Frankenstein Descriptive Paragraph Unit

I'm finally finished! This unit has been taking up all the free space in my mind for the past three days.  I could have completed it in one day, but life called and I had to this on the back burner. 

This is a whole week unit that I plan to use to teach adjectives.  I'll intro adjectives around Halloween with this unit.  However this is not when I will actually be doing my full adjectives unit.  That will come after my first writing assignment of the year (personal narratives).  My students have struggled a little in years past with having lots of detail in their narratives.  I'm hoping by doing this little mini unit, the students will have a better idea of what I'm expecting.

parent letter

rough draft

final draft papers

The unit comes complete with a unit plan, parent letter, rough draft, final draft, and student guess chart.  The guess chart is explained in the unit plan.  I honestly can't really wait until Halloween, because I'm so excited about this unit!  It is available for purchase at my TpT store. 

Now I'm off to get groceries so that I can come back and get cracking on anchor charts!

Anchor Chart Challenge Day 3: Non-Fiction Narritive Elements

The weekend is almost here and I can't wait!  I have no plans except a cheerleading car wash fundraiser on Saturday, so that means lots of anchor charts!! I'm such a nerd for admitting this, but I'm sort of excited. :)  The gym at our school is being waxed this week, so we had to hold cheerleading practice in my room today.  That's quite alright with me because that meant I got to spend a little bit of time unpacking the things I had to pack up at the end of the year.  I did some cleaning as well and discovered that I needed to make some new labels for my book baskets.  That got the ball rolling and before I knew it I had whole page of new labels that needed to be made around the room!

I certainly have a lot to keep me busy tomorrow.  I wanted to get them all done tonight, but things didn't work out that way.  I was able to work on my descriptive paragraph unit that's been burning up my brain for the past couple of days which makes me very happy. I was pressed for time this afternoon, so I was only able to make one anchor chart.  That's my daily goal so I really can't be disappointed.  Tomorrow I'm really going to push myself and try to make 4.  Grocery shopping might get in the way of that!

Today's chart will come in handy at the beginning of the year.  In my resource language class I begin the year by discussing nouns.  After every four week grammar unit, I do a two week writing unit.  My first writing unit is always a personal narrative.  This chart will be a constant reminder to students as to what is expected of them while they do their rough and final drafts in class.

You can't really see it, but I didn't cut the bottom of the page off like I do most of my charts.  I left this one with extra space on it in case I feel like adding to it during instructional time.

I'll be uploading most of the labels that I make tomorrow to my TpT site. I haven't sold anything there yet, so I'll be uploading some freebies to help boost my profile over there. Maybe I'll find a couple more projects to get into as well. ;)

Anchor Chart Challenge Day 2: Writing COPS/Capital Letters

I'm watching my favorite show right now (So You Think You Can Dance), but I know that if I don't tear myself away and get today's anchor charts up, I'll get behind and I don't want that to happen again!  Today was another busy, busy day, but I was able to finish the chart I started last night.  I was debating a little bit on this one; after completing half of the chart, I couldn't decide if I liked it or not.

What gets a capital letter? anchor chart

I suppose that I don't think that it's terrible, but that's as good of a review as I'm going to give it.  I figure that if I keep my rate up and make close to 50 posters this summer, I'm bound to have a couple that I'm just not that crazy about.  I'd definitely lump this one into that category. :(

The other chart that I made turned out very well.  I got the idea from a printable.  I decided to make it a chart though, because some my students tend to lose things from time to time!

I tried my best to free-hand a police badge, but that was a little bit out of my range.  I found one easily enough with Google though!  I printed it and traced the outline to make it a little darker before gluing it to the chart.  If I had to make it again, I'd write the information after the colon a little bigger. 

I talked yesterday about how I was working on a really awesome mini-unit I was working on that I was going to finish today and get it all up tonight.  With a three hour cheer practice, 1 hour 20 minute drive (each way), doctor appointment (45 minutes away), dinner, anchor charts, SYTYCD, and blogging, I pretty much ran out of time.  I began making little notes for myself to remember what all needed to do in case I had to stop in the middle of the project.

Boy, am I glad that I did that! My notes are still on my desk waiting for me to finish.  It's #1 on my list after cheer practice (and that drive) tomorrow, so hopefully I'll get it finished before the weekend.

Happy Hump Day! :)

Anchor Chart Challenge Day 1: Synonym/Antonym

Good evening! One of the things I want to change about myself is that when I start something, I normally do great for a while, but then I am always trying to play catch up.  In my last post I said that I had a goal to make one anchor chart everyday for the rest of the summer.  At that point I had two made.  I started out to make yesterday's chart with the plan of blogging about it today.  I got sidetracked by how well my first one turned out that I made a total of three yesterday and began a fourth.  I stopped halfway into the fourth because I wasn't sure that I like how it was turning out.  I'll finish that one tomorrow after cheerleading practice and have it up tomorrow night.  Onto today's charts!  Of course I got the ideas for these online, but I was not really into some of the pairs.  I made some of my own up, and I encourage you to do the same when you make yours!

