Smarter Balanced Teacher: Fairy Tales, Peek at Our Week, and Valentines {LOVE}

I love a fairy tale as much as Taylor Swift does...

My little class is beginning to fall in love with fairy tales, too! We're studying the many versions of many fairy tales, beyond the "Cinderella Stories" referenced by CCSS. There are SO many of every fairy tale, and we're having a blast comparing and contrasting them, looking for those special words, "Once Upon a Time" and "Happily Ever After", as well as looking for magic, the numbers three and seven, and the good guys and bad guys. It's all thanks to Heidi Harrell's Fabulous Fairy Tales Unit that I ever even knew about this three and seven stuff - I'd never heard or thought about it before, but she's right - they're everywhere! I think they're perfect for the Valentine's Season, too. Let's face it...who didn't grow up wanting to be a princess, marry a knight in shining armor, and live in a beautiful castle on a mountainside? It's pure romance!

With that, here's a peek at our week:

We'll be in full Valentine mode this week, too. With our Daily Five finally under control, partly due to these awesome foldables we put in our reading journals, we can actually work on fun things, tying them to our curriculum without going cah-ray-zy! I'll be posting these foldables on Teachers Pay Teachers, along with directions for cutting, gluing, and folding this week. They are really cool, and keep my kids on task by providing them visual reminders of expectations, as well as strategies for when they are "stuck" on reading.

We'll make Valentine boxes, to hold our Valentine cards, using cereal boxes. I plan on having my students measure their boxes, then measure and cut paper to cover/wrap the boxes, and finally, decorate each one. We'll tie all that to the story Queen of Hearts, too!

And, we'll read How Big is a Foot and make beds fit for a queen by measuring our own feet to show why standardized measurement is so important!