Happy New Year and Welcome Back!

I'm a little late on the New Year's greeting and I'm a little late on the welcome back.  That's what happens when my kids decide to get sick.

But I wanted to share a link to a website that I thought had a great back to school idea.  If you can't use it this year, then pin it to pinterest and keep it for next year :)

Christan at 4th Grade Frolics always posts some great ideas.  I loved her back to school idea (she also talks about some great math packs which might be of interest to you as well).  I think it's a great idea to re-visit Lucy's resolution lesson at this time of the year and get kids going on the right track for the rest of the year.  She has a great book mark that she shared for free.  This would go great with a mini-lesson around revising resolutions and may help to get students thinking about their reading habits again.

Follow up to Thinking Clouds

Last week, I posted a link to Thinking Clouds that can be used during guided reading groups to help kids stay on task as well as to foster conversation about their metacognition once they are done reading.  One of the clouds is "Author's Purpose" and it says on it, "It's all about PIE."  I found another great free resource to go along with that and help teach what PIE stands for.  This website has a set of short posters that explain each of the letters in PIE (persuade, inform, entertain).  I printed them off and laminated them to have on hand when the conversation comes up.