Five for Frunday..little late!

Ok, it has been a SUPER long time since my last post.  I have been so busy between going out of town, being sick, sub plans, watching the news like crazy.... the list goes on.  I'm going to catch up tonight so I can post new things this week!

1. I have never mentioned this on my blog, but  I actually have two jobs.  I am a teacher, obviously.  But I've also had another job for almost 7 years.  It started out as a summer job during college, but the money was so good, I couldn't give it up!  I drive the beverage cart at the TPC here in North Texas.  One of the perks about working there is I get to meet celebrities!!  There are several that I know because they come often, but others will just come play as they're traveling through.  Last weekend... one of my FAVORITES came out golfing.  Not only do I LOVE his music, but he always gives me backstage passes to his concerts and STAGE seats!  CLAY WALKER!!!  

Me and Clay! :)

2.  The next day (Sunday) I was working a tournament. As I was digging through my cart to get this guy a drink, I hear in a VERY DEEP country voice, "M'am can I have a Diet Coke?"  I look up and guess who it was... TOBY KEITH!!! Of course, I start FREAKING out!   I was like telling myself, "Ok Katie you got this, just start singing Red Solo Cup!" Then I decided I was going to tell him that I used to teach on the air force base next to the town he lives in.  Well, I came to the realization that... HE DOESN'T CARE!  How awkward would that have been if I'm like spilling the beans about my life and he just walks away in the middle of my rant! That probably would have happened. Thankfully, I just pretended to not know who he was! Just for the record, I KNEW WHO YOU WERE TOBY!!

3.  I wrote a couple weeks ago that I was going to Billy Currington and I promised to post a photo.  Although I didn't get a picture with him .. here is the one I do have!  It's fuzzy but he puts on a DANG good concert!! 

4.  I just got back from DISNEY WORLD!!!  We took my nephew on a surprise trip for his 4th birthday!  It was so much fun!  We met everyone from Captain America, to Pooh, to Patrick from Spongebob.  What a perfect birthday! 

5.  The Boston Masacre has weighed heavily on me this week, as I'm sure it did every other American.  All I can really say is that we need to pray for the families involved.  Not just the families of the victims, but anyone who was there.  That was a traumatizing experience..very sad.  

Nonfiction Research Writing

In ELA this week, our focus is on research.  If you have read some of my previous blogs, I am really into Writer's Workshop lately.  This was really exciting for me because not only am I conducting a research project with my kiddos, but it helps them when they want to create nonfiction stories.  

I started the unit by letting them know we were going to create a nonfiction book as a class.  In order to write a nonfiction story, we need to learn how writers go about doing so.  I told them they first have to figure out what they want to write about!  (I always tell them, a huge thing for writer's is that they need to be interested in what they are writing, or it will just turn out to be boring!)

I made an anchor chart for the steps in the writing process.  It read: Choose a Topic, Thinking Map, Research, Write Story, Table of Contents, and Glossary.  Once we completed a task, we crossed it off the list.  

Step 1:  Choose a Topic (here are the topics my friends picked)

We voted on Dolphins!

Step 2: Thinking Map- I asked them what important information we wanted to find out about dolphins for our nonfiction book.  

Step 3: Research-We read several dolphin books and watched a video about dolphins... every time we learned a fact that we wanted to know, we wrote it on our thinking map in blue.

Step 4:Write/Illustrate 

Step: 5-Table of Contents

I spread out all of our pages and had my students rearrange them in a logical order.  Once we did that, we numbered our pages and created our Table of Contents.

Step 6: Glossary- We went through and found all of our underlined words and defined them.  

Tomorrow, we are creating the back cover to be "About the Authors".  Then I will cut the top and laminate the book.  I figure since I can't put their pictures on my blog, I might as well go ahead and post this without that page.

Next week, they are doing individual research with a partner!  I am so excited, I'll post some samples!