Five for Friday {October 4, 2013}

I am linking up with Doodle Bugs Teaching for a quick Five for Friday to share some highlights of my week.  It will be an early night for me since this cold I am fighting is kicking my behind!  It probably didn't help that I had to stay up last night watching my Bills lose. :(

 Guess what arrived?!?

That's right, our pen pal letters arrived from Jessica (Ideas by Jivey) and Gary (Scrappy Guy Designs) in Georgia!!  The students have no idea yet because this week was insane trying to play catch up with fire drills three days in a row and a 1/2 day with students today.  I also still need to pair up the names and can't wait to do the big reveal next week.  The students will be ecstatic!!  

This folder was in the envelope!

 Here is the inside with the letters, "Cool Stuff Every Kid Should Know about Atlanta" book, and class lists (they have about 50 students total to match my numbers since I teach ELA to the whole 4th grade).

There is also a little fact card about Lawrenceville for each student!

We worked on the first interactive notebook lesson in our writing journals.  This characters interactive notebook activity is from the 4th Grade Interactive Reading Notebook by Nicole Shelby.

 We finished reading the book, Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing this week and completed some character trait activities.  Students completed a graphic organizer where they listed a character trait for some of the characters in the story and found at least two specific details from the text that demonstrated that trait (sorry, I took the graphic organizer from a resource and didn't make it myself).  For example, the main character, Peter, is responsible.  Details:  Peter takes care of his pet turtle on his own by cleaning the habitat and feeding the turtle.  He is also responsible because he completes his homework on time and wants his school project to be well done.  I was so proud to see my students refer to this page in their journal without any prompting from me when completing activities about character traits!

We had our first monthly "Homework Stars" incentive lunch party that ended with some Gangnam Style "Just Dance" from Youtube.  Homework Stars is homework incentive we are using as a departmentalized 4th grade.  You can read more about it here.

I finally got around to mod podging about 50 writing journal covers that the students had personalized.  On some of the journals I used shipping tape to cover them because they had the plastic like covers that mod podge doesn't work well on.  I use this free editable handout for my students.  They loved it!

It was spirit week for homecoming this week and every day the students had a special dress up day.  Here is a picture of some students on "mismatch" day!  The boy is wearing different socks and shoes. :)

You need to checkout the giveaway at Fifth in the Middle!  One of my BBB's, Diane, is celebrating 1,000 TpT Followers and giving away a $20 TpT gift certificate!  In addition, ten winners will win any item from her TpT store.

Happy weekend everyone!!