Muslim Woman in Amman

Last week I was talking with some of the other teachers at work and they were discussing a new way to teach Writer's Workshop to kindergarten and first grade. It was about using chickens to represent the steps of the writing process. MG, our ELA expert said she got the idea from ABC's of the Writing Process . I really liked the idea and decided to make my own chickens to represent the writing process. I named him Chuck the Chick.  I plan on using Chuck to review the process with my students next semester. Especially the planning stage, my students like to bypass that step. They end up with run on stories that have no ending. or they decide they do not like their story so they move on to another one and another one and none of them get finished. Hopefully Chuck will help them get back on track so we can finally get something into the publishing stage. Below is my WW stages with Chuck. Let me know what you think.

Time for another installment of Thankful Thursday. This week it was so great it is hard to limit my self to only three grateful gems but I did it. Do you have any Grateful Gems? Link up below ad share three things you are grateful for this week. The one thing I am grateful for above all this week is winter break. Having two whole weeks away from the hustle and bustle of school gives me a chance to destress and relax so I can be ready to start the new year running. One thing I have to mention is my dad. I have to be grateful to the guy who saved me from a flat tire on the freeway. Me and my mom were on the way to Pismo Beach for a day and my car got a flat tire 45 minutes in. My dad drove all the way down to us so he can change it for us. He is an awesome dad! I have mentioned before about my shipping sprees at Daiso Japan. So it only makes sense that they earn a place on my grateful list at least once. They have so much stuff that I can use in the class I never leave

It is Friday again and this Friday is better then most because it is the last Friday before winter vacation. I am so excited! But, before vacation begins it is time to share my Five for Friday over at Doodle Bugs Teaching Spot We had Career Day on Tuesday and some of our presenters were really cool. First we had an archaeologist who talked about how archaeologists excavated objects. Then she gave them a little cupcake filled with some kind of plaster like stuff that the kids had to dig into for a little present. Another cool presenter was the photographer. Her activity was to create a cardboard camera. What do you think? I hope he got by good side.  My kids took over the lesson for the day. Here they are reading our Co-operative Strip Paragraph. They went through the editing process on their own while I observed and laughed my head off when they came up with the title "Tr. Deena's Slaves' Paragraph About Heat." The sad thing is I am pretty

It is Thursday time to link up your Grateful Gems for this week. It is a difficult thing sometimes finding things you are grateful for especially if it has been a trying week. But, a great way to overcome that is by reminding yourself of the good instead of the bad. I started my week with a cold and it is hard to think happy thoughts when your throat is scratchy and your nose won't stop running. Plus it s one week till end of the semester and the kids are restless. So I really need a pick me up. Today I am grateful for the internet and all the amazing teachers who share their ideas on it. I am constantly browsing Pinterest to come up with new ideas for the classroom. I have a list of bloggers who teach fourth and fifth who come up with amazing ideas. Not to mention Teachers Pay Teachers which is just the best source of teacher stuff I've seen. My second grateful gem is my students, With my scratchy throat, my voice was terrible. I could not teach them properly so

Normally I am super excited about it being Friday and last day of the week.  But this week there was a water main break at the school and they had to shut down our water so the administration shut down the school. So I have an unexpected four day weekend. Nevertheless I can still come up with Five for Friday. On Monday we went on a field trip to Rock-it Science to learn about lights and potential and kinetic energy. We had two classes, the first one was about reflection and refraction. we saw how laser pointers are affected by mirrors. To see the light stream better they used a fog machine. It was really cool and all the kids were more interested in having a lightsaber fight. Our second class was about building a catapult. It was a lot of fun and the kids learned about potential and kinetic energy using rubber bands. Also they got to throw plastic grapes around.  Every week I write out our new spelling pattern on sentence strips then cut them out. It is g

It is almost the end of the week and I don't know about you but I could use a pick me up before the weekend. Teaching can be a stressful job but also very rewarding. Sometimes the stress takes over and you forget how important your job is and how wonderful your students are. So I decided to create a weekly reminder at the time of week when the stress starts to get to me. Thus Thankful Thursday was born. Every week I will host a blog linkup where teachers can link up and tell others three things they are thankful for. I am calling them Grateful Gems. So if you need a pick me up or a reminder of how much you love your job grab the badge and link up your three Grateful Gems. Disclaimer: By linking up your Grateful Gems on Thankful Thursday you are giving the host permission to use your Gems on other social media sites. I am grateful to my best friend and mother who inspired me to do this linkup. She read an article about how you can rewire your brain to be happy if you thin

  Another week has gone by and it is now time for Doodle Bugs Five for Friday linky party. Best part is, its FRIDAY!!!! This week our word list was about compound words. I had the kids cut up the word sorts in half then paste them back into their notebook as a complete word. Then for homework I had them find 5 new compound words then each student wrote one on sentence strip. Now our word wall has their words on it. My kids and I watched this video a few weeks ago  So we decided to make our own. I refused to use candy because I thought it was a waste, so we used colorful packaging peanuts. It turned out really well. the kids loved playing with it. We had a few peanuts so flying but over all we had a blast. Evil Shadow, as he is now known as, decided to escape his hamster ball and run around my desk area being evil. I had to bribe him with treats to get him back into his ball. Still cute though. As i was scouring the internet for ideas I came