Books! Books! Books!

Hey everyone! It has been a whirlwind of a week and I can't believe tomorrow is already Thursday. This week we are camping out in my classroom...not literally of course! We have a week long reading camp each year in third grade. We sing camp songs, play a word game called 'Word Wizards', learn reading strategies through mini-lessons, travel through genre study groups, act out reader's theatre scripts, and of course READ! I've created a few things this year for camp including a camp journal which has kept me quite busy! I can't wait to share it with y'all and will upload it this weekend. :)

Since we are in camp all week and reading books and more books, I decided to browse through my eBook resources so I could integrate some technology this week too! I've listed the eBook sites I use below so you can also have a spot to go with a list of links. I found of some of these through Pinterest, some I learned about at TCEA, and others I just stumbled across.


We Give Books

This is my latest fine and already a fav! We Give Books has several children's eBooks that you can use in your classroom. One of my new favorites is Goodnight iPad, similar to the book Goodnight Moon.
These are all free eBooks.

KOL Jr. Stories 

This site has eBooks for young kids. Some of the stories are unknown but they also have books from the Arthur series.

Tumblebooks

Tumblebooks is a great resource for eBooks for kids.  Unfortunately, it does cost money. However, there are readable books, audio books, and even books that read to you! Most books also have quizzes or games associated with them. Our school purchases this program so our kids can use it at school and home. The kids absolutely love it! They are also more and more nonfiction books too.

Dr. Seuss Books

This is actually a link to an app for iPad or iPhone. Dr. Seuss is one of my favorite authors and I thought this is a great resource for classrooms using iPads, especially for the younger kiddos!

Storyline Online

This is actually a site of videos where actors are reading well-known books. I like to use these from time to time for a reading lesson when I want to put a little novelty in my lesson. 

Barnes and Noble Online Storytime

Barnes and Noble has some books online read by authors or actors. This is great for younger kids!

Bloggy Tag!

Hey everyone! One of my followers, Kara, invited me to be part of Bloggy Tag!  I'm so excited to be involved in blog tagging for the very first time. Thanks Kara! If you haven't checked out her blog, Treadwell's Math Adventures, take a moment to stop by! She's got some GREAT ideas!

Here are the rules:
1. Post the rules.
2. Post 12 fun facts about yourself on the blog post.
3. Answer the questions the tagger set for you in their post, and then create 12 new questions for the people you tagged.
4. Tag 12 people and link them in your post.
5. Let them know that they have been tagged.

Okay, let's get started! 12 fun facts about myself...what if I'm not very fun? Haha...okay I'll try my very best!

1. Even though I've lived in Texas for the last 16 years, I spent the first 18 years of my life as a Cali girl! I grew up in Tracy, California which is in central California. Being a Cali girl, I LOVE the beach. :)
2. I grew up in a big family. I have two brothers and two sisters. I'm the second oldest in my family. :)
3. I have the cutest puppy, Bela. She's a chocolate lab mix and is too cute! She's a little over a year old and I probably spoil her too much but I can't help myself. :)
4. I'm an Aggie so I love Texas A&M, even if our football team hasn't done too well in the past few years. :-/ Gig Em Aggies!
5. I am married to a great man named Blake. We are approaching our two year anniversary and I couldn't be happier!
6. I love scrapbooking. I used to scrapbook all the time with my Cricut but blogging has taken over my spare time. I think I'm more addicted to blogging than scrapbooking now haha. 
7. I'm addicted to ice-cream. I love just about every flavor. I also love gelato and frozen yogurt. I try to keep that out of my house so I don't eat it 24-7 haha.
8. I'm one of those that loves Starbucks. I just can't help myself sometimes. If I'm having a hard morning, a  White Chocolate Mocha just makes it all better. :)
9. I've taught kindergarten, first grade, and third grade. I actually love them all and wouldn't mind teaching any of them! Maybe I'll give second grade a try sometime too!
10. I love baking cookies, cakes, pies, and anything else I can think of. Sometimes I bake just to bake and have to bring my baked goods to school to share with the teachers...just so my hubby and I won't eat them all!
11. I'm addicted to Pinterest like everyone else out there! I use it for teaching, baking ideas, cooking, hobbies, and so much more. I have no idea what I did before Pinterest was around. It's really what got me started with blogging!
12. I love reading and watching movies on my Kindle Fire I got for my birthday. I wish I had more time to just relax and pull up an ebook!

Here are Kara's questions for me...

1.  If you're a "pinner", what's your favorite item you've pinned?

• My favorite item I ever pinned was the Kindle Fire when it was announced. My hubby found out I wanted one and it arrived right after my birthday when it was released. 

2.  Who is your favorite children's author or book in general?

• I absolutely love Judith Viorst. Alexander and the Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day is still my absolute favorite book of all time.

3.  What is your favorite dessert?

• Tiramisu is my absolute favorite by far!

4.  What is your most memorable school moment?

• My most memorable school moment in teaching has been when my sweet students through me a shower for my wedding. They all wrote down their favorite recipe and collected them in a recipe book that I still use. I've never seen such a sweet gesture!

5.  Any advice you would give to a new blogger (like myself)?

• I'm a new blogger too! I'm not sure if there is any advice I could give you with being so new. I feel like I have some great ideas to share and then I forget about it. So I would encourage you to blog when you have a great idea so you can share with others!  

6.  What's your favorite TV show?

• My favorite TV show right now is Revenge. I'm addicted.

7.  How did you learn the tricks of blogging?

• I have been reading different teaching and baking blogs but I'm not sure if I know the tricks yet!

