Five for Friday and Flashback

This week I'll be linking up with Five for Friday and Friday Flashback!  I feel like a lot happened this week but it didn't...  Do you ever feel like that?  Maybe because it went by so slow?  Who knows!?

1.  My first big news is that I am the newest passenger on the Donors Choose train!  I had always heard about it and thought what a great idea but for the life of me I couldn't think of anything I needed.  Well now I have and it just got accepted this morning: Crossing the Curriculum One iPad at a Time :o)  Please check out my page http://www.donorschoose.org/mrs.sanjurjo and let me know of any other great Donors Choose ideas y'all have.  I feel a linky coming on....

2.  A few weeks ago I found this amazing site from Stafford County Public Schools and knew I had to do one of their lessons and soon - like Monday!  I'm a big history nerd and whenever I can fit in Social Studies, I'm all over it.  These teachers wrote a grant for Teaching American History through Literacy and they have posted all of their lessons and handouts!  It focuses on grades K-5 and there are three different section to browse: Grade Level Index, Moments in Time Index, and People Index (within those are key events, historical figures, and founding documents).  I clicked on 5th grade and went to heaven!

It's an AMAZING resource to bring Social Studies in through literacy.  My first lesson from this website was Roanoke the Lost Colony and it was perfect because I already read this book to my kids every year but now someone took it to a whole new level.  I bought three extra copies and made CSI: Roanoke Colony folders so the students could get their inferring on!  There were four different folders and each folder had a copy of the book and a different theory handout.  The students had to find vocabulary words, answer questions and look for clues to help support their theory (even if they didn't think that is what really happened).  The kids loved it!!!  Perfect lesson for inferring and citing your evidence to prove your point.  Whew that was really long but I was really excited about it! LOL

3.  Tuesday was my observation and we started piggy backing off of author's purpose to move into author's perspective.  Our first lesson: Point of View.  The students and I went through a PowerPoint where they filled in their notes sheet and some practice examples and then on to the fun stuff: Book Bonanza! 

Each table had one of these book bins that they were to go through and figure out what point of view each book was written from by reading a few passages here and there.  Usually when I do this lesson I'll put four books at a table and let the kids rotate tables after a few minutes but I had 24 kids and thought this might be a little easier on my sanity ;o).  The kids filled out their sheets with the title of the book, the point of view, and cited their evidence as to how they knew that was the point of view.  They rocked it - so proud!

4.  One of my best friends Amanda made this super cute foldable for the Multiplication Properties and sent it to me this week.  This year I will use it for a review before the BIG TEST (ugh) but next year it would be great for the beginning of the year!  Check it out for yourself here.

5. And last but not least... This is one of the best videos I've seen in a long time.  It made me so happy for these two and I definitely got teary eyed at the end but for all the right reasons!  And she's a teacher so I feel like that makes it fit into the linky, lol.  Here it is: Brad and Emily get Engaged.!

I hope you all have a wonderful and relaxing weekend and some of you a spring break (SO jealous)!

Sabra