A Peek at My Week-Holiday Break

 

 

 

 

I decided to link up with Jennifer over at Mrs. Laffin’s Laughings for her weekly linky party. It’s a chance to share what your upcoming week looks like, and since it’s Christmas break right now I’m hoping to accomplish a few things around the house. Hopefully. 🙂

Here’s one thing I’ve already done. Yes, it took me a looooong time to get this done. I put the diplomas for my master’s and EDS in frames and hung them in my office/library/junk room. 🙂

Done!

 

I need to finish painting the bottom left frame, take the gosh awful sticker off of the top right frame, and then I want to paint over the yellow gold color that DOESN’T match my 2 shutters. I’m going to paint over it with a brown color.

 

These files need to go somewhere. Trash. Filing cabinet. Bonfire. Somewhere. 🙂 I rearranged my little office and just threw them down. Does anyone else ever do stuff like this????

 

Some other things on my to do list are:

*****upload all of my pics from an old laptop AND my old southern linc memory card to Shutterfly. It’s a free website for photo storage.

*****put up curtains in my little office and in my workout room

And of course, I’ll be spending time with family tonight and tomorrow!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

What have you got planned this week? Are you trying to organize anything around the house??

Five For Friday 6/7/13

It’s time to link up over at Doodle Bugs Teaching for her weekly linky-FIVE FOR FRIDAY!!!!!!!!!!

1. This week has been BUSY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! The National Writing Project started Monday. You can read about DAY 1 or DAY 2. I’m trying to write a post about each day because there’s SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO much I’m learning or trying to stuff in my brain. I need to organize it all and pick a few things I want to implement. I’m mainly talking about techie things. 🙂

2. I’m a country girl so you would think I wouldn’t get excited over seeing animals when I’m driving but…… I still do. 🙂 Here’s my new friend. He was crossing as I was driving  to the NWP.

 

 

3. 

My youngest stepson carrying “his” calf to the truck. It runs in the family. I guess through water, not blood. LOL!

4. I co-hosted my 1st twitter chat last night with a teacher from Arizona!!!!!!!!!!!!! It was an incredible experience. We chatted about the book Notice and Note-Close Reading by Kylene Beers and Bob Probst.

Kylene and Bob joined us for the chat! This book is very practical and just makes sense. It’s a GREAT read if you’re wondering about close reading and strategies/lessons for helping students GET IT!!!

5. I’m a Kermit fan. In case you were wondering. 🙂 Isn’t he handsome???

 

June Currently

June the 1st. Can you believe it????? 🙂 Happy days are here.

I’m linking up with Farley over at Oh, Boy 3rd Grade for her Currently linky.

 

LISTENING: We live in the country so I get to hear all sorts of lyrical tunes like frogs, crickets, birds, and coyotes. Tonight the coyotes have struck up what sounds like a rhythm band, and the dogs have joined in. Music to my ears. But they better hush when I’m ready to go to bed! 🙂

LOVING: I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE my new iphone 5!! OMG!! I’m not sure how productive I’ll be for the rest of the summer…..

THINKING: Yes, I really do miss my husband. Oh, he’s coming home. He just works 3rd shift (for a year now), and it would be nice if he was on day shift-then we could be a normal family and fuss and get on each other’s nerves. 🙂 I even miss him after he cut through our phone line today with the bulldozier which in turn took MY INTERNET DOWN. Then he told me not to get the phone company to fix it until he finishes with the driveway. Now you have to understand-I’m still waiting on him to finish other projects from 7 years ago. But guess what I remembered? That I got this little hotspot box when I got my iphone and IT GIVES ME WI-FI!! I’m back in business!!!

WANTING: I SERIOUSLY want to go to the beach!!! But I got accepted to the National Writing Project and start on Monday-June 3rd so the trip will be postponed to sometime in July. Sigh. BUT I’m SO excited about the Writing Project. Come back and visit cause I’ll be posting lots!

