Five for Friday... On Saturday

I am happy to be linking up with Doodle Bugs Teaching for their Five for Friday Linky today, even though it is a day late. This is the first linky party that I've joined, even though I've blog stalked used linky's to find new ideas.

Here are my five for this week:
1. In my first grade class for student teaching, we had some St. Patrick's Day fun. On Monday, we read some St. Patrick's Day themed books. On Tuesday, we completed some Lucky Fact Families and we had a lucky charms graphing activity after the leprechaun left us some clues. I can't seem to find the blog where we got the great freebie for our first graders to do the graphing. On Wednesday, we did some writing about who is worth more than gold to us. We found the printables here.

2. We started Daily 5 full force this week with our first graders. Overall, they've been doing ok, but my mentor and I are trying to find a way for the kids to pick their choices without taking time in between sessions when we should be doing our many lessons. Any suggestions? Right now, each child has a little card with their picture on it, and they place that card in a pocket chart next to their choice and they change their choice in between sessions. I feel like this is inefficient and takes away precious learning time.

3. With us starting the Daily 5, we have also been completing mini lessons on the CAFE strategies. This week, I am going to be teaching the kids the expand vocabulary strategy - "Tune In To Interesting Words and Use New Vocabulary in Speaking and Writing". For this, the sisters had given their word collection boxes, but I didn't feel like this was a good resource for first graders (you know they wouldn't be able to fit more than two to three letters in a box). So, I am going to copy booklets that have lines and a page for each letter of the alphabet. It is their word collection book. I plan on having each student keep these in their book boxes and then go over the words written in the books during individual or group conferences. Click the picture below if you'd like a copy for yourself.

Graphics from Creative Clips
Fonts from Jenna Barrett

4. The weather in Kentucky has been awful, therefore, I have not been feeling well since Wednesday :( I'm starting to feel better, but my throat is still a little sore.

5. Last, but certainly not least, I got some good news this week. I received an email from the University of Louisville this week stating that I have been honored as the "Outstanding Master of Arts in Teaching Student in Early Elementary Education for Spring 2013 Commencement". After a little digging, I found out that the faculty members all get together and nominate one person for each award. Then they vote on the nominated students. I'm not sure how many awards there are, but am pretty pumped to have won the award. I'm excited to head to Louisville in April for the awards ceremony and see all of my fellow classmates who I haven't seen since December.