5 for Friday

Have you been on spring break? Not me! Mine does not start until March 25 and I can not wait! I love my class, don't get me wrong, but it's just "that time of year".  Here we go with 5 random things from my week. Link up with Doodle Bugs and play along.

#1: Next Wednesday is my formal observation. I have been a teacher for 20+ years and I still get nervous. I much prefer it when my principal pops in as opposed to this "formal" thing.  I have to do a complete lesson on a NEW concept. It can't be a review or continuation of another lesson. YIKES! Why am I sweating this? I finally decided I'm going to teach a lesson about fairy tale elements. I'm almost finished making "All About" Posters for Traditional Literature. I think it will be perfect.

#2: I finished these "All About" Posters for Fiction. There are 8 posters in this pack and I'm very pleased with how they came out. They are great for my kids to put in their reader's notebooks. You can use them for book report forms or as an assessment after a genre study.

Denise (Sunny Days) tested them out for me with her 2nd graders. She read aloud the book Baloney by Jon Scieska and they completed the Science Fiction poster. I think they did a fantastic job!! I'm glad 

 

#3: My students have done a bang up job on research and reading nonfiction. We are starting to wrap up our study. They chose a topic at the start of the quarter that they wanted to become an expert on. We have been reading and studying how to read nonfiction. This week they started creating concept maps about their topics. I love how excited they get about sharing some "cool" fact they found. Here are the beginnings:

#4: My school is next door to two public parks. One is a community park with sports fields and playgrounds. The other is a state park which is actually an historic site. Seminoles lived there at one time and its the site of a battle between the Seminoles and the Military. In the beginning of the year, parents sign field trip forms so that we can use these parks during the year. Today my kids earned recess time at the community park. There were 2 playgrounds at this park until these little guys moved in:

Burrowing owls are protected and since they built a nest here the playground equipment had to be removed so as not to disturb them. You can't get too close or they hiss at you. Momma owl was inside the hole. I kept my distance to take the picture. Fun little nature lesson on our way to playtime!

#5: Now for Freebie Friday! Be sure to check out ALL the free products. It still amazes me when I see the creativity and talent out there amongst my teacher peeps!!

Hop on over  HERE to get your free Spring Brain Booster!

These are great for morning work, fun work, or that filler the day before spring break or even the day back from break. We have an early release next Thursday and Friday is a planning day. Then off to spring break. Have you had your break yet? 

Please stop by each day for the next week for a fun giveaway. I'm celebrating you, my followers and friends, with a daily raffle. You can enter a different raffle each day and the winners will be selected on Saturday, March 23rd.