Five for Friday: January 22nd

Hey y'all! We survived a four day week...Woohoo! Why do they always feel like the longest weeks of them all? I hope everyone is having a great start to their 2016 year! We are rocking and rolling in Portable 37 as those big state tests are looming over us. I'm joining Kacey at Doodle Bugs Teaching for her weekly linky to give you a peek into the craziness...

We have discovered Google Docs since the beginning of the year and we are loving it! I'm fortunate to be a 1:1 classroom and we have all just recently gotten our Google accounts. Boy, do these accounts make life easier. I love being able to use them anytime, anywhere, and even more that I can give immediate feedback! This week as we have wrapped up our FIRST DBQ project, we went back to look at an exemplar essay and highlight certain sections. We went through to highlight the main reasons and evidence. It's so important for them to look at good writing to become good writers. It's also a bonus that they love to add color to their documents. What's even better? Our Media Specialist joining in the fun and giving them a Google slides project on Generals of the American Revolution!

We covered in depth before our holiday break Opinion writing, so now we are diving into Expository writing. Sometimes it is a struggle getting the kiddos to write those five paragraphs with 3-5 sentences. I'm still working on finding the magic to make this writing thing a breeze for them! Our first expository task will be to pick a topic to research, so hopefully with them getting to choose their topic they will be more interested!

We dove into the topic of Martin Luther King, Jr by creating these mini-lapbooks below. Students had to research using the Google kid search engine, kidrex.org to fill in the information about Mr. King. I love how they turned out! You can find this item in my TPT Store!

I HAVE to share one of my favorite new places in my room...

When students have finished reading a book, they add a book review to our "Some Books are Worth Melting For" Olaf bulletin board. It's been a big hit!

Leaving you guys on a little personal update...

This little bump of mine is growing each and every day. I'm at 25 weeks and counting. Time is flying by amazingly fast and I'm definitely coming home double teacher tired, but I wouldn't have it any other way! Wishing you all a wonderful, warm weekend!

~January Currently~

Happy New Year! I'm joining Farley from Oh' Boy 4th Grade for her monthly currently linky...

I'm listening to one last holiday movie, Elf and am trying not to get sad about Christmas being over. I took my tree down today and it was a little depressing. I can't be the only one that gets sad...
I'm loving my shiny new engagement RING! You all know when you first got that ring you would randomly stare too!
I'm thinking I'm beyond blessed to live this amazing life I have and am thankful for each new day I'm given...
I'm wanting to have a clean house, but I'm also not wanting to be the one to clean it! The struggle is real...
I'm definitely needing to give the dog a bath, but again not wanting to be the one to do it. Cleaning and washing the dog is not how I want to spend my last few days of break, but I should probably change my thinking as I have spent the last week resting and relaxing and avoiding ALL of these little household duties...
My one little word for this year is consistent. To be consistent with creating, blogging, and my classroom routines.
Wishing you all a wonderful start to the new year!

*New Year Resolutions*

I'm joining Jayme at Teach.Talk.Inspire and Diana from My Day in K for their New Year's Resolutions linky party. What better way to hold yourself accountable for you resolutions than making them public for others to see? I'm at least thinking I will start out strong, but hopefully with continual goal setting at the beginning of each month I can achieve these resolutions!

I set five goals, three personal and two professional.

1.) To Forgive: To forgive myself when I don't accomplish everything on my list. I think this is most important for me because I know I put the most pressure on myself and I have to learn that sometimes I just can't do it all. This is also something I will learn quickly once I have a newborn to take care of too!

2.) Read 52 books: Okay, so this is one that I set every year and it is always achieved. This year I fully expect for that tradition to continue, but we never know what life has in store for us! Writing the resolution down makes it more real.

3.) Cook at home, eat out less: I'm always a busy bee and fast food is my go to. I want to change that this year, not only with the idea of being healthier, but also helping out my bank account. Eating out so much puts a hurting on my poor wallet!

4.) Welcome my students at the door: This is what happy classrooms do. I always start out so strong at the beginning of the year and then it tinkers off as I get bogged down with the day to day paperwork of teaching. The paperwork is not what is important, my students are and I want them to feel that even more in this last half of the year!

5.) Blog 3 Times a Month: This is a struggle. I started my blog over the summer and once again started strong, but as life got busy I struggled to blog. This year I'd like to make it a priority!

I hope these resolutions have given you some ideas or inspired you in some way! Cheers to a wonderful 2016!