Tried it Tuesday: The Lemonade War & Scholastic Summer Reading Challenge

I've been absent far too long. These past few months have flown by and I've been trying to tackle all my end of the year projects for both school and home. I've really neglected my blog and I'm going to try and be more diligent.

 With that being said, I have two Tried it Tuesdays to share with everyone today! Thanks again to the always fabulous Holly over at Fourth Grade Flipper for hosting and sharing! Even though I've been MIA, I always read and favorite the great ideas everyone shares.

 

My first share this week is for the book The Lemonade War by Jacqueline Davis. Although the book is a little too easy for many of my fifth graders, it does such a great job at teaching so many underlying concepts of economics! This is a must read if you teach economics in 4th or 5th grade! My students preferred the novel over a textbook any day! Plus, reading the novel, means Lemonade Day! This was my first year participating in "Lemonade Day" as dubbed by several coworkers who started this great project a few years back.

While reading, The Lemonade War, students created their own drinks for others to sample. They need to use some of the advertising techniques discussed in the book as well as in class. As as well create a drink, people would want to try! As fifth grade teachers, we also added in a portion of the project based on interdependence and globalization. Students had to state somewhere in their advertising why it'd be beneficial to trade with other states/countries/etc. in the creation of their drink. 

Requirements:
- Creative name
- Slogan for drink
- Advertising technique
- Statement about interdependence
- Price of drink

Here are some snapshots of our Lemonade Day:

Our Lemonade Day was a huge success! We have many young entrepreneurs and marketing execs. on our team. Hats off to a great book and fun end of the year "project."

Since we've read so many great books in class this year, I decided to try out the Scholastic Reading Challenge to keep my students motivated and reading over the summer. Thanks to my teaching partner for hearing about this easy to manage summer "reading log."

Scholastic allows you to enter your class roster into their reading website. Simply go the Scholastic Reading Challenge page and choose "Educator." Students will be assigned a user name and password. I just cut out the strips after printing but you could also give students the cute user name cards that Scholastic has on their website. Then students can go on each week and "log" their minutes read. We offered a prize to any students who reads 1,000 minutes over the summer.

Students can also see how their school's minutes compare to other areas of the country. There are also lots of great videos and facts centered around this year's theme of space.

The best part, you can check up on your readers! You log on like placing a book order and can see the minutes read by each student in your class. Super easy to check on their progress or verify their "winnings" next year. It's easy and very  motivating to several of my students. It's great too because I can see how many winners, I'll have before next school year to plan my "prizes" accordingly. If you're still in school, definitely share the challenge with your students.

What have you tried this week?

Gone too long... Back for Five for Friday!

It's been quite a whirlwind around here with both my school life and personal life but things seem to be getting back on track so I figured, why not link up to share some of the great things happening in these last few weeks of 5th grade!

So I'm linking up once again with the wonderful Doodle Bugs Teaching for her Five for Friday linky party!

We finished our College and Career Unit this week! Students had to research a career of their choice and report on the skills, experience, and education needed to be successful in that career. Thanks to Nicole Shelby and her fabulous College and Career Research Project - my teaching job was a breeze! We watched some videos on United Streaming and then had the iPads for several days to do our research. We ended the unit this week with some musical chair reviews!

  

 

I love my new Staples M discbound notebook for grades and data! 

Tomorrow I'm running in the Color Me Rad 5K... Well, walking in the race with family. I'm excited because I've never done a "color run" before! Plus, the shirt is cute... Too bad I can't wear the adorable sunglasses because they aren't prescription!

Have you heard of Our World Boutique? If not, you need to check them out. They have great sales on super cute jewelry especially statement necklaces. Five new necklaces for only $21 dollars and free shipping! Love all my new accessories!

We're getting ready for our "Lemonade Day" in the coming weeks. I love ending the year with Economics! Today, read The Lemonade War and we went over different advertising techniques that companies use to hook us into their products. Then students had to decide the best strategy for marketing their drinks! I'll be blogging more about this book this Wednesday for Workshop Wednesday!

What's one of your favorite unit(s) to end the year with?
Happy Friday,

How to Make a Cherry Pie & See the USA

 

It's feeling like a loooong week and it's only a Monday! We have a lot going on this week with library, MAP testing, and Book Fair all crammed into one week. Plus, I'm also trying to do some teaching at some point this week as well. I created a quiz that I decided the students needed over our novel and we're also creating our mosaics which involve shredding construction paper - we're having lots of fun in 5th grade!!! So, to relax and ease my mind about my upcoming week I thought I'd link up tonight with a great mentor for Social Studies! Thanks to Amanda and Stacia at Collaboration Cuties for hosing such a great linky! This text is called, How to Make a Cherry Pie and See the United States. This book is great for teaching geography, United States natural resources, as well as economic concepts like interdependence and specialization.

In the book, the main character and her dog really want a pie for the Fourth of July. However, the pie shop is closed. So they set off across the country to put together everything they will need to make a cherry pie. I wish the book focused more on the "pie ingredients" but it does get a little side tracked with things like clay for the baking dish and cotton for a pot holder... however, the book does an excellent job at showing specialization and interdependence while taking readers on a cross country tour of the United States. It also has a companion book, How to Make an Apple Pie and See the World.  It's a great book if you teach regions of the United States and need to hit economics as well as the geography! Plus, it's a great review of all the states with whimsical drawings. Definetely worth checking out! This a book I just added to my collection this year knowing my new curriculum in Ohio was going to be Western Hemisphere Geography with history and economics interwoven into the geography of our country.  I haven't used it yet this year but if I create a handout or SMARTfile I'll be sure to post something on the blog!

  This also connects nicely to Diane from Fifth in the Middle's Social Studies Linky Party! So don't forget to stop over and check out all the great postings and link up your ideas! I'm linking up this post to her Geography category!

I love reading in Social Studies!