Five for Fraturday because you know how it is

It's Friday (well, it was Friday when I started)!! I feel like its been forever since I last linked up, but this was the first week that I was working with kids and really had anything to share. We hit the ground running HARD on Monday, and I've barely had time to catch my breath or take pictures. I have a little over 50 kids on my caseload this year, and it's going to be busy!

We started interactive notebooks in 3rd grade, and I'm so thrilled with how they are going! I'm using Lovin' Lit's pack for grades 2-3. This week was all about story elements. Next week, we're going to practice it and maybe start retelling. I want to take it slow and make sure they get it.

Fourth grade was digging into Author's Purpose a little deeper. I actually used my own product (Going Deeper with Author's Purpose) for this that I created last year. My focus is to have them think past "PIE" and actually look at what is important in the paragraph. Honestly it leans a little more toward theme, but I always ask them to think about what an author would actually say if they were asked why they wrote their book. We used The Indian in the Cupboard to read a small scene (where the cowboy shoots Patrick in the hand) and analyze why the author included that scene. Now I'm having to go back and read it to my small group of 4th graders because I remembered how much I love that book!

Fifth grade continued with the 9/11 theme as we did activities relating to The Man Who Walked Between the Towers. As I said last year, I went WAY more serious with my 9/11 plans on the actual day, but I still love the book and wanted to use it. We used a lesson from Jivey's HUGE "Better than Basal" pack that is AMAZING. I actually need to buy a binder for it because I printed all 300+ pages and then realized I didn't have anything big enough to hold it. But y'all, it is worth it. I didn't have to come up with ANYTHING for this. Jivey had already done all of the work. Plus we were able to work on multiple skills and can spiral with them all year.

Yesterday, we did our first mystery of the year with The Case of the Missing Mascot. The kids had a lot of fun with it and can't wait to try some new ones later on in the year. I did, however, notice a small error on one of the pages, so make sure you download it again (remember, it's FREE!) so it's all fixed. Sorry about that!

Finally, I have a little contest going on my facebook page to win my latest mystery. It hasn't even been posted on TPT yet! Be sure to go check it out because it ends tonight!