Five for Friday May 1, 2015

Time for Five for Friday with Doodle Bugs Teaching!  The last week of April was filled with a ton of crazy and a ton of proud moments!

We started the weekend with a trip to the Emergency Room when my 20 year old son, Powell had a seizure.  He was diagnosed with epilepsy when he was almost 2 years old, but it has been a long time since he had a seizure.  We believe it was brought on by him playing a video game on his computer.  He was sitting at his desk playing the computer when all of the sudden my mother heard a loud crash and scream from his room.  She ran in and found his chair tipped over, and he had crashed into his closet.  His nose and tongue were bleeding and he was quite bruised up.  He was unresponsive at first, but then just didn't remember what had happened.  He doesn't remember falling into the closet or the seizure.  We took him to the Emergency Room to be checked out and discovered that he had broken a vertebrae in his back during his fall.  All is well now, and we will be following up with his neurologist a little sooner this year than expected.

Because he couldn't remember falling, he was somewhat surprised by his injuries.  As we waited in the waiting room he kept asking me, "Did I hurt my neck, because it hurts?"  "Did I hurt my nose, because it hurts?" I ended up taking pictures of his injuries for him to see. We were there over 12 hours!  At least it kept us somewhat occupied.

I greatly appreciate all of your well wishes about Powell from my last blog post!  In addition to his epilepsy diagnosis, he also has autism, fragile X syndrome, and cerebral palsy.  Having my own special needs child has influenced me as a teacher in dealing with special needs students in my own classroom - I always think, "Would this be how I would want a teacher to work with Powell?"  He has also made my children more sensitive to others and we couldn't imagine our family without him!  I am so grateful that his injuries weren't more severe!

After all the craziness, I needed a little retail therapy at my favorite used book store.

They have an amazing children/youth section and I stocked up with many new books for our classroom library!

On to my proud moments!  I have a group of students that have been driving down struggle street when it comes to reading.  They came into my class able to read a few sight words and not much more.  They were sure that they weren't readers and they certainly weren't smart.  I was determined to let them know otherwise!!!

They have made so much progress this year, and have just discovered Fly Guy books.  I think this series is great for struggling older readers, because they are appealing to even my higher readers.  They are "chapter books" with 3 chapters in each book, so the students don't feel like they are reading baby books.

I have been capitalizing on this interest with special Fly Guy sight word cards and activities.  They are loving them and their growth is soaring!  I am so proud of them!!!

I am so proud of my students' writing this year!  We have been using Lucy Calkins' program, and their writing has improved so much!  This week we are working on our opinion unit.

In math, we are working on equivalent fractions.  They were so excited to share their equivalent fractions!

Teacher's Kids can be such show-offs!  LOL! (Yes, he's mine!).

Hope you had a great week!  Link up and share!