Valentine Book Reports

Stop by The Teaching Oasis and download these Valentine Themed Genre Book Reports!

Odds and Ends

A couple of weeks ago my laptop died right after I had finished uploading the free materials to The Teaching Oasis. I was worried that I had lost all my files... and no, I hadn't backed them up so I was super nervous. I mean I had most of them on my school laptop but personal documents and pictures were only located on my personal computer. My gracious sister offered to buy me a new laptop (she had a Dell line of credit) so I accepted the offer. After almost paying Geek Squad to tell me if my files could be recovered I did some searching on the net. And low and behold... I found out that I could get a screwdriver and take my hard drive out of my dead laptop. Go to Best Buy and spend $30 on a case to make it an external hard drive. After my new laptop arrived, I hooked up my old hard drive and ALL my files were there. Fonts, Desktop, My Documents, Pictures... everything! I was so happy!

So it snowed here in central Virginia yesterday and the roads are clear but I have no good reason to be out there in that slush so I'm spending a quiet day at home playing with my new laptop. I even created something today, a Peer Writing Checklist.

I took a snapshot of the document with Microsoft Word and loaded on Google Docs (I've never used that before) to see if this will work. Let me know what you think and if you think you can use this in your Writing Workshop.

 



Then I created a Conversation Heart Math Activity for my students.

Would love feedback... do you think you'd use the Writing Checklist in your classroom?

Pinterest Inspired: Currently Me Journal

I’ve seen these types of notes on various blogs where teachers are sharing their “currently” statuses. Someone pinned this idea onto their Writing Ideas board and my creativity kicked in! This would be a wonderful journal for students to keep with their writing ideas all year. Just create a journal for each child and allot time each month to devote to this writing exercise. Students could use this journal to help spark ideas for writing. Do you see yourself using this in your classroom?                 
 





Currently Me Journal

It's Friday!

Well I've managed to work in my room two days this week. Yesterday I went in with reinforcement and the bulk of the remaining boxes in my dining room and low and behold... we didn't have electricity in our pod. So I worked in the dark for a couple of hours and then left. I did manage to get some storage units put together and my curtains hung, I can't wait until it's finished so I can take pictures and post them.

Last night I was working a some small items to show my appreciation for my Facebook Fans. I made 7 sets of writing stationary. Here is the link to the Aloha Stationery. If you like it, join The Teaching Oasis fan page (click the FB icon to the right) and you will find the link to all the others.

Well I am hoping to have a productive day on the computer and cleaning up the place since alot of the boxes have now been removed. I can't believe I only have 3 more weeks of summer until teachers report back to school.

Launching Writing Workshop

I have a collection of books that I read to get students excited about writing. If you have any other good ones please share by leaving a comment!

The Plot Chickens - Mary Jane Auch

Aunt Isabel Tells a Good One - Kate Duke

Arthur Writes a Story by Marc Brown
Mr. Putter and Tabby Write the Book by Cynthia Rylant
What Do Author's Do by Eileen Christelow
The Alphabet Tree by Leo Leonni

Library Mouse- Daniel Kirk

The Best Story- Eileen Spinelli

Library Mouse: A World to Explore- Daniel Kirk

Show, Don't Tell! Secrets of Writing by Josephine Nobisso

I also have another list of writing books and ideas on my site here.

Conference Calendars

You can read all about my Data Binder on my classroom website http://www.mswinston.com/data%20binders.html . Last year I used a monthly calendar to schedule my math, reading and writing conferences and lets just say that calendar got a little crowded by the end of the month! I kept telling myself I would make separate calendars for the various subjects but I'm just getting around to it. Hopefully these 3 simple calendars will keep me much more organized next year!

Conference Calendars