Synonym Anchor Chart

 

 

 

 

Synonym Anchor Chart

The didn't quite take up the whole chart paper, but I like this size because I'll probably leave them up all year.  I love these charts because the first and last letter tell you about the word.

I let my fingers do some Googling earlier tonight looking for an idea for today's anchor chart.  While I was looking for a great idea I discovered an even better idea.  I've been working on it for a while, but I'm still not quite finished, so I guess that will be tomorrow's post.  There just aren't enough hours in the day!!

Custom Ruler Holder.

So I totally meant to get this up yesterday, but I wasn't able to. :(  Sometimes I don't know where the days go!  I got the idea for this on Pinterest and thought it looked easy.  I can't express how beyond simple it was to make.  All you need to start are an empty Pringles can (washed out), scissors, ruler, one page of scrapbook paper, glue pen or thin double-sided tape, and (self-adhesive) ribbon.

The first step is to measure the construction paper to fit the Pringles can.  Lucky for you, I've already done this so I can tell you that you'll need to cut it to 10"x10 1/8".  I used these measurements (which are a little short lengthwise) because I was wrapping ribbon around the top and bottom.  If you're not going to use ribbon then cut the paper to 10x10 3/16.

 After cutting out the paper comes the difficult part.  I used a glue pen, but if you can find double-sided tap, I would highly recommend that.  I used the outside border of the nutritional information as a way to make sure my paper was nicely lined up.  I made a line of glue all the way down the container and held the paper there until the glue dried. Then I added a little glue to the paper at a time and kept rolling the container into the glue.

 
After the glue dried and the paper was secure to the container, I applied a piece of the adhesive ribbon along the seam to keep it covered.  I then wrapped more of the ribbon around the top and the bottom to keep the paper secure to the tube and also to cover up any messy edges.

The only thing about this project that I didn't like is that the Pringles container is not tall enough to be able to place the cap on with the rulers safely inside. :(  I guess things can't work out perfectly all the time!

My next project of the day is to continue working on anchor charts.  I've gotten two done so far, and they're proving to be more complicated than I thought! My goal is to make one a day until school starts.  If I take out the days I'm at the beach for my vacation, that would give me 32 in all.  My Pinterest Anchor Chart board only has 25 charts on it, so I guess that means that I'm going to have to spend more time on Pinterest searching for me! ;)

Katie

Place Value I have... Who has...

So I've spent all morning drinking coffee and watching The Hills.  I love summer mornings!  I was browsing around on Pinterest all morning and I saw a pin with a lot of games on it.  One that peaked my interest was a game on place value.  My students absolutely LOVE to play I have...Who has...  I combined those two ideas and voila!  I honestly can't believe that I've never thought to make one of these before! The hardest part was going through the numbers once I was finished and making sure I didn't have any repeats.  I'm sure there would be many students that would be willing to point out that I had made a mistake. :)

Once I had them all looking good with no mistakes I printed them onto cardstock.  I want to cut them out now to see how they look, but I'll wait until I can go back to school and use the big cutter so I can make sure all the lines are straight and the cards come out to be the same size.  I also plan on laminating them once I'm finished to make them ready for a little more wear and tear.

a little blurry, but you get the idea of what they look like

Unfortunately my TpT website will not let me upload anything at the moment, so I can't share this with everyone.  I plan on it soon though! I'm working with someone to help me fix the problem and I hope it all gets fixed today, because I have lots to share!

Happy Friday the 13th! :)

UPDATE: Turns out that the problem with my TpT website was fixed as easily as uploading my projects using Chrome as opposed to Firefox.  The game is now uploaded and you can find it here!

welcome!

This is my first blog, but I've been reading a couple of blogs by other educators.  I'm pretty much amazed at what they're able to do, and I'd like to be able to inspire others like they've inspired me.

I've seen lots of other blogs created for this grade or that, but I rarely come across blogs for Intervention and/or Special Education teachers.  That's where I hope to come in.  I have been the 4th grade Intervention Specialist at my district for three years and I'm about to start my fourth.  I teach resource Language Arts and Reading and am the inclusion teacher for Math, Science, Reading, and Social Studies.  I absolutely love my job and am working on creating lots of new resources for the upcoming year.  



Right now I've been concentrating on getting ready for Open House.  While browsing Pinterest (oh, pinterest, how I love thee!) a week or two ago, I found a cute welcome letter that I thought my students would love.  I tweaked it a little to match candy that I knew I'd be able to find on short notice.  Sometimes I forget about things until the last minute! ;)  You can download this letter for free at my TpT site.

That's it for me today.  I'll be back soon to share some more of the things I've come across or made!

Ms. Katie