itself was structured, written, etc.)

As we moved on we started a Character unit. I will share my Reading notebook and classroom focus/topic poster soon! But I wanted to share the students' favorite book, they couldn't stop talking about this one and the character traits that they discussed were great.

ENJOY these great mentor texts!

I Need My Monster UPDATE

Hey guys...just want to give a shout out to the person that shared my I Need My Monster Packet! My email has blown up with requests to share the packet, LOVE IT! So thank you for the "share", not sure who you are :)

Anyway to maybe make things a bit easier/faster for some of you, I have uploaded the packet to my TpT store. Some people were having problems with the Google link and not being able to print. Thank you again for the massive amount of interest and I hope you all enjoy!!!!

Here is the TpT Link:
http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/I-Need-My-Monster-Packet-922729

Here is the link to my original post about the activity:
http://dandelionsdragonflies.blogspot.com/2012/10/we-need-our-monsters.html

Visitors

The past two weeks I have hosted a few visitors in my classroom.

One of my student's asked if his Aunt could come teach some Yoga to our class, SURE...seeing that we don't have PE teachers and are in charge of it ourselves...I thought it was a wonderful opportunity.

Here are a few pictures

Only down part was some of them were a little "too" relaxed afterward!

The second group of visitors just came today. Our district board of education "popped" in for a little visit.

My kiddos did AWESOME. We were in math centers working on many different things. Here are some great resources I have used for our Decimal Place Value and Factors/Multiples Review.

Center 1: Moby Max (this is a great website, with free portions, that really helps with support and review)
Center 2: QR Self checking Place Value and Factor/Multiples (LOVE this seller's stuff on TpT!)
Center 3: A QR code weather decimal/website worksheet that I made
Center 4: Meet with teacher
Center 5: Salute

The HR director also thought he would do a little decorating while he was in my classroom!

Finally earlier this week we also had our walk-a-thon. 

Here I am with my co-teacher...a little cold out and both supporting our teams!

This was our classes walking back to school from the Middle School track...you can tell they were a little tired! 

Hope you guys are having a great week and I'm looking forward to the weekend!!!!