NEEDING: I’m in dire need of another diet pepsi from the kitchen, but I’ve GOT to get this post written, published, and linked up before 453 more people do it in front of me. 🙂

AND my 3 vacation essentials would be books, running shoes, and MORE BOOKS!! I.LOVE.TO.READ.

:):):):)

What are you currently doing???

Five for Friday

I’m linking up with Doodle Bugs Teaching for the 1st time ever for her Five for Friday linky party.

1. Learning computer technical thingies. Alas, I bought some graphics from teachers pay teachers and was going to put these cute little sticky notes with numbers in this post but……. it’s late, I’m tired, and I can’t figure out how to make the number BIG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! So now you know what part of my “to do” list includes for this summer! 🙂

2. I am taking part of the Runner’s World Running Streak that goes from Memorial Day to the 4th of July. Hopefully this will get me back in the swing run of things! I’ve logged 5 miles so far since Monday! You can follow me on twitter-@shannonclark7. #RWRunStreak

3. I raked hay this morning for my husband and have to say that I did a pretty darn good job of it!! 🙂 Note to self: take headache medicine before taking this one because your neck becomes that of an owl swiveling and swiveling and swiveling and…..

4. I have been reading up a storm as I’m doing the #bookaday challenge that Donalyn hosts each summer. The plan is really just to read as much as you can and tweet your reading/books using the #bookaday challenge. I.LOVE.TO.READ. 🙂 I just finished Flipped by Wendelin Van Draanen today, a middle grade novel that was superb!!

I keep up with my books on Goodreads so check out what I’ve read lately-maybe you’ll find a good book or two!

5. For those of you who teach and like to read about teaching and talk about teaching (that would be ME!), a fellow tweep and I are hosting a book chat on the book Notice and Note-Close Reading by Kylene Beers and Bob Probst. The twitter chat will be June 6, 13, and 20 at 8pm CST. Hashtag is #NNNchat. Join in for the fun! We have also created a facebook group so that we can continue the discussion and for those who can’t be part of the twitter party. 🙂 Here’s the link to it:

Notice and Note-Close Reading Facebook Group

So there you have it-my 1st Five for Friday post. That was fun. 🙂

 

 

What I’m Going to Do Differently Next Year

Yes, go ahead and call the bloggy police. I’m posting twice in one day. 🙂

I’m linking up with the fantastic Kim at Finding Joy in 6th Grade for her 1st linky party-What I’m Going to Do Differently Next Year.

And since supper is on the stove, this is going to be FAST! 🙂

1. Well, for starters I will be teaching 6th grade ALL SUBJECTS next year!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! YIKES!!! So lots of new stuff for me, and I couldn’t be more excited. Earth Science will be new, Math will be new, AND I am going to TRY the reading workshop model AND the Reading Olympians Word Study in place of Spelling AND Jeff Anderson’s Invitation to Notice for Grammar.

Whew! Maybe I should have put all that under different numbers!!!

2. I “hope” to be more organized with my planning-in other words get a lot of the rough sketching done this summer!!

3. I want to REALLY focus on writing. I start the National Writing Project on Monday, June 3rd and hope to learn A LOT!!

So-what are you going to do next year????????????

Squared Away Linky Party

I’m joining Michele over at Coffee Cups and Lesson Plans for her SQUARED AWAY Linky Party.

This past week was not my spring break (that was the week before) so it was a regular school week. It ended up being a fantastic week and went by super quick, too. 🙂

Here’s what I was able to square away:

RUNNING-Ran 4 miles for the week. Not too good, but getting my game back on!

READING: Read several good books. My favorite was One For the Murphys. If you haven’t read it-YOU MUST!

TEACHING: I dove into teaching poetry writing to my 5th graders. Have never taught it before, and I found out it is SO MUCH FUN! We worked on shape poems.

