MaXed OuT!

There really is no substitute for the real thing. We've had several people from my team out this week and it's made quite a difference in things. Report cards went home today and I managed to get my comments and progress reports stuffed into those lovely yellow envelopes before the end of the day despite my kiddos' homeroom teacher being out again. My para educator has been out all week and let me just say, I miss her! I want her to get well but soon...and will definitely be smothering her with hugs when she returns.

In the meantime, it's been quite a hectic few days and I've been cramming as much as I can into my planning and lunch period modifying grade-level materials, making my own materials and brainstorming WAY too many other materials pushing my To Do lists to the max! Finally managing to sit down with a few minutes to myself before the Mister comes home from work...

My kiddos are starting to get into the Chris Van Allsburg author study and are really enjoying the read aloud activities. We struggled a bit with outlining the story elements  - they still have trouble identifying problem and solution as well as picking important events from the story rather than listing every little thing. We read Zathura today and 'discovered' the boys at the end of Jumanji are the main characters in this story. Tomorrow I plan to review the books with my students and attempt to compare and contrast the two books.

My Mister finished off the orange juice last night so I'm hoping to get labels and cards printed/laminated for my Jumanji-Zathura Find It! activity. I've also got an Allsburg timeline sort activity and am thinking of how to incorporate The Z Got Zapped into a center activity or project. I've only got 4 kiddos...so it'd be at least 6 alphabet letters apiece I'm thinking...

Speaking of alphabet letters...does anyone know where to find alphabet magnets for a good deal? I seem to live in an area where they no longer exist...

But for now, the bed is calling so I'll leave you with a favorite from yesterday. I borrowed this idea from One Extra Degree and her glossary skills activity as seen here. I had my kiddos look up new/higher level vocabulary from Jumanji and define it in writing and with a picture. I loved what one student came up with! Forgive the poor picture quality - all I had on me was my camera phone.

When asked to explain..."a gigantic shark that eats people and trains and destroys bridges...that's dangerous, right?"