First things first. I would like to say thank you to all of you that participated in my 3 day sale in honor of my 1 year wedding anniversary.  Thank you so much for all your support!

Okay now on to things in my classroom. This past week my students had to take the SAT. I am so proud of all of them, they really took control of the test! In case you are wondering what I am talking about I took an idea that I saw on Pinterest and created it for my classroom. Here is the picture of the anchor chart I found on Pinterest and the candy game controller tags I made for the students to go along with what we had practiced. I only wrote test taking strategies that I felt my students would use, so I didn’t use all of the strategies that you will see on the picture below. However I did think it had a tone of strategies so that is why I posted it.

As you all know my students have been hard at work on their idiom pages. They are still putting the finishing touches on them so as soon as they are done I will post their finished product. I do have to say they are very creative and some are pretty funny. If you are looking for a creative writing activity you should take a look at my Idiom unit. Click on the picture below to take you to my TpT store. I have added a class book cover, alphabet choice cards, and an idiom definition teaching chart to the unit. After I used it in my classroom I felt these were needed so if you purchased it make sure you re-download it if you haven’t already.

A few weeks ago I had posted about a book study that I was in. We are talking a look at the book called “Reciprocal Teaching at Work” which is geared toward improving reading comprehension. Recently we had to read over chapter one where were took a deeper look into the fab four strategies all good readers use: predicting, questioning, clarifying, and summarizing. After reading this chapter my brain was buzzing with ideas. One idea that I have is to provide my students with better strategies to use when clarifying text or ideas. So I started thinking and, Ta-Da, a new unit is in the making. Here is a preview of the unit. I am hoping to have it finished sometime this week.

Okay so on to my Continent Boxes project. I have seen tons of continent boxes on Pinterest and all over the internet. I have been totally inspired to create them for my classroom.  We have just finished studying the United States and are moving to learn about the 7 continents of the world. So I have started looking up resources that I could use to create them and here is what I have so far.

First I purchased 7 of the photo boxes from Michael’s Craft Supply Store.

Then I purchased Landmarks Around the World Toob. You can click on the link to purchase them from Amazon. However I bought mine from Michael’s Craft Store.

The next item that I was pretty excited about was hats from around the world. I found these at Oriental Trading. I just love this online store. It has great crafts for kids at a great price!

The last item that I have purchased is a book series called A True Book Series. If you haven’t looked at this series before it is a really great nonfiction series that I perfect for young readers. They also make books in lots of topics, so even if you are not interested in their continent series you should still take a look. Below are the books that I purchased for the continent boxes. I found them originally at Barnes and Nobel however they didn’t have all the books so I ordered the rest from Amazon.

Now I need to decorate the boxes and fill them up with all the goodies. I am still on the lookout for some things to add to what I have already purchased. I will keep you posted as I create each box. I am really excited to start crafting each box to represent each continent. I just love making resources for my students and classroom.

That is it for now. I hope everyone has a great week with their students.