I have been sequestered to ICUs, hospital rooms, and living rooms with muted televisions…thus, my online absence. Last week, my husband had emergency lung surgery.  After many a tense moment, we are both relieved that all is well and he is healing nicely.  But then again, who wouldn’t when you have staples stapling staples in your chest?

With many a moment to think over the past week and a half, here is my five (weekend edition):

I am thankful:

1.  … that my husband is alive.

2.  … that I have a tremendous group of friends and neighbors that take care of my life without a second guess.

3. … that I am not so anal-retentive that I can be gone from school for 1.5 weeks and be focused solely on my husband (well…until that last day when we knew all was well and I would be returning to school soon…the itch started to come back — but it didn’t come back for a good week!)

4.  … that my students came through in crunch time and weathered a sub for a week and a half with decorum (mostly) and minimal damage to the classroom (remember this?).

5.  … that the iris has bloomed in my pond and there are many a lily pad – reminding me that life continues.

That would your five be?  Enjoy your weekend, friends!

Can you smell that?

It’s the utter exhaustion emanating from my body.  I’m tired!  Bless the UPS man who has been systematically delivering macchiatos and cappuccinos for my Tassimo straight to my doorstep.   The thought of a caramel macchiato was what got me out of bed this morning after a 14 hour sleep.

1.  I’ve just returned from a multi-day trip with my darlings to study colonial life.  We did up forts, slept like colonial soldiers, marched like soldiers, compared rifles with muskets, and dragged water for our gardens from the lake.  I could have done without the 5:50 a.m. drum call and was none too ashamed to have taken my Thermarest to soften the blows of a wooden floor and a straw-filled mattress.

2.  I was all a go with the quality teaching yesterday after having just returned from the trip.  I had planned a Sage and Scribe activity with a differentiated sheet on Crossing the Delaware and the Battle of Saratoga.  After discussing appropriate language to be used during the activity (get your heads out of the gutter – we didn’t have THAT conversation), the students were off.  Not even 2 minutes in, and I could see students dragging their heads towards their partners and pencils slovingly being dragged across the paper.

ok.  eyes on me.

Would you rather do this whole class?

A relieved yes unified the class and we were back to our seats.

Even SIOP can’t beat the exhaustion of a tired group of soldiers.  Sometimes whole group discussion has its place…and that place was my classroom on a Friday after returning from a week long trip 6 hours from home!

3.  Although they too were exhausted, my dear darlings came to school adorned with gifts for me yesterday.  here are just a few of the treasures that my treasures brought for me:

I will say that I love teaching students who are in tune with human feelings enough to understand the load of work that teachers do (hence a homemade mug with a personalized thank you note…and a coffee mug, no less) but also still have a hankering for sweet candy…those cola airheads were awesome!

5.  I came across this Substitute Teacher Class Report form when I was recreating a sub folder the year I was away and without my entire basement.  I’m thinking of using it in the mega-magnificent binder contraption I have planned for next year.

And now, I shall put on my newest CD (woo hoo Amazon mp3 downloads): Zoey van Goey’s The cage was unlocked all along and perhaps begin the loads of laundry that are full of colonial skunk and which I must walk over ever time I enter the kitchen…my idea being that if I put the laundry piles where I had to walk over them, I do the laundry faster.  Will it work?

Likely not.

I have been wanting to catch up on Ten Things I Hate About You episodes online.

Exhaustion.  Check.

Rationale for watching cheesy kids’ shows in the middle of a Saturday afternoon?

I’m sure I can come up with something.

Have a great weekend, all!

Whew!  Has Friday come and gone?  I do believe I need to rename my Five on Friday to Five (see above), as getting to the couch and a glass of wine on a Friday is hard enough, let alone a blog post.  Perhaps the goal of by Sunday eve would be best.  You’ll need to check back each week to see which day prevails!

So here you have it – my five for this week!

