Cybils!

This year I am extremely excited to be a member of the middle grades panel for the Cybil Awards.  Are you ready for the awards?!
 
Cybils Nominations Open October 1st: How Can You Participate?
Nominations for the third annual Children’ s and Young Adult Bloggers’ Literary Awards (the Cybils) will be open Wednesday, October 1st through Wednesday, October [...]

Metacognition in Reading Workshop

Assessment in Reading Workshop is always difficult, especially in an education culture that begs for grades at every turn.  I always struggle with how to assess my readers without cramming quizzes and tests down their throat at every turn.  I do test their basic comprehension when we read class novels- a necessary habit/evil that they [...]

Walking to School by Eve Bunting

Very few of my students are familiar with the situation in Northern Ireland over the course of their lifetime.  However, this contemporary situation is one that should be taught.  Before I read Eve Bunting’s newest offering, Walking to School, I wasn’t really sure how to do it.  Now, I know I will share this story [...]

Diary of a Wimpy Kid Do-It-Yourself Book by Jeff Kinney

Jeff Kinney is a godsend for reluctant readers.  His Diary of a Wimpy Kid series is my go-to for students who hate reading.  Everytime, within only a few pages of Greg Heffley’s “diary” they are laughing and telling their friends what a great book it is.  I can’t tell you how many of my students [...]

Houdini: The Amazing Caterpillar by Janet Pedersen

I am the crazy butterfly lady, no doubt about it. If a book so much as even mentions monarch butterflies I must have it for my classroom collection. Imagine my excitement when I received a review copy of Houdini the Amazing Caterpillar from Clarion Books this week!
Houdini is a monarch caterpillar who lives [...]

Jogtheweb

I spent  little bit of time tonight playing with Jogtheweb.  Jogtheweb allows you to create tracks, or trails, on the internet.  Tracks lead readers from one sight to the next.  You can set up any type of track you can imagine and I can see this being a great resource for research or web quests.
 
I [...]

National Punctuation Day!

Thanks to Jen for the link to National Punctuation Day!
 
From the press release:
 
Why is punctuation important Jeff Rubin the Punctuation Man and founder of National Punctuation Day explains that without punctuation you would not be able to express your feelings in writing not to mention know when to pause or stop or ask a question [...]

Wordle in the Classrom

Today I used Wordle in the classroom for the first time.  I loved it!  More importantly, the kids loved it!
We have been working on thinking about our reading in reading workshop and today’s mini-lesson was about using our thinking to write a paragraph explaining our thoughts.  We were reading Sandra Cisneros’ “Eleven” (one of my personal [...]

Monarch Emergence and Document Camera

Wow! This past week both of my classes were witness to one of nature’s miracles- the emergence of a monarch butterfly from its chrysalis. I have never managed to have both classes view this miracle as monarch usually emerge early in the morning, before we arrive at school. This year, I remembered [...]

Our Monarch Release

Below is a brief slideshow of the monarch release our team held earlier this week.  All of the pictures were taken by our “class paparazzi” who did a great job!

Make a Smilebox photobook