5 For FRIDAY - This week felt L-O-N-G, even though it was short...

I started a post before a fabulous girl's dinner with some friends and planned to finish it when I got home...Well you can see where that got me!  Anyway after a short week that felt very L-O-N-G, I am ready to share 5 GREAT things about my week.  Then I am off to a "dinner party".  At least that what the Little Lady is calling it.  Actually the neighborhood kids are having a pizza dinner, but she's excited, so I'll take it!

But first...

1.  Lowercase Handwriting Pack - MATCHES FUNDATIONS UNIT 1

I have been LUCKY beyond words to have been working with my AMAZING team mate for all 11 years I have been at my school.  We have both been teaching firsties since I started!  She's not only a great teacher, but one of my best friends!  AND... I am lucky enough to be teaming up with her to create a year's worth of phonics packs that supplement the Fundations Phonics program.  We started with unit 1, which you probably already did, but it could even be used with kids who need more practice or if you teach Kinders this would be perfect as the year goes on.  Here are some sneak peeks!

Find the first pack HERE!

2.  Story Mapping - Characters!

I LOVED the first 2 Kim Adsit units I bought that I went out and bought the third unit called Digging Deeper.  This unit focused on character this week and on the book Chicken Little.  We spent the first day reading the book and identifying the characters.  We also defined the word character.  The second day we learned that characters talk and when we read what character say our voice changes.  We used a play of Chicken Little I found along with the character bibs that came with the pack!  We then moved on to talk about the rest of this chart.  

Finally we talked about character traits.  I started the discussion with this bubble map with me in the middle.  I had filled in the items in red and the kids added the ones in purple.  

We then filled out this BIG bubble map for Chicken Little.  

The kids then filled out their own bubble map during their reader's response station.  Here is an example:

2.  RTI Time (Power Block)

We have always know that the goal of RTI is to switch all of the kids at our grade level around based on the skills we are looking at.  However, until this year we grouped our most struggling kids to get extra during RTI and did small groups work with the rest of the kids.  This year we took the leap and we started this week switching the kids around for our 2 math power blocks!  Day 1 was a breeze.  I was ready for day 2....until 2 providers didn't come and I ended up with 7 extra kids - EEK!!  Luckily I had some other games that they could play and our math coach helped me out by taking a few friends too. My group is working on math facts to 10 and explaining the changes (ex:  start at 9, change it to 7, what did you do?  I took away 2.).  Here are some pictures of our activities!

Here are kids solving and sorting addition number models by sum.  They recorded their answers at the end.  

The next group using Fix It Strips.  These help with explaining the changes.  Kids are using cubes to help for now, but the goal will be to remove those over time.  The pic I took showed to much face, so I'm not going to put it up. 

This activity is another from Kim Adsit.  These are counting boards and I gave them acorns and leaves to make 8 different ways to make 7 using the manipulatives.  

The kids then recorded the ways in this cute mini-book!

Finally, the "extra" group played 10 Frame Memory, which asks kids to match ten frame cards into compliments of 10 (ex 6+4, 5+5, 3+7).  

4.  Columbus Day

Better late than never. Right?  So Columbus Day was Monday and we had time for the craft Friday - oops!  We were busy busy all week, so even though we talked about Columbus earlier in the week we didn't get to make this boat until the end.  I got the craft from Cupcake for the Teacher and even though it may be too late for Columbus, she has a ton of Halloween goodies for sale (her bats project is a freebie too!).  

5.  Partner Reading

I have been using the second Kim Adsit unit whenever I can fit it in.  I can't do it during my focus lesson time anymore because we have moved on to story mapping, but I still feel it is important to tech kids how to read with a partner and how to talk about books.  This week we focused on what we could talk about with our partners and tried out one item from this chart each day.

Stay tuned because the kids will be putting these skills to good use next week!  

So clearly, I didn't finish the post before the pizza party and this morning was crazy!  But at least I finished before Sunday! ;)  I hope you all have a great weekend - and a wonderful next week!  One week until the sugar high hits!