1.  This past week has flown by.  I’ve been asking myself just where the week went.  You’ll notice that I missed my Thursday post.  Perhaps you’ll glean why from my post today.  I’ve enjoyed many a sweet conversation with students over the American Revolution and I’m sad to see that we’ve seen the week fly by, as it means we are soon at the Battle of Saratoga and before I know it we’ll be at the Bill of Rights.  My students love the American Revolution and I attribute a lot of it to this, this, and this.

2.  I have been busy making caramel latte macchiatos with my new Tassimo.  Bliss, let me tell you.  Let me also tell you that having such a delightful drink at 8 pm so that you can finish last minute preparations for a BIG field trip is great and all to keep you awake but doesn’t help you at all when you need to get to sleep…and are still watching the clock at 1:30 a.m.  Powerful stuff those macchiatos.

3.  I’ve been having my students do a lot of the teaching over the past few weeks.  They’ve taken great initiative in creating their teaching aids – some have even made quizzes and flip books voluntarily.

4.  I enjoy learning or reviewing vocabulary words using VocabAhead. About a year ago, I signed up for their Word a Day and thus, I get a new word and video delivered to my inbox each day.  Once I even got to use a word and video when coincidentally, a student reading Hatchet what a word meant…and it was the Word of the Day in my inbox.  Check it out — the pictures and videos are fun!

5.  Quote of the week — when shopping with my husband at the outlet mall and reflecting that the 80s and 90s have returned as a mixed venture:

Me: “Didn’t Kurt Cobain die in that shirt?”

Hope you enjoyed a lovely weekend — I did lots of planting and loved it!

My list o’ 5 this week is a mash of everything that’s rolling around in my head.  Enjoy your travels!

1.  Yesterday my students made me so proud because they completely (and I mean completely!) controlled themselves in what could have been a chaotic situation.  You see, yesterday was Multicultural Day (MCD) or what some have termed MultiChaos Day at our school – a culminating event to each class studying and presenting on a country in the world.  Picture 400 students presenting and rotating through classrooms, being entertained and shooed out on an 8 minute interval cycle.  Potential for darlings to freak out?  Um, yes!  Potential for teachers to freak out?  Um, yes!  My darlings came through.  I survived.  Yes, mission accomplished.  Reason for not getting to my Five on Friday on Friday?  You just heard it!

2.  I have several Paul Revere, William Dawes, and Samuel Prescott wanna bes in my room.  Picture 1 tricorn hat and 3 students galloping around the room, “The British are coming.”  No, I don’t think they’ll forget Lexington and Concord.  All for a $6 tricorn hat.  Nice!  Never underestimate the potential for learning with a cheap prop.

3.  SIOP encourages teachers to paraphrase a student’s thoughts when teaching.  However, this comic from May 7 illustrates why we can’t over do our corrections and why waiting until the student has finished speaking and then paraphrasing is perhaps the best way to go:

4.  As I continue to teach the American Revolution, I’m reminded how important it is to not just be teaching our students the individual content standards and the lesson’s objectives but to be reminding the students of how the current lesson fits into the larger picture of their Social Studies lessons…and in this way, we’ll be able to never hear “but why does this mean anything?”  This week, my class will be working on creating a large timeline of important events that we’ve studied since the beginning of Grade 5…but in comic form.  Students will be using this page that I’ve created for the timeline purpose:

Timeline Comic BLM

5.  I’m thinking of reorganizing my guest (substitute) teacher folder over the summer… perhaps a super duper color coordinated page protector collection of awesomeness.  My question to you is this:  what would you put in such a collection of awesomeness?

Have a great weekend,

1.  I’m absolutely loving the weather today…summer is around the corner.  Apparently it’s supposed to rain this weekend but I’d rather dwell in blissful ignorance and pretend that this weather will last right through the end of the year.  The weather inspired my math buddies teacher friend and I to take our classes outside for math buddies today.  Our math equation  — 4 clipboards + 4 mad minutes + 50 kids + 4 pencils + 2 teachers + random children from other classes running around during their normal recess + other teachers yelling, “hey, get out of that area” = a rockin’ math buddies relay race that the kids love.  Engagement = 100%!

