Spooktacular Savings

In honor of the upcoming holiday, I am having 20% everything in my TpT store this weekend!

Be sure to load up your cart!

Anchors Away!

Some people might think I am crazy, but I just love anchor charts. I think it is the elementary teacher trapped in me. It is rare that we do not make at least three of them during the course of a week in my classroom. My goal is to start sharing my anchor charts with you all on a weekly basis, but we will see how that goes. 

Last week we were focusing on plot elements and we were using a story mountain to help us. I created this chart with them that we have since put up in our classroom as a reference for us to use throughout the year. 

I just love hearing my students talk about the different elements in a story now that they understand what they all are. 

Yesterday we started to talk about theme. My student had no idea what the word theme meant, but they quickly realized that all it really is is the message or lesson that the author is trying to teach us in a story. As soon as they realized that, we quickly became theme pros. :)

If I turned this into a weekly, or biweekly, linky party, is that something that you would be interested in participating in?

Tell Me Something Good...

I am linking up with Jennifer for her Tell Me Something Good Linky! 

 

Something Good At School: I am finally in a nice routine at school and so are my 101 6th graders. It only took us about 9 weeks. :) Only having my students for 55 minutes has been a huge adjustment, but I am loving how much more productive they are since I do not have them for two hours. Now I am just hoping that we can keep this up! 

Something Good At Home: My grandparents came to visit us this weekend. It is always so nice when I get to see them, and Meme even treated us girls to dinner. 

I am also in love with my new whiteboard that I got with this year's budget. I really wanted to create something where I could post our daily learning objective, our agenda, and homework all in one place for my students. My campus requires us to post our learning objectives, but I wanted my students to be able to measure them.

 The "Today I will" portion is where our actual learning objective is posted. The next part, "I'll Know I've Got it When" is something new that I added this school year. A big push on my campus has been how will our students know they've got it, so I added this part to my board. I also like to post an essential question that my students should be able to answer by the end of the class. 

In the center of the board you can find the date, our agenda, and my students can also see what items they need to pick up. The material cards are from Ashley Hughes. You can find them in her TpT store.

Here is a view of the entire board. 

How do you organize this information in your classroom?

I've Been Booed!

The sweet Sara from Miss Elementary has shared some Halloween love with me!

Tori from Tori's Teacher Tips is the one who has actually organized this entire linky party. Thanks, Tori!

Last year, we played this same game in my neighborhood and it was so much fun. I am thinking I might make it happen at school too! I think it would be something fun to take our minds off of the stress for just a bit. 

So here is how it works. Be sure that you post the rules on your post too!

1. Give a shout out to the blogger who booed you and link back to their blog.

2. Share 3-5 October activities, books, products (yours or someone else), or freebies that you love.

3. Share the Boo love with 5 bloggers- make sure you check this link to make sure you do not boo someone again. Don't forget to make sure that you let the bloggers know that you booed them! 

4. Link up here so that others can find you and read about your wonderful October ideas!

Some of my favorite Halloween books would have to be:

I am also loving the Persuasive Writing Activity from Young Teacher Love.

Source: youngteacherlove.blogspot.com via Katie on Pinterest

What are some of your favorite Halloween activities and books that you use in your classroom?

I am booing some of my favorite bloggers:

Lindsay from My Life as a Third Grade Teacher

Jennifer from Runde's Room

Lisa from Fourth and Ten

Kristine from YoungTeacherLove

Kristen from Ladybug's Teacher Files

What We've Been Up To

I know...I am the world's worst blogger.

School has just been absolutely crazy! I am sure most of you can relate. The adjustment from having 60 kids to 105 has been insane, and the amount of grading is crazy. This year might make me move grade levels, well at least the thought of maybe only having 40 kids sounds appealing right now. 

Anyways, I just wanted to share a few of the things that we have been up to lately in room 117. During the first 6 weeks of school we covered Poetry and Non-Fiction. One of the things that we did was write some personal narratives. I had no idea how difficult this was going to be. My students either forgot how to write over the summer, or they have never really learned. It was pretty much like pulling teeth just to get them to write one page single spaced. By one page all I mean is the front!!! We did take some pretty cool notes in our Interactive Notebooks though. I made them on a large post it note to display in the room, and the kids copied them into their notebooks. I got a lot of my inspiration from some of the wonderful work of Jennifer Runde!

The leads anchor chart turned out to a huge help because so many of my friends were stumped on how to start their personal narrative. I can only hope that our next writing assignment will be a little easier for us to complete. 

I also wanted to share my new motto with you all. I don't remember where I originally found this, but it hits home with me. I have really been struggling with collaborative planning with my other 6th grade teacher, and this just reminded me why we are doing it. 

Currently...

I linking up with the fabulous Farley for her monthly Currently party. 

If you happen to find the personal assistant I am looking for, please send them my way. I'm not kidding! 

I am exhausted and have so much I still could be doing. Yes, I should be completing my ILD training right now instead of blogging, but who cares! If this training was any good, I might actually want to complete it! 

I promise the next time you hear from me it will be more positive! :)