September-My Favorite Things Linky

School has been back in session for two weeks and two days.  With all the beginning of the year assessments, I do not feel like I have a solid routine yet.  But I do feel like I had done some great lessons with my 3rd graders.  I am linking up with Teaching Trio and sharing my 3 favorite successful lessons that I have done in the past two weeks.  

1.  Within the first few days of school, I got the feeling that several, almost all, of my students needed to change their mindset about a few things.  We do a lot of "getting to know you", team building activities, and reading/math interest surveys the first few days of school.  These activities are pretty revealing about students' attitudes, likes, and dislikes.  I knew afterwards that I needed to do a few lessons on growth vs. fixed mindset.  I found a great WONDERFUL PowerPoint on TPT that made this lesson! Thank you Eve Coates!  The lesson ROCKED!  I wrote about the lesson here a few days ago.  There are a few different bloggers that I had to thank in that post for their amazing ideas.  It was such a success.

2.  Another lesson that went well was the day I taught my students how to pick out good-fit books for independent reading.  I think using concrete representation (in this case it was shoes) can really foster deeper understanding of skills for students.   The lesson started with a large brown paper bag filled with different shoes from my closet.  I talked about how we pick out our shoes every day and how our shoes have a purpose (just like when we pick out books to read).  Check out the post here.

3.  My weakness in life is Oreos....They are dangerous.  I can eat the whole bag in one sitting.  It really is a sickness.  So, needless to say, when I saw this activity on Pinterest, I had to do it.  Turns out, the lesson was a great way for students to see the importance of reading a text more than once.  I have not written a blog post about it yet, but here is where I found it on Pinterest.

What are your favorites this month?