 

In 5th grade history we have been learning about the constitution, bill of rights, branches of government. They had to memorize the Preamble and recite it in front of the class. All 35 of them did this-I was so proud. 🙂 2 girls even said it with a British accent for extra points, and 2 other girls rapped it for extra points. 🙂

In 6th grade we have been all about some roaring 20s!!! We learned the charleston dance and rotated through stations to learn about that decade. Friday we started playing a stock market game and will finish up tomorrow. It’s been a blast!

PERSONAL LIFE: Saturday AND Sunday my hubby and I put out 3 tons of fertilizer on pastures and worked cows. My youngest boy decided to take a calf home with him since she lost her mom. Check out “Daddy” Adam!

 

Summary-AWESOME WEEK! 🙂

Added some new blog pages

I just added some new pages to my blog. These are from my old blog when I taught Reading to 6th graders.

They are titled:

Reading Tools

Grammar Practice

Comprehension Skills

Comprehension Strategies

Linky Link Parties

CAFE/Daily 5

Maybe you can find something beneficial. 🙂

Monday Made It Linky

You can link up and showcase whatever you have been working on for your classroom/school over at Tara’s 4th Grade Frolics fabulous blog and Monday Made It Linky Party!

I made my purple shelves black. To match the rest of my classroom.

 

I’m teaching history to 5/6 graders for the 1st time, so here are the chapter books in the black baskets that are historical fiction. I’m also displaying some books on top of the shelves that I will use throughout the year and for them to read. 🙂

What did you make this week?

Monday Made It Linky Party

You can link up and showcase whatever you have been working on for your classroom/school over at Tara’s 4th Grade Frolics fabulous blog and Monday Made It Linky Party!

I have made:

time for reading, supper, my 18 year old daughter mad at me, and my laundry able to fold itself (just joking!). 🙂

I made a NEW lesson plan template. Yes, again. I went to a 2 day workshop on content literacy and strategic teaching and FELL IN LOVE WITH STRATEGIC TEACHING!!! So I revised my lesson plan template to reflect this new love. Here it is if you want to use it, edit it, throw it away……

5th6thlessonplan

Here’s a pic of it-

If you want to read about strategic teaching you can visit this post or this one that I wrote earlier this week.

I also got 2 of my bulletin boards ready in my classroom. One is for my english anchor charts, and the other one will be for current events since I’m teaching a block of 5th grade english and 5th and 6th US history.

English bulletin board.

Current events bulletin board.

I am going for the simple black and white theme this year since I painted my walls a BRIGHT BLUE!!! Guaranteed to keep the kids awake during history! 🙂

What did you make this week?

Newbie Bloggers Hop Linky Party

I found this linky party on Surviving Sixth Grade, a blog that I have just recently started following. Hey, Mrs. Jefferson!

Grade Three is the Place For Me is the blog that is hosting this linky party. I’m not a newbie blogger, but wanted to get in on the action.

Here’s how to participate if YOU want in on the action:

1.  Post about this linky party on your blog

2.  Answer these five questions

3.  Think about visiting the other blogs on the post

 

1. What state are you in?

Alabama

2.  What is your current teaching position?

5th/6th grade US History and 5th grade English

3. What is your teaching experience?

I taught Kindergarten for 6 years, and this will be my 3rd year teaching 6th grade for a total of 9 years. I’m 41 and didn’t decide to teach until I was 30. It took me 3 years to get my master’s degree. 🙂

4. When did you start blogging?

I started blogging in January 2011 with my old site- 6th Grade Scott Foresman Reading Street Resources. I changed to my new blog in May 2012 so that I could simplify my life since I tend to blog about teaching, running, and reading. 🙂 My new blog is I Run Read Teach.

5. Share a blogging tip / blogging resource.

Always try and leave comments on other blogs AND leave a link to your blog as well. However, the biggest tip that I have is to ALWAYS reply to someone who leaves a comment on your blog!!!!!! Even if it’s just to say “thanks”.