Book club & TpT love!!

Hello all!!!!!  I finally feel like I have my head a little bit above water, so I thought I'd catch my breath and blog about it :)

I can't believe the first 3 weeks of school have already come and gone!! We have been crazy busy in room 14......we are being pushed to teach "bell to bell" and let me tell ya.....I'm doing just that.  We are late dismissing every day, but we are soaking up every bit of instructional time that we have.  I. am. POOPED!!!!!

On a more lively note......let me just say.....I {love} TpT!!!  What would I do without it????  I have never taught 3rd grade ELA & Reading before......only math and science.  And this is still my first time teaching the first semester of math and science (I moved midyear, last year.....remember???), so this is ALL new to me.  BUT.....thank goodness, I am surrounded by teaching geniuses......both at school and in the blogosphere :)

Not that I'm one to follow or imitate, because I have NO idea what I'm doing.....but I will give you a little glimpse of what we've been up to in room 14.......and all the great resources I found on TpT that {LITERALLY} saved my life :)

First of all, in ELA, we use Journey's as our basal.  Of course, we add to it......make it better and differentiate for our kiddos.  I also use Daily 5, so......after we read our story (whole group), the writing station and word work station in Daily 5 always link back to the story that we have read in Journey's.  In my "Work on Writing" station, we are using this **fabulous** creation from Nicole Shelby over at Teaching with Blonde Ambition.  It's perfect....especially when we are really trying to build a foundation of "responding to our reading".  I want my kiddos writing about what we are reading (for now)......and this baby does just that!!!!

Then, in our "Word Work" station, we work on our spelling words from our story for the week.  Luckily, I found the entire 3rd grade Journey's spelling lists on TpT!!!! Perfection!!!

When my kiddos are at their Daily 5 stations, I am doing "book club" at my table.  This is my first year to do this and I am loving it so far!!  We are reading Judy Moody and my kids love it!!

I was searching for some sort of "novel study" or "literature circle" activity that I could do with this book, and of course, TpT delivered.  Since I had never done book clubs before, I wasn't sure what to do......but, Praise the Lord, several other teaches have done this before and were kind enough to share their wisdom!!! I found 3 different products on TpT over this very book.....and I mixed and matched different activities from all 3 products to make it work for my kiddos.  Here are the 3 products I am using right now....

I'm sorry the pics are so blurry, but follow the links in the images and you'll get a better idea!  These products are awesome!  They have vocabulary activities, comprehension checks, discussion questions......the WORKS!  There's even a book review for the kids to complete after we finish the book.  It's so much cooler than a boring ol' book report! 

 

In math, we just took our Unit 1 test over place value/comparing & ordering numbers.  Thanks to Stephanie over at 3rd Grade Thoughts, we got to do some awesome *Monster Math* as a review before we took our tests.  The kids loved it!! 

This got my kiddos up and moving......which they needed.  Fridays we take our weekly reading assessment and our spelling tests.  It just so happened that our unit test landed on a Friday, too (which I hate).....but this activity got my kiddos moving around the room for a nice change in our day 'o testing!  Plus, it was a nice way to review before our test.  The kids rocked it :)

 

As you can see, we've been busy.....and the year is just gettin' started!  I hope to finally get back into my blogging routine and make a post at least once a week, but with my grad school internship (135 hours in one semester), that may not always happen!! 

 

I hope your year has started off with a *BANG* (the good kind) and that you are enjoying your weekend!  Be good :)

Keep livin' the dream,