Whoa!!

 Better Days

     Hello everyone!! I know I've been gone for a few days, but this has definitely been one of those weeks. All it takes is one phone call to make your life go into a whirlwind. Regardless of that, life does continue to happen and I have a classroom to get ready for the upcoming school year.

     This upcoming year, we will be starting the Daily 5. I've read the book and I am excited about it. I also read the Book Whisperer by Donalyn Miller. That is an excellent book to read if you want to boost the reading in your classroom. She gives great tips on how to do that as well as required book reading lists for the class. When I first read that she had a required amount of reading for the students, I thought okay, that's a little easy, my 4th graders can handle that without any problem. I even thought about increasing the reading challenge. However, as I read further in her book, she requires the 40 books, but they have to be a specific amount in different genres. You all may have thought about that, but I can honestly say I did not. I will be typing up the required reading sometime this week. Once I do, I'll post a sample of it on here and hoping to set up a page on TPT.

     I am hoping that between the 2 reading resources and a phenomenal reading specialist, we will work hard and boost our student's love of reading in my school. Today while yard sale shopping, YES, I absolutely LOVE to shop yard sales, I found an awesome deal. I walk in the door and lo and behold brand new carpet squares! I picked through the entire 4 stacks until I found 15 of the softest ones for my students to sit on during their free reading time. Am I crazy?? According to some of the looks that I received from people walking by. However, I know that I just secured softer seating for my students who like to stretch out on the floor to read, play a game, or just to work on assignments. They are perfect because they can move to wherever they want to sit on the floor and in some cases out in the hallway and because when reading time is up, I can put them all back on the shelf in my closet out of the way. EXCITED!! LOL, it's the little things that make me happy!