Five for Conference Friday!

What a week it has been!  I am linking up with Doodle Bugs Teaching for Five for Friday.

1.  Monday and Tuesday were snow days.  There was not much snow to play in, but there was plenty of ice on the roads on Monday.  I am not sure why we were actually out on Tuesday, but we were.  Anyway, on Monday, while I was talking to Zack's baseball coach, the house suddenly got quiet.   Here is why!

Thank goodness it was washable marker.  Ginny Beth had to clean it all up!

2.  I only worked one day this week ~ Wednesday, and part of that was benchmark testing.  I spent Thursday and Friday at the Virginia State Reading Association Conference.  I have learned so much that I am going to take back to my classroom!  And I got to see my friend Carla from Comprehension Connection!  We haven't seen each other in a few years, so it was good to catch up with her!

And I am loving this awesome shirt I bought at the conference!

My first session was all about helping students make inferences.  It was eye-opening that many times those struggling students have problems with simple inference skills, like pronouns and antecedents.  I have an entire blog post in my head for that one!  Look for it!

3.  My second session was with Tanny McGregor, author of Comprehension Connections: Bridges to Strategic Reading and her new book Genre Connections: Lessons to Launch Literary and Nonfiction Texts.  Here are her notes! How fun!!  

4.  The main speaker on Thursday was Stephanie Harvey, co-author of Strategies That Work: Teaching Comprehension for Understanding and Engagement.  She showed us some great ways to help teach nonfiction texts.  Wow!  Some of it was confirming, but some of it was new information. Again, I can't wait to take it all back to my classroom!

5.  And the big event on Friday was hearing Donalyn Miller, author of The Book Whisperer: Awakening the Inner Reader in Every Child.  I just started reading the book and can't wait to finish it!  She had some wonderful points to make about reading in our classrooms.  And as I listened, I had tears well up in my eyes because if it weren't for my son's teachers and me allowing him to make choices in reading, he would not be the reader that he is today!  To get better at reading, we must read more!

What have you been up to this week?  Link up with Doodle Bugs Teaching and let us all know.  Head on over to find out what the rest of us have been up to as well!