Teachers need to eat- Easy Mediterranean Pasta with Chicken

Looks delicious, right?? And trust me, it's super easy. Today is a Friday at the end of a very long week and the second to last day of school. It was a long half day of packing and managing my students (they named themselves my "little minions") moving my classroom from downstairs to upstairs. Afterwards, we went out for a late lunch as a staff. A few of us then went back to school (I know, a glutton for punishment) to organize and put report cards in student folders.   

So around 8pm this evening, I was hungry for something light & yummy, yet super easy to make because I barely had enough energy to get myself off the couch, let alone enough to do any 'real' cooking. I ended up grabbing some Mediterranean type veggies from the fridge, pre-made basil pesto, whole grain breaded chicken fingers, some feta and tossed it all with some pasta. It totally fit the bill! Yummy and WAY easy.  

I'm sure there are tons of variations that you can create based on your tastes and what you have on hand. Also, the quantities of ingredients will depend on how many servings you want to make. I made just enough for me, although I ended up with two servings.  

Ingredients:
- Frozen chicken tenders
- Pasta
- Sun-dried tomatoes
- Marinated artichoke hearts
- Kalamata olives
- Capers
- Feta cheese
- Basil Pesto

How to make:

1. Cook the chicken tenders and pasta according to the directions on the package.

2. Cut up the veggies you are using. I used sun-dried tomatoes, artichoke hearts, capers, and kalamata olives. 

3. Toss the vegetables, basil pesto, and chicken with the pasta.

4. Sprinkle with feta cheese.

Enjoy this simple and delicious meal!

Quotation Marks Antics

Throughout the year my students have really strengthened their writing. Their ideas are growing by leaps and bounds, and their grammar, structure, and organization is also improving. The one thing that continues to plague them, even my best writers, is consistently using and formatting dialogue properly. Why is it that students find using quotation marks correctly so difficult? This week I was feeling ambitious, so I decided to tackle it. 

Here are a few activities and things I tried with my kiddos. Feel free to give them a try and let me know how they work out. I also welcome any other ideas you have.

1. I started by telling my kiddos that I wrote a story and wanted their opinion. I displayed the story on the smart board. It was a story that contained lots of dialogue, but no quotations marks or proper punctuation or formatting. They quickly identified what the problem was. As a class, we went through and they edited it together. 
2. Next it was time for some buddy practice and reteaching opportunities for those who needed it. I found a wonderful FREE resource by Kristine Nannini on teacherspayteachers.com. Here's the link to the wonderful resource. Thanks Kristine! It provides great hands-on practice with a little scaffolding built in! As they worked in pairs, I floated around the room and gave assistance as needed, and also pulled a small reteach group for a few friends that were really struggling.
3. Time to apply the skill to writing. I gave students the choice of either working in pairs or working independently. Most chose to work with a friend. I then posted three pictures for students to choose from.
   
   
   
   
 

 

Their assignment was to write a short story that included dialogue between the two animals. I told them that of course it would be funny, but they just needed to be sure to write and format the dialogue correctly. They really enjoyed this activity and came up with some great conversations.

4. Independent Practice: Due to the way our schedule worked out, they ended up doing this part a few days later, so it really was a good indication of how much they remembered and could actually apply the skill in their writing. I posted one more picture, and instructed them to write a story (that included dialogue) based on the picture. They got a real hoot out of the picture and came up with some really creative and truly good stories :) And amazingly, they did a really good job writing their dialogue correctly!

 

Picture credits:Snake & bird- http://www.flickr.com/photos/djphoenix18/3988720849/in/pool-1914019@N23/ Cat & mouse- http://pets.onas.ru/cat_mouse_strawberry_1.jpg.html Ant & Snail- http://www.zmescience.com/science/biology/ant-snail-amazing-picture-27062011/ Jedi Squirrels- http://500px.com/photo/1976424/jedi-squirrels-by-mark-white

 

Notice & Note Summer Book Club

Hello! Although I plan on enjoying my time off from school, I wanted take the opportunity to do a little personal professional development-- no classes or anything official, just a little something for personal enrichment.

This past year "Close Reading" was all the rage and although I gathered some useful info and strategies, I feel that this is an area that I want to explore a little more and plan a bit. I came across a book Notice & Note: Strategies for Close Reading by Kylene Beers & Robert E. Probst. It has some pretty good reviews and has been recommended to me more than once, so I thought this would be a good book to dig into this summer.

This is where you come in at. I'd love to get a group of educators to join me, so that we can have discussions and share ideas. Don't worry, I'm not proposing anything super structured or time (or energy) intensive. Just some casual discussion as we read. As I read, I'll post some questions for each chapter. Feel free to respond on that thread or pose your own questions, discussion topic, thought, or activity/lesson idea.

I've set up an Edmodo page for the book club. Click here to go to the page.
Here's the link address just in case: https://edmo.do/j/ac34ox
The group code is: kcc4fy

Here is the link to the book on Amazon. 

Please invite others to join us!