Another 2 Weeks... another post and a linky party!

I hope this isn't the beginning of a new trend of mine. I definitely want to posting more than this! It is so hard to recap everything that goes on in a 2 week period in one post. So I am going to try and get back to posting once a week but who knows how that is going to go. I feel like in the fall there is a ton of family birthdays/celebrations and then school has just been B-U-S-Y! Between conference night, grading and report cards - I can't catch a break! I know all of you can relate to a busy schedule, so thanks for understanding! =) I think that is one of the reasons why I love blogging. I am talking to fellow teachers that know how busy life is and having a classroom full of kids that you care about and don't want to disappoint makes it that more hectic.

Anyway, I wanted to share what my team was for our Story Book Parade! Every year second grade does an author study with Kevin Henkes. We use all his mouse books. The kids always love it and I have to admit I love getting dressed up as a book character too! It is our tradition and we are always the same character. LOL! I think it is a teacher thing, if not then we are all just that OCD. I am Shelia Rea The Brave. I wish I could show you the kids all dressed up, but I have the next best thing, me and my team as mice! Check us out!

So much fun right! Well in spirit of all things fall we started a new unit in writing! It is monster theme. We have a few kids this year that don't celebrate Halloween so we have to be a little more careful than usual. So we called it "Learning how to write scary stories!" =) Awhile back I shared a book with you all called "I Need My Monster." I discovered it last year and have fallen in love with it. It was so perfect for our scary stories because lets face it, children's picture books aren't that scary. But I wanted them to be descriptive and also review adjectives. This book was PERFECT!  It has taken us a little over two weeks to complete this unit (I added in the editing process!) and I will admit that they are putting their finishing touches on it this week. I just posted the unit so I will show you what I have included and also show some finished projects!

Here is some of their monsters and stories published! They are adorable.... I hope you enjoy them!

 

Okay, so besides teaching I have also been diving into some book studies as well as trying to get my reading instruction down to thirty minutes! I know, I think I might just be going crazy! Here is the problem we have exactly thirty minutes to teach phonics and our reading skill. I am having a REALLY and I mean really hard time doing this! So we (me and my co-teacher Diana) brainstorming with our reading resource. So far I think we are onto something! We are using poems to help teach phonics which seems to be working. We review it every day and they read it independently during read to self as well! In order to make the connections for the students in other areas we want to have them practice it during work with words. So I have created a little file folder to help with this!

I am hoping this will make practice efficient and easy to keep up with! If you are interested in this activity you can click on the product cover and pick it up in my TpT store.

Here is how it works!

So in order to manipulate the words a little more I want them to be exposed to them in small group! So I am in the process of putting together a "Working with words" booklet! I need the words that we teach through the poems to connect to the text in small group! Also because it is a 10 minute phonics lesson I need more time with it in small group! I am not finished with this resource yet! However, I will show you what I have done so far!

That is all I have for now! I am linking up with DeAnne over at First Grade and Fabulous. You can click on the cute little image below to check out her blog!

The recipe that I am going to share with you is one that my husband loves! He can not wait for the fall because that means lots of leftovers and pot pie! That's right....pot pie! He loves them. So if you have lots of left over turkey you might want to check out this recipe!

I hope everyone has a great week.