2.  My Send a Problem worked really well this week, as we reviewed events leading up to the American Revolution.  Following up that with a sort had my kids SIOPing away in Social Studies this week.  One students shared this week, “are we going to do more of those activities where we work in groups and practice our language?  I like those.”  Nice!

3.  Words from my mouth several times this week: “Been there, done that…yes, I’ve been in grade 5 below…let’s just skip the whole trying out that trick part and get to the part where you just do what I want you to do.”  Humor goes miles with my class.  We’re really enjoying one another which makes implementing my SIOP activities quite easy.

4.  I recently started our Historical Fiction book club and students self-selected from a choice of books.  Many chose My Brother Sam is Dead — a phenomenal Newbery Honor book.  Undaunted by the length of the book and small font of the type, my students have been coming into class, doing their graph-in, and immediately chatting with each other about the book.  Another great event that started this week is me being called over every moment the students notice some Social Studies in the book…imagine their surprise that our Reading Workshop ties into Social Studies!   Are there ways that you can integrate your subjects?

5.  I’m busy coloring checkers boards for the homophone checkers game I’m creating this weekend…I’ll have to let you know how that goes!

Thanks for stopping by!

In honor of some of my favorite bloggers who do the same, I share my ‘Five on Friday.’

1.  What perfect timing that Train’s Soul Sister was the last song I heard before getting out of my car in the driveway this afternoon.  This is one of the songs used in trailers for ‘one of my shows’ Nurse Jackie.  Jackie puts up with nothing…this arrogant and totally capable nurse…one of those people you want to be on shift if you come into the ER because she’ll tell it like it is and you’ll be fixed and out.  Even if it is with the name and number of the ambulance driver’s dealer.  And who doesn’t like watching Peter Facinelli with his tweeting obsession.

2.  By chance I had Tori and Dean on while writing this blog post and they recently went on an RV trip across the US…and stopped at The Big Texan in Amarillo, Texas…just one of my absolute favorite stops on our Route 66 car trip across the US this past summer…but I didn’t try the 72 oz steak contest !

The Big Texan: Route 66 Road Trip 2009

3.  I enjoyed a great session with a school this afternoon teaching different SIOP activities that focus on interaction and increasing the language domains in a lesson.  One activity I shared was a people hunt…a scavenger hunt for people who can answer a question on a student page.  A student can only have another student solve 1 question on their page, so students have equal opportunities to talk.  Before using the activity, students make a class list of of appropriate sentence starters that they can use when asking for and receiving responses.

Fraction People Hunt

4.  I’ve made it through the 5 days following Spring Break…and need to spend the next 5 days cleaning up my kitchen counter which currently houses stacks of unopened mail (this week’s), half-full coffee cups (from midnight work sessions), and *beverage* bottles (from stepping into the kitchen, looking around, and needing a *beverage*.)  But that’s not it.  There are 2 (yes, 2) of the infamous teacher bags sitting on the kitchen floor.  Now let me tell you about these 2 teacher bags (although I KNOW I’m preachin’ to the choir).  These are the bags that get packed at 3:00 full of ‘work to be done at night’, get dragged into the house (because we have grand plans to catch up), and which get dragged back to school the next morning unopened (because we were too tired to pull ourselves off the couch to open the bag).  At least there are 2 bags this week which means my hunched shoulders will be equal in size and no one shoulder will be lower than the other.

5.  My favorite quote of the week:

Me: So Cinderella didn’t know the prince was talking about her because she felt so little of herself that she could not conceive of the idea that the prince was speaking of her (and not the injured bluebird) when he said that he just had to stop when he saw a beautiful creature having trouble.

Student: Or maybe it was just because the prince called Cinderella a creature.

Happy Weekend!