A Dead Computer and Some Sparkling Words

Last week, my poor computer kicked the bucket.  Yep, dead as a door nail.  Sot I can still get online and check out all your cool blog posts, but I can't save or print anything.  This is KILLING me!  I usually spend most of my summer printing things and getting ready for the new school year.  Now, we only have black and white printers at school, so I can't print anything in color.   GRRRRR!

On another note, I wanted to share an idea I had while I was sitting in some boring intriguing summer workshops this week.  Last year,  I had a "Sparkling Words" wall where we put the words introduced in our Making Meaning Vocabulary program.  These are those tier 2 words that kids will encounter in their reading.  After the words were introduced, I would write them on sentence strips and place them on our Sparkling Words wall.  When the kids used the words in conversation, they got to put a sticker on the word.  When they used the words in their writing, they got a jewel on their paper.  I used some of those sticky jewels I got at Dollar General.  You would not believe the way the kiddos would work for those little jewels!

So this year, we have both a new principal and a new AP.  Our theme for this year is "Wild About Reading!".  To tie in with this theme, I came up with some animal ideas for the word wall.  I thought I would share them with you in case you needed some ideas.  Most of these are jungle animals, but I've added a few others I've thought of.  Here goes:
                           Alligator/Crocodile: "Snapping Up Great Words" - add the words on the teeth
                           Lion/Tiger/Jaguar etc: "Words to Roar About" - add the words to the mane of the
                                                                  lion, the stripes of the tiger, or the spots on the jaguar
                           Parrot/Macaw: "Colorful Words" - add the words on feathers
                           Monkey: "Monkey-ing Around With Words" - add words to bananas on trees
                           Birds: "Words To Tweet About" - add words to the leaves on trees
                           Owls:  "Owl-standing Words" - add words to the leaves on the trees
                           Giraffe: "Spotting Great Words" - add words to the spots
                           Cats: "Purrrr-fectly Wonderful Words" - add words to balls of yarn
I hope you can use some  of these ideas!