My friend Kathleen from A+ Kids Bloggin' is having a giveaway with products from many TpT sellers. 
 The giveaway ends on May 2nd, so be sure to enter soon. You can click on the picture above or the link below to enter. Good luck! 
a Rafflecopter giveaway





Happy Wednesday! I have to run off for a meeting, but I wanted to share my Shades of Meaning Freebie with you first! My ELD students enjoyed this activity so much, and I feel they have a deeper understanding of this challenging concept
We began by discussing general words like hot, run, and nice. I showed them how we could look up the words in the thesaurus and find more words that mean basically the same thing, but are more specific. We had some great discussions! They had a hard time deciding the order for some of the synonyms for run. I told them that sometimes I have a hard time deciding the shades of meaning too, but we looked at the definitions for each of them, and this is what the students came up with. They wrote their words on their shades of meaning pencils after organizing them on their white boards.  
The next step of this activity is to write sentences using five of the words. They will be working on this today.
You can grab the freebie by clicking on the picture below. 
This freebie is part of a larger Spring ELA set that you can find here. The pack has more shades of meaning task card practice, as well as apostrophe, commas, verb tense, homophone, prefix, suffix, and parts of speech task cards practice. I love using these in small groups and posting them around the room for my fast finishers to work on.
I hope you find this freebie helpful! Have a great week! :)

Hello Friends! I've recently heard a few teachers say how slowly the second half of the year drags on. I always think the second half goes by faster than the first! Maybe it's because my class is finally trained and working well together and independently! I have been excited about a few things we are doing in my classroom, and I wanted to share them with you! 

I love the center/literacy station set up I'm using this year. I bought these plastic trays at Target at the beginning of the year. I have also seen similar ones here. Last year I painted the ones I bought at Target Dollar Spot. Click here to see how I painted those. Some of them are chipping now, but I plan to give them another good coat of paint this summer. (The pictures below are a few of the activities from my Spring ELA Pack.)
 
I've used literacy stations in a few different ways this year. One way I have used them is by having the students in numbered heterogenous groups. I've also numbered the centers with clothes pins as you can see in the picture above. I assign a responsible student to be in charge of the answer key for each group. Each group is rotated through a new center each day, so it's easy to keep track of which group needs to do the next activity. I have also had a parent volunteer work with the students who are struggling with a particular concept. This has really helped my struggling students. 
  
I have also use the same activities during my ELD time. We are required this year to spend an additional 30 minutes with our ELD students. (This year I have seven of them!) Some days we focus on reading, other days grammar or writing. Shades of meaning was a difficult concept for them, but we practiced during ELD time, and they became my experts, helping the other students when I taught the concept to them. I have seen a significant improvement in my ELD students' progress this year! 
 
Something else I've tried this year is using the clear plastic white boards shown above that I bought from Target Dollar Spot years ago, instead of recording sheets. Not only does it save me time, money, and paper, but I am able to immediately see the students' responses. Each student is required to write an answer for each task card, so everyone is participating at the same time. This works especially well when the students work with a parent volunteer or me. Sometimes I do like to see the students' recording sheets when they are finished working. 
Do you have any other ideas or tricks you use for center/literacy stations? I would love to hear how you use them in your classroom!

I wanted to share this FUN measurement activity we did on Friday. I really hoped that my measurement unit coincided with Easter this year, but we were able to finally complete this project! The students were placed in groups of five. Each group was given a measuring tape and a plastic hopping bunny. They recorded their measurements during five rounds of each person hopping their bunnies. I loved seeing them work as a team, each person helping to hold down the measuring tapes and the others determining the precise measurement. They did a great job! If you want to grab this freebie, click on the picture below. It also comes with measurement task cards. You can find the bunnies from Oriental Trading here. I have also found similar hopping frogs at The Dollar Tree in the toy section if you would rather use those. They work the same way as the bunnies.

I love getting to the point in the year when the students can work independently. Everyone's hard work has paid off, and now it's time to enjoy our last few months before we have to say goodbye. I plan to make the most of the time we have left.
Have a great week! :)

I'm loving these new graphics Lisa from PAWSitively Teaching made for our Pick 3 Linky! They are absolutely gorgeous! Thank you Lisa!
After a whirlwind March with St. Patrick's Day, Easter, and April Fools' Day, I'm excited for a calm month! This month I plan to celebrate Earth Day for more than one day. We will be finishing up our insects study, then we will be moving on to plants, then Earth Day activities. I'm looking forward to getting more ideas from the AMAZING bloggers who link up with us this month! Most of my classroom ideas from last month came from the bloggers who joined us! :) 
Click on the Photo Above to See the Original Pin
I adore this first pin! What a perfect way to use up all of those extra plastic Easter eggs sitting in a box! I love the idea of putting a battery operated tea light inside the egg so it lights up. The kids would go crazy over these! They would be a fun incentive to give students as a desk buddy for a day, too. Maybe if they have a "lightbulb idea" to share with the class, then they get a friend to keep for the day? Hmmm...

Click on the Photo Above to See the Original Pin
My second pin would be a yummy treat to make for the class! We could watch The Lorax and pass out Earth Day popcorn. I have made something similar with a bag of microwave popcorn and melted Wilton's Candy Melts, but it would be fun to make it in Earth Day colors. (For that, you just melt the candy according to the directions, pop the popcorn, then mix both in a bowl. You then lay it out on waxed paper to cool). 


Click on the Photo Above to See the Original Pin
I love this pin! Everything about them screams Earth Day! We will be studying plants next week, so it would be fun to have the students bring in a water bottle and decorate their pots and plant their grass seeds. These are just too adorable! 


You can follow me here on Pinterest for more ideas!
Visit Marissa's profile on Pinterest.
Come Pin with Us! 
This linky is hosted on the third of each month. We would love for you to join us! 
1.  Save the Pick 3 images to your desktop.
2.  Create a blog post using these images to share you 3    
     Pinterest Picks for the month.
3.  Share a link to your full Pinterest page if you would like.
4.  Link up by clicking the "add your link" button below.
5.  Be sure to check out the other Pinterest finds that have 
     been shared and leave a comments on the ones you love!






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