Recycling Gift Cards

I have kept most of the used gift cards I've been given.  They're so colorful, and I thought  there must be some way to use them in a craft project.  In my mind, I was imagining heating them until pliable and then fashioning maybe beads or some other type of jewelry pieces.

I never did find the right project, but as the new school year started and I needed to replace my tired looking bathroom, library and office passes, I thought of my gift cards.

I used my exacto knife to make a hole through which I could attach the lanyards.  I wrote which type of pass it was and my name on the back with a permanent marker.  I then covered the writing with a piece of clear mailing tape to protect it.

If you have a good craft project using gift cards, please share!

My Favorite Read Alouds. Part 1

If my students read for pleasure and not because they are assigned to read, it's a great accomplishment. One of the ways I try to share my love for reading is by reading aloud to my class every day. This is something I will never give up, no matter how full my classroom schedule is.

I model reading with fluency and expression, often using different voices for characters. I read books I enjoy which makes it easy to convey my excitement about reading to my students. I often read one book in a series and then offer the other books as a choice during our silent reading time. I read books that are at the reading level of most third graders, but I also read books that are above the reading level of my students as a child's listening comprehension is higher than his or her independent reading comprehension.

I've been teaching third grade for the past five years.  These are some of the novels I read to my class year after year:

Almost anything by Roald Dahl - James and the Giant Peach, The BFG, George's Marvelous Medicine, The Twits, and Matilda

Island of the Blue Dolphins by Scott O'Dell

Any of the books in the Junie B. Jones series by Barbara Park

The Lemonade War by Jacqueline Davies (Our reading curriculum, ReadyGen, features one chapter of this story in the first unit, and the kids enjoy learning the rest of the story.)

Old Yeller by Fred Gipson

Stone Fox by John Reynolds Gardiner

These are a few of the read alouds I enjoy.  I'll publish more titles in a later post.