Five for Friday! Spring Break

"Looks Like We Made It!"

Can anyone name the artist? Hint: 1970's ;)

I thought I was going to skip linking up with Kacey for

It's our first day of Spring Break and I was going to take the day "off," but I also really wanted to share all the fun we had this week!

 April 1st kicked off Autism Awareness Month!

I don't know how I'm going to let my students move onto second grade. There will tears, guaranteed.

It has been, without a doubt, the toughest school year I've ever had. After Monday and Tuesday of this week being extra-challenging in the behavior department, I decided to scrap Wednesday's Guided Reading lesson and focus on bringing the joy-factor back. 

I'm working with the bottom quartile, so I really can't justify doing an art project for the sake of art,. It must be an application of our learning. So, I asked myself, what do my students REALLY need to know before the school year ends? They are decoding words now like nobody's business, so I decided we need to focus on a writing mechanics bootcamp. 

My Motto: if they can say it, they can read it, If they can read it, they can write it (and all the combinations in between). 

I went straight to the experts at TPT and found this adorable (freebie) from Stephanie Stewart. I got a little creative with shapes and clipart to design our own Complete Sentence Man based on her idea.

They turned out terrific, right?

I hung them in the window. We oohed and aahed and then went back to business. It was hours later when my boss politely pointed something out to me.  It still took me a moment! 

Do you notice anything? #craftivityfail (understatement)

Don't worry, the general educator also built in some  more appropriate spring craft time yesterday. 

My students worked so hard:

The picture above reveals so much about how awesome my students think!

This spring break I'm FINISHING my model teacher portfolio. If you want to learn about how amazing this opportunity is, you may want to google Baltimore City's contract and the union.

I have one more week to wrap up this mega-project!

I'll also be taking little creativity breaks to read all your blogposts & scroll through Pinterest. I JUST figured this out:

You can pin from your phone?!? 

Welcome to the 21st century! 

Please find me here ♥

Here's one of my creativity breaks from yesterday:

It's a wine label for one of my co-teachers getting married. 

It was fun trying out Paula Kim's graphics!

Have a fabulous Friday! Jen