Operation Office Decor!

I just really did not like my office. Since I am VERY lucky to have an office (Again, I am at a Laboratory -Private- School we all have offices. We are on a college campus so it is set a little different. Look it up HERE!) I thought it was time to make it MINE. After re-purposing unwanted home decor this is the result:

Can you tell who my favorite little thing in the world is?? He is my everything and he is 15 months old! I still cry when leaving him from time to time! :) (SADMOMPROBS) 

*Glass-less window came from home. I repainted it and added the ribbon and pictures. Its my favorite :) The stars were all from home and repainted. The frames from DOLLAR TREE- again repainted. The baskets from DOLLAR TREE! 

One day I will print 8x10s to fit in the frames ;) 

I made this at the beginning of the year. I love it! 

Lamp from Dollar General. I got the shade on clearance before school. I have another one that is turquoise on my front desk in the classroom. 

I now feel that it is a likable space! Plus it matches my classroom...always a plus! 

Main Idea and January "Bulletin Board Worthy" Writing

As a main idea wrap up last week we did Graffiti Posters (See original idea HERE). I have really become a fan of this because it is very interactive and each student gets a change to get involved! (see involved kiddos below)

And for the finished project, students had to have the main idea and supporting details. The details has to be from Text Based Evidence! They have really gotten good at using TBE! I found the articles through our Time For Kids subscription for the students to use. Some of them even took it to an artistic level making their organizers related to the theme of the text! 

Here is a specific TBE. Notice they quoted and can lead you to the EXACT point in which the evidence was retrieved from! Score!! 

Then for the sake of a "quick" writing activity we wrote about melting snowmen! We do a lot of LONG writing pieces in 5th grade. I am at a Laboratory School (private) and most of my kids are at or above grade level. So we spend a lot of time doing what makes us stronger...WRITING! So when I say a quick piece I mean something not completely through the formal WRITING PROCESS. They are very cute! And here is where I copied the Bulletin Board from! It was just too cute to pass up!

I have one more "quick" writing that we did! My kids all have their own computers so we typed this one and I printed their pictures for them. This is something I will keep of theirs. They turned out SOOOO good! (Idea from HERE)

Up next time: Biography Unit! I have made this a MULTI-SUBJECT Project. It contains a book report, formal written biography, magazine and so much more! AND making my office more like MINE. 

Main Idea

I RESOLVE to post my more in 2015!! ;)

We have only been back to school for 4 days (I am soooo lucky to have an entire month off for Winter Break)!!! In those 4 days we have been hitting it hard with Main Idea!! I have always found myself frustrated with teaching main idea, but this year it seems like 2nd time is the charm!

We started with this anchor chart:

It was short and simple. We can re-use it each time we read something that is Main Idea worthy! It will stay hanging in our room. We read an article on teaching Computer Science (coding) in classrooms from our Time 4 Kids magazine. Then we worked together to pick out the main idea and supporting details. We also threw in some close reading as we re-read the article each time looking for more and with a different purpose.

We followed that up with a worksheet for practice from this packet (click on the picture to go to the item):

This was a success! They did very well with it and I was able to see which students are still looking for a main topic vs a main idea! 

So the next day I broke out some more T4K magazines (I obviously don't get to them on a regular basis and have a stock pile. BUT they are great for Non-Fiction units!). We followed our close reading process and I read it aloud first. Then we picked apart the main idea and added it to our foldable. Then the students dug in to look for TEXT BASED EVIDENCE to support the main idea. Here is the foldables that we made! They did an excellent job and are really getting good with TBE. 

The article we used. Notice all the N-F Text Features :) 

My model

Again the model

Student sample (Main Idea in the middle- TBE on the flaps) Notice this student even references the line number!! Points on the TBE graph :) 

The finished product!

What is up next: More Main Idea Practice! I am going to have to dig even deeper to come up with more practice passages and activities, but I am sure I will come up with something. We are moving on next week to a project that ties together with our biography study and our NF Text Feature "review."

ONE day away from a three day weekend! Woo!