What Pet Should I get?

Who else is as uncontrollably excited as I am that Dr. Seuss' new book was finally published and came out in book stores this week!!?!?

As an avid Dr. Seuss fan, who owns every single one of his books, I had to have a copy for my classroom. "What Pet should I Get?" is an adorable book about two little kids who go to the pet store to purchase a new pet. They are immediately confronted by tons of amazing pets and they struggle to decide on one to buy. Upon reading it, I fell absolutely in Love! It's a perfect classroom read aloud, with easy words, wonderful rhyme and fabulous pictures.

And who don't love talking about pets!?

I'm already planning on using it this year as my initial introduction to my students' writing. Each year, I love starting off with a writing prompt that my students are excited about; one that I can use as an assessment as to their true writing potential and present ability. When kids are excited about what they are writing, they tend to write more and therefore challenge themselves to do their best. This book is going to be great for getting their minds flowing and encouraging them to write! 

I put together a small companion pack of pages to go along with the book. You can download it here for free! I hope that you will enjoy the book as much as me! 

Helping Young Writers

Hey everyone! I attended an assessment conference a few weeks ago and learned all about student engaged assessment. One of the things they discussed the most was helping students assess themselves during writing. I got to observe some super amazing teachers teach writing. As a result, I spent a week updating all of my young writer's criteria and spending extra time teaching my students how to better assess themselves and their peers during the editing and revise portion of the Writing Process. Below is the link to my newly created Young Writer's Help Packet. It includes a checklist, and sight words, transition words and question word lists. It's already made a huge difference in my student's self assessment and overall confidence in writing. I hope that it can be some use to you too!

Young Writer's Help Packet

Sacrament Matching Game

       So about a month ago my school put on a religion night to help bring students and their parents together  in their faith. I was in charge of creating the very simple sacrament matching game for parents and kids to work on in the lower elementary wing. Because our school has students who primarily speak Spanish at home with their parents, we created a spanish version of the game as well. Below are two pictures of what the game looks like and the links to download the game for free. 

Our parents got quite the kick out of being able to correctly identify the sacraments with their symbols. 

Game in English

Game in Spanish

Christmas is coming!

I have so many little things to post about what we're working on for Christmas, but those will have to wait! I thought instead that I would post the scripts for the Readers Theater shows that my students are currently working on. I adapted them from various online plot summaries and links about each story. Readers Theater is such a valuable way to work on Fluency and accuracy. I can't wait to see their performances!

Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer

Twas the Night before Christmas

The Grinch who stole Christmas

Clara and the Nutcracker

I will post the elf writing activity and Christmas ornaments that we're working on soon!

Hope you're having a wonderful Christmas season so far!