Five for Friday

When I saw this post: 5 Tips for Improving Your TPT Store This Year it really brought home some thing I've known for a while. I need to update products. It's very time consuming, but I'm amazed by how much I've learned this year.

Have you heard about the Teachers Notebook Super Sale this weekend?

If you need a promotional banner, I'm sharing this one (editable).

I would really appreciate your input as an educator on this.

I remember reading Matilda when I was probably in 4th or 5th grade. I LOVED it. Recently I watched the movie with my son (age 6-kindergartner). After watching the movie, I thought it might be fun to read the book together. Holy smokes! The vocabulary in that book is crazy! Examples from the first few pages: revolting, twaddle, periodical, cicada, emerge, extraordinary, lyrical, abdomen, particularly etc. Now, my son has a particularly extraordinary vocabulary for a kindergartner, but right away I began to question the wisdom of my decision. I asked him if he liked it, and he said he wanted to continue, so we read the whole thing. As I read I thought to myself: 'There is no way I was understanding all this vocabulary in 4th or 5th grade. Are kids really reading this in elementary school?' I checked and apparently it's a level S according to Scholastic. I have no idea what grade level that is considered to be. So, 4th and 5th grade teachers, is this typical of books your kids are reading? I haven't read much at that level in a long time. 

In a crazy coincidence, I was talking to my sister today, and she mentioned that her son (also a kindergartner) had recently brought home a book that he was supposed to read with his family. There was a note saying they were supposed to read this book over the next 4 weeks. You've probably guessed by now that the book was Matilda. I am speechless. Seriously, there are multiple words in every chapter that I know I learned in preparation for the SATs! What on earth is going on? Please, as an educator, tell me your thoughts.

Do you use this app? I'm loving it so much that I wrote a whole post about it. I have a whole new appreciation for the bloggers out there who are writing tech tutorials! Wow, that took forever. On the bright side, I've actually had a few readers tell me they downloaded it and began using it, so that's exciting.

If you found this post to be interesting or fun, I'd love for you to connect with me!