8.  What is your favorite math game?

• My favorite math game is still 'Around the World'. I don't use it much in my room but I loved playing that growing up. I know it's a little old school@

9.  What is your guilty pleasure?

• IceCream 

10.  What is your favorite band/song right now?

• I like The Fray.

11.  Do you sew?  Would you recommend buying a sewing machine?

• I have sewed a bit before with my mom's sewing machine and I really enjoyed it. My cousin sews and quilts and is so creative. If it's something you love to do, then do it! You can make so many things.

12.  Favorite place to buy teacher things?

• I really like Lakeshore Learning. We have a store here and they have an online store too!

Here are the questions for those I tagged:

1. What is your favorite teaching blog?

2. What is your funniest teaching moment?

3. If you could teach any topic, what would it be?

4. What is your favorite TV show?

5. What was your best lesson you've ever taught?

6. If you could travel anywhere, where would you go?

7. What's your favorite digital tool you use with your kids?

8. What was your favorite moment in school growing up?

9. What is your favorite read aloud book?

10. What is your favorite dessert of all time?

11. What's the best "teaching" book you've ever read?

12. Do you Pin? If so, what's your favorite Pinterest pin?

TAG! You're it!

1. Miss Janes @ Miss Third Grade 
2. Kristen @ Ladybug Teacher Files  
3. Lesson Plan Teachers @ Lesson Plan SOS
4. Tracey @ Our Cool School  
5. Jen @ Runde’s Room 
6. Annie @ Teaching Blog Addict 
7. Julie @ Thoughts of a Third Grade Teacher 
8. Rachelle @ What The Teacher Wants
9. Mrs. Randall @ Mrs. Randall’s Learning Library 
10. Christie @ Teaching in Flip Flops 
11. Abby @ The Inspired Apple 
12. Amber @ Me and My Gang  

Have fun!

TCEA 2012

Hey everyone! I'm so excited about being here in Austin, TX for the annual TCEA convention! I get the opportunity to learn all about technology and how to help my kids become 21st Century Learners. It's always a great time of learning and collaboration with other teachers. I thought I'd mention on this blog that I post all the info I learn on my technology blog. Feel free to stop by to learn about new technology tools you can start using in your classroom today!

Taylor's Technology Tidbits

Have a great day!

 

Summary - Cactus Hotel

We've been exploring summary the past few days in my classroom. Summary is always one of the more difficult skills to teach to eight year olds! We are required to teach summary of fiction texts and literary nonfiction texts. We started with sequencing first and then discussed what a "retell" is. After exploring those, we moved into summary. My students are really understanding it better than they have in the past!

We started learning about summary with 'Into the Book'. If you've never used this site it is a great tool to teach different reading strategies! It has great interactive lessons for the kids as long as a variety of teacher resources. It has quite a bit of stuff for summarizing and my kids absolutely love it! If you don't have computers in your room for kids to explore this site, you can always do it as a whole group lesson too. :)

My class seemed to grasp summary of fiction much easier than literary nonfiction. Literary nonfiction is a new genre to them in third grade and sometimes they have a harder time with the story. We read Cactus Hotel by Brenda Z. Guiberson. It's a great story about the life of a saguaro cactus. We made the anchor chart below, summarizing the story of the cactus hotel. I hope you don't mind my drawing skills, I'm not much of an artist! The kids really enjoyed the book and I encourage you to use it for a summary lesson or even a general lesson on literary nonfiction texts.

Happy summarizing!

Shape Madness!

We are in the midst of our measurement unit and I've decided we need some fun measuring activities that involve shapes too! My students are not very familiar with their basic shapes this year and I'm just a bit worried since we are quickly approaching our yearly assessment. I shopped around and found the most adorable clipart involving shapes by KPMDoodles. I love how she gives the shapes personality! My students will love it! I created a unit called Shape Madness which involves identifying attributes of basic shapes including hexagon, octagon, ellipse, and more. I also added in different activities involving problem solving, measuring,and perimeter. In all there are five activities in the unit so that it'll fit nicely into a week long unit. I hope you take a moment to hop over to my TPT store and download it! 

 

Martin Luther King Jr.

Our students have tomorrow off in honor of Martin Luther King Jr. In the past couple of weeks, we have been studying characters in different genres. Our main focus has been on how and why characters change in the books we read. In honor of Martin Luther King Jr., I created a 'Characters Change' graphic organizer for students to fill out when reading a biography of Martin Luther King Jr.  We will most likely read the following biography on Tuesday:

We will focus on how Martin Luther King Jr. changed throughout his life and what caused him to change. Feel free to download the graphic organizer free on TPT in honor of Martin Luther King Jr. Day by clicking on the image below.

Making Inferences About Character Traits

I can't believe we are already nine days into January!  It's been a while since my last post and things have been a bit busy around here. I'm hoping to start posting a minimum of once a week. I've been creating some great tools but just haven't had time to post them. I'm sure everyone has the same busy, chaotic lives!

The last couple of week we have been studying characters in fiction genres. We've been exploring character traits and discussing how we can determine character traits through the text and the clues the author gives us.  I saw a few different types of graphic organizers around on different blogs but needed something all in one place for my kids to use. I created this all-in-one chart where students can jot down character traits and the evidence the text provided to help them infer that specific character trait. I included three different columns (dialogue, actions, other clues) so my kids could really think about different ways the author can help us with inferencing about characters. It's available to download for free on my TPT store. Click here to download now. Happy inferring!