Harry's Mad by: Dick King-Smith

I read Harry's Mad the other day to my husband to see if I wanted to read it to my class.  It was absolutely fantastic!  My husband and I loved it so much!  I cannot wait until I get to read it to my students!  I have not looked for lesson plans to go with this, but even if there is not any its definitely worth reading to your students.

The Hundred Dresses

The Hundred Dresses by Eleanor Estes is a wonderful yet, humbling read for children or anyone.  I began reading it last week to my class.  I am using it as my listening comprehension book.  There is a great intermediate lesson plan in the August/September 2003 issue of The MAILBOX magazine.

There is also a verb lesson plan that goes along with this book by Teach21.  So to incorporate both of these ideas into my classroom.  I created verb centers for this week.  One center is verb charades which I found on teachers pay teachers.  My students LOVE this game, it never gets old.  Another center is creating verb collages.  This activity has kept them very engaged.

Another center activity that I chose to do was based off of the verb lesson plan as shown above.  My students had to search through chapter one of The Hundred Dresses and find all of the action verbs.  Once this was complete they had to categorize them by body action or mind action verbs.  This was good to reinforce the verb lesson and to read part of The Hundred Dresses again.

My last center was a writing center with a writing prompt taken from The Hundred Dresses.  The Mailbox magazine gives some great prompts for this learning activity.

Moving On Up!

 I have been terrible at keeping up with my blog, but life is super busy, and I know a fellow teacher can definitely understand that. Especially one that is getting their masters degree at the same time.  I moved to fifth grade this year and since we are departmentalized I teach three ninety minute blocks of reading and writing.

I am loving this change, but if any of you have any tips for teaching fifth grade reading and writing I would love to hear from you!  Thanks for reading!