The Week in Pre-View 1/14

Whoa.  That's all I have to say.

If any of you follow me on twittter at @classicsixbooks , you'll know that I was suffering from Who Knows What and was down and out for four days last week.  The best laid schemes...

My Students With Autism Class - We are writing poems for the school poetry journal.  First we did some PebbleGo research and they selected the animals that were of most interest to them.  Their picks were panda, bulldog, and pug!  I created a SmartBoard lesson where they could fill in some of the words with photographs from a picture bank.  Our first poem was finished on Friday:  I Love Pandas!  If you want me to email the Notebook file to you, please email me at classic6books at gmail.com. (While you're on the subject, is anyone having a problem with their Notebook software crashing?!)

We March
Written and Illustrated by Shane Evans

Kindergarten - We are hoping that We March by Shane Evans scoops up some Caldecott love!  If you would like the worksheet I created to go along with the book, please let me know as well!

First - Ever notice that the word BEST is in the word DUMBEST?  I thought I had the DUMBEST idea for my firsties and it turned out to be the BEST!  I had all the letters of the alphabet cut out on little squares, took out the number of letter to get to the number of students (so for my class of 20, I removed 6 squares), called those my "mystery letters", handed out the rest of the letters to my students and had them line up alphabetically.  When we got to a missing letter, I checked (very dramatically) to see if it was one of the "mystery letters" I had in my pocket.  They LOVED it!   Love when last minute planning turns out to be such a success!

Mixed First/Second - We'll be using the fabulous ShelSilverstein.com site this week!  There's a great game where you try to guess the last line of a Silverstein poem.  Great for teaching kiddos how to look for patterns in rhyme or wordplay!

Second - Total steal from The Centered School Library website!  Creating snowflakes from...snowflake making materials (I didn't have the heart to tell them they were just coffee filters!).

Third - We read Wabi Sabi last week and this week we are creating our own haikus about our favorite books!  I LOVE this haiku organizer from ReadWriteThink - I use it every year.

Fourth - We are continuing our Smartboard lessons on Notetaking!  I think I actually have their attention!

Fifth - More to come, but we have been blogging and commenting up a storm on our book recommendation site.  We are co-blogging with another elementary school in the county and it is totally fabulous.  More later, as that could be an entire blog post in itself.

And also...remember how I told you I abandoned my MG novel?  Well I think the muses were sending me a sign because I dusted off my YA WIP from last year's NaNoWriMo and...it is all just falling into place.  I'm up to 32,000 and I'm just loving it!  It's a joy to write it!  Imagine that!  The working title (a title!) is OTHERWISE OCCUPIED.  How's your writing going?

As one of my tweeps said, you don't realize how good you feel until you're not feeling well.  Enjoy your health while you have it for, as the poet Jane Kenyon wrote, one day it will be otherwise.