Live, Laugh, Love Second: Five for Friday

I've bene neglecting the little blog lately, so I decided I would link up with Doodle Bugs Teaching for Five for Friday! You can link up too by clicking on the button below.

Here was my short week...

We've been using these place value mats I made to help with our addition and subtraction. The kids love them because they get to use Expo markers. I love them because they are reusable thanks to the plastic sleeves I picked up at the Dollar Tree before school started. I wasn't able to get an entire class set, so the other kids just use a regular document protector, which works just as good. I found some page protectors like these on Amazon. You can check them out HERE. It's a set of 25 for $31.88, which is a great price!

I have no idea what I saved that file under for the place value mat, but I will put it here to download as soon as I find it!

I wanted to have some of my kids start taking home fluency strips and passages to practice reading at home. I needed a central location for them to store everything so it wouldn't get lost and would be easy for parents to get to. While I was visiting my family in Texas over Thanksgiving, I noticed that my niece's kindergarten teacher had made pencil pouches using gallon sized bags. She reinforced the bottom where she punched holes, and then she clipped them in the binders. Genius!

*The fluency strips are from Jane Loretz from See Jane Teach Multiage. My kids LOVE them. It helps that they're Star Wars themed. The kids progress through different levels that involve the characters. You can check them out HERE.

The passages are from Christina Decarbo. I like them because they help my kids practice their sight words, but they are reading them in text which is so much better! You can check them out by clicking HERE.

Let me start by saying that I absolutely LOVE Amy Lemons' and Katie King's new Rooted in Reading series. I have a comprehension group for 40 minutes in the afternoon, and these activities have been so great for them. I haven't been using the grammar pieces as much, but we have plenty of engaging activities to do with just the comprehension pieces. So...I wanted to make an anchor chart for the MLK Jr. week. While I can make a pretty decent anchor chart, I really liked the one Amy made and shared in the set. I blew it up using my projector, slapped my chart paper on the board, and TRACED it. Now I have a beautiful anchor chart to go along with our lesson. Not only am I using the great materials they created, I can also use the same eye-catching anchor charts! (Oh! Go check out Amy and Katie's newest Rooted in Reading set for February by clicking on the picture below!)

My last classroom was really big. So I had to be creative in my new classroom because I wanted all the same components of my old classroom. My meeting area is super important, and I knew I had to make it work. It's been fine for the most part, but recently, I've noticed I have to start every group meeting with "Scoot up! Fill those gaps! That's not an acceptable place to sit. If I can't see you, you can't see me! Are you sitting by a successful buddy?" It's driving me nuts! So, after stalking Chris from Famous in First's giveaways for Sit Spots, I finally gave in and bought some for my room. They seem random colors (trust me, it's killing me on the inside!), but they match stickers on their desks. Each pod (4 desks) has 4 colors (pink, green, yellow, and white) that the kids are strategically placed at. My thinking is that they will still have to sit on their assigned colors. I might make them sit by their current elbow buddies, but we'll see how it goes. The ultimate goal is to get seated quicker and start our lesson.Go check Sit Spots out by clicking HERE.

I've said this before, but I love our CKLA domain studies. We just started Cycles of Nature, and the kids are already loving it. The curriculum called for us to complete a seasons chart as we read one of the listening pieces. But I am really big on engagement, so I thought it would be more fun to take all the chart details and divide them up among my 6 pods and have them work together to determine where they went on the chart. Each table took a turn coming up, and as they stuck their cards up, the other tables discussed whether they were correct or not. The best part was when they had to move other misplaced cards because they had to determine where that it was supposed to go. It was pretty quick and was way better than me standing up there and writing them all out.