Paying It Forward & Five for Friday!

This week has been so busy I don't think I've had time to catch a breath! I feel like I've been constantly doing something except for the hour and half I spent watching Project Runaway live this week. So, I figured a great way to catch everyone up was to link up with Doodle Bugs Teaching for her Five for Friday linky party!

The "Fancy" Sharpener PSA: So, I purchased a Classroom Friendly Pencil Sharpener this summer for my classroom after my teaching partner won one off a blog giveaway and raved about it! So, naturally, I had to have one too. Within the first few weeks of school one of my little lovelies sharpened a purple colored pencil in my sharpener and it almost was my poor sharpener's downfall. Now, it seems to be in nearly perfect working order. It doesn't quite work the way it did fresh out of the box but does still beautifully sharpen pencils. So, my partner Amie decided to make a team PSA this week to remind our students to be extra careful when sharpening pencils! I was the behind the camera - I think I did a pretty good job! Hopefully, my P won't mind I shared her amazing video!

Pay it Forward! We introduced our Pay It Forward Project today to our students. We had someone from the Dragon Fly Foundation come in and discuss ways to help pay it forward to other children that may be in the hospital due to cancer. This project is not graded but ties in perfectly to our character unit and reading of the novel Rules. We like to challenge our students to do acts of kindness of 30 days and then record their experiences and reflections and share them with the class. Our hope is that these acts will spread to a more global scale. We even have a blog set up so that students can pass along a card with the blog information when they perform a "pay it forward task" in hopes that in turn that person will also pay it forward. The students seemed so excited! It's one of my favorite projects of the year! More to come on this soon - I need to get the post all in order still. If you want check out the project brainstorming sheet you can grab a copy before a blog about it from my drop box. I take no credit for creating the project - just promoting its awesomeness!

A view from the SMARTboard. We're getting into our planning stages of Writing Workshop. Our first piece in fifth grade is a personal essay. Today, we brainstormed stories that could support our three reasons. We then added these stories to note cards which we put inside our "pockets" that we made to house our research. These pockets and note cards are great because students can literally type their notes together to help them write a first draft!

All planned out! I'm planned for next week and everything is copied and ready to go! What?! I hope I can stay in this wonderful rhythm. But, I do start MAP testing next week... so I better not jinx myself.

Thursday is OVER!!  I finally gave myself some time to blog. I love down time. I need it. I think I might be getting a little sick :(  Blogging is the best therapy and experience out there. I can't wait to mail off my #SLANT box this weekend to Kris from I {heart} Teaching as well as mail my Giveaway to Shelly!

Hope everyone had a great week,