Five for Friday

Joining the party for Five for Friday!!! You should go join too :)

This week was a WEIRD week. I'm not sure why, but it was odd.

My Random Five
1- We (six teachers and two administrators) drove four hours (one way) to get some YPP training.



I was NOT excited to leave at 5:00 am, but within the first twenty minutes of the training I knew the drive had been worth it. Don't you love trainings like that?? I will definitely post more about YPP. Does anyone else out there use this assessment tool??


2- After going to the aforementioned training I looked at my YPP data and realized my students are lacking on passage comprehension. We do comprehension frequently but I need to step it up. So starting Monday I am going to dedicate the entire class period to working on comprehending different kind of passages using this book.



This will take place every Monday and I will incorporate annotating and fluency along with comprehension.


3- Google Drive Baby! I am finally diving into this wonderful tool and loving it! I teach a computer literacy class and created a simple document where a group of 4 students had to collaborate via a Google Doc.

My students were absolutely silent, but having conversations with their peers while doing their work. Seriously awesome! Now all I need are laptops in my room so I can utilize it with my ELA class more. HA!


4- I LOVE cold weather. I also love warm weather. Fall is my FAVORITE and so is Spring. I am very thankful to live in a place that has four distinct seasons. On Thursday night, my 3 year old woke up because the blizzard outside was amazing fierce! The wind was blowing so hard. I walked in to the front room at midnight to see my husband cuddling my little girl. Such a precious moment. I took a picture, but it was just white.


5- Puzzles are the best indoor winter activity at our house. We have one on the counter right now and my three year old and I are having some serious bonding time. Anyone wanna come over and join??

Ghost of the Lagoon

We read the short story Ghost of the Lagoon in my classroom and the two related informational texts. One was a brochure about the island of Bora Bora and the other was an article titled Under Attack. It discussed the facts that humans are actually attacking sharks. Very interesting. We annotated the text using the text mapping idea and my students still love doing this!

Ghost of the Lagoon
A village on the island of Bora Bora has been terrorized by a great white shark that lives in the village's lagoon. Mako lost his father to the great white and has vowed to kill it. One night Mako is crossing the lagoon and the shark starts circling his canoe. Mako's dog ends up in the water and the shark starts toward the swimming dog. Mako spears the great white, not once, but twice with his deadly aim in the eye.

If you need an engaging story to read, definitely check out Ghost of the Lagoon! My students keep asking if we can read it again.

Mapping & Annotating Text

Today we finished our first experience of text mapping. It was SO MUCH FUN!!! Every single class asked if we could do it again.  We worked on identifying text features first and then went on to annotating the text. All of these pictures were "in the process of" and are not completed work. I need to take a few shots of finished products. I will post more on this later, I have a faculty meeting right now! I was so excited that I needed to share :)