My Life Just Got Easier! : )

This week I had one of those Aha moments or maybe it was really more like a "DUH" moment! I have had problems all year trying to find good material for me to use to teach Oklahoma. We do have textbooks, but they just seem a little intense for third grade, so most of the things I have used were things I made. I don't mind making things, but the problem is my principal wants me to help support the reading comprehension. I'm happy to help, but I have nothing like that to teach Oklahoma and reading comprehension together. 

I tried my hand at making one and I will admit it was much harder than I thought it would be. It was hard to get the passage to an appropriate reading level. Once I got it down where it needed to be, I had a tough time deciding on what the questions should be. I think the hardest part was choosing the wrong answers! HA I don't think writing reading comprehension pages is one of my talents.

So my Aha moment happened the other night, I was looking at the teaching guide of the Oklahoma book which I haven't done much, because we didn't have any kind of workbooks so it just seemed like a waste of time. As I am looking at it, I keep seeing these pages that say Student Edition, but I don't have one so I decided to try and google the book. I found the book and the student edition online. I was very happy when I was able to download it! There are a lot of pages in the student edition that support reading! YES! We may be doing them together since the textbook is so intense, but at least I don't have to make things, unless I want to. I kind of felt like a load had been lifted off of me.

I want to share some pictures from the Fall that I never got posted. First up is my bulletin board from Red Ribbon Week. I used the drawings the kids did as the border for the bulletin board.

You might call me lazy, I like to call it earth friendly. ;)  I made this bulletin board so I could change out the question each month and have the kids write a new answer. The mittens say, "Inquiring Minds Want to Know". Of course the kids love it because their pictures are on it.

We studied the Plains Indians in the fall. Right before Thanksgiving, I gave them paper, scissors, crayons, glue and their imaginations to make Plains Indians villages. Some worked by themselves, some chose to work in a group which was interesting when it came time to take them home. They were making plans on who was going to take it home first and then bring it back to school for the next one to take home...I never saw any of them come back to school! Hahaha

Later they worked in teams to make a Timeline of Oklahoma's State Symbol adoptions

 OK, I think that about caught me up me up, at least for now.  Have a terrific week!!! I get Monday off!