Weekend Reading

Here are some of my favorite blog posts from the week!

• Lindsay, over at My Life as a Third Grade Teacher, shared some fabulous anchor charts for poetry and grammar. I just love the way she introduced her poetry unit.  
• Farrah at Think * Share * Teach found a great new free app for the iPad that she's using to make instructional math videos for her students and their parents. I'm anxious to give EduCreations a try!
• Farley at Oh' Boy Fourth Grade shared a fantastic idea for teaching about prepositions with a pumpkin activity. The student work samples that she showcased were awesome! 

This week in Eberopolis will be the last week of our second term, which unfortunately means that I'll be doing a ton of assessing and grading to get ready for report cards. These are the units we're wrapping up:

• Narrative writing - students are putting the finishing touches on two narratives -- one historical fiction set in Colonial America and another on any topic of their choosing
• Literary reading - we've been reading novels and really digging into theme lately
• Multiplication, Division, and Algebra - it's been a busy 6 weeks in math. Most of my darlings are getting multi-digit multiplication and division, but there are still several that are struggling with their basic facts, so this is always a challenge. We'll be working on this the rest of the year, I suspect.
• Forces & Motion and Simple Machines - this was a fun science unit, and I definitely think my students understand many of the concepts. 
• Thirteen Colonies - aside from our Colonial America narrative, we'll mostly be done with this by Tuesday when we take the test. But a former student did drop off a pile of books she had borrowed last year and forgotten to return, including several of my favorite Colonial America read alouds that I'd been missing this year, so I may need to sprinkle those in throughout the week.

 What activities and topics will you be studying in your classes this week? I'd love to hear about it in the comments section!