Daily 5 Chapter 5

I’m continue on with The Daily 5 Book Study and this week we are linking up with Mel (Suesstastic Class Inspirations) Nicole (Teaching with Style) and Kelli (Castles and Crayons).

Read to Someone is buddy reading or reading with a partner. This is great opportunity for kids to interact with each other while reading and helps to build fluency and comprehension. When students read to one and another is also builds their confidence as a reader.

When launching Read to Someone you want to model how to sit while reading together. EEEK style is the way! EEKK: Elbow to Elbow, Knee to Knee. The kids adore this acronym and always remember to sit this way.

Here is a darling poem that goes along with learning EEKK:

Elbow to elbow,

Knee to Knee,

I can read to you,

Elbow to elbow,

Knee to knee,

Book in the middle,

So we both can see!

My kids love to read to each other. My kids can choose to read big books, class books, poems, books from their book boxes, and books on display. My kids love to read in the library during this time so they can grab any books. This is also the only time I let them use pointers so they get super excited about that too. I allow 4 students at one time to do Read to Someone which helps keep voices down in the classroom and still lets everyone get a turn. After they finish reading I have response questions they can ask each other so they help each other retell the story.

Listen to Reading is always a favorite choice in Daily 5 but it is such an important part of the component especially for primary students. It allows the student to hear how other read with fluently and helps to build their comprehension. Above is my listening station where 2 students can listen to a book on tape/CD. 

I have 2 choices for Listen to Reading in my class so when students choose they have to specify which one they would like. I have a regular listening station player in my classroom that can play tapes or CD’s.  I have a different book set out each week for the kids to listen to and we have a book that they must response to their listening after in. (See above picture of student responding after reading The Little Mouse, Red Ripe Strawberry, and the Big Hungry Bear.)  I get most of my tapes or CD’s from Scholastic but have found that Amazon has good deals as well.

 

I also have 5 computers in my class. On the computers the students  go to Raz-kids.com and read books on their level, listen to books, and take comprehension quizzes. My kids love racking up points by reading and are so involved many time do not hear the chimes ringing to check in on the floor so we have to tap them on the shoulder to come. I love when students are so into something!!

As always if you have any questions feel free to ask! Thanks for reading and think about linking up for the book study! 

A+

I'm so proud to be a part of such a great school and to announce that my school got an "A" grade this year! School grades are super important in the state of Florida. I feel blessed to be in my school and it really does deserve the recognition of getting an "A" again this year.

Thank you to all the teachers who made this happen and countless hours spending time crafting your teaching, continuing to learn, being innovative, and being there for your students when it counted the most! Thank you to our wonderful staff who supports the school and cares about all of our teachers, students, and parents. Thank you to our awesome admin team that brings out the best in teachers and students while leading us in the right direction. Thank you to all the parents who spend time reading with their children each night, doing homework, and making sure their kids are well-rounded. Thank you to the students who listened, learned, and showed us all how smart they are!

I hope everyone is having a wonderful day! I just had to brag on my school a little bit because I feel like this is such an accomplishment this year! Thank you bloggers who have inspired me to be more creative, teach in new and interesting ways, and always have a love for my passion teaching!

Daily 5 Chapter 4 Book Study

One of the first parts of Daily 5 that I teach after picking out good fit books is how to read a book. Kids seriously get this when you model and it is great for students who think I can’t read! You totally can kiddo because there are 3 ways to read a book!

The 3 Ways to Read a Book:

Read the pictures.

Read the words.

Retell the story.

This is great for primary classes that have varying levels of reading abilities and great to see how kids interact with book at the beginning of the year.

For modeling reading the pictures I use the book Pancakes for Breakfast by Tomie dePaola.  It is a wordless book so I go through the book thinking aloud and “reading” the pictures. Then I have the kids try to do it with the book as well. They love it and get that you can read pictures and make up your own story and rely on the pictures to tell a story. This is important in early reading stages but once students are actually reading I encourage them to look at reading the pictures in a different way. I usually teach in small group taking a non-fiction book with pictures and we read the captions under the pictures and look at the pictures to predict what the book might be about.

For modeling reading the words I of course read a book aloud to them and show them how to correctly read a book during Read to Self in Daily 5. I model strategies you can use when reading.

For retelling the story I try to use a fairy tale or fable that the students will know. We talk about well-known stories and then pick one most of them seem to know. Last year we retold the story of Goldilocks and the 3 Bears another year it was The Gingerbread Man. They easily get the picture of how to retell a story and then continue to practice with every book we read.

Then I introduce Read to Self and make an anchor chart of how this should look in our class.

Choose a good fit book.

Get started right away.

Stay in one spot.

Read the WHOLE time.

Check for understanding.

Use your strategies.

Build stamina!

Teacher is working with kids!

We model the correct and incorrect way to  act during Read to Self. I get the kids pumped up about reading on their own for their first time and tell the we will be building our stamina each day. I ask them if they think they can read for 20 whole minutes and most of them say “No way!” but I tell them that is are end goal and we’re building up to it. Then I ask them if they can do 3 minutes and I hear “yes, I can do that!” Then I review again what is expected during Read to Self and let them begin reading. Everyone will always start off really well but around 3 to 4 minutes someone will always either move to get something (another book, water, sit near a friend) or stop reading. At that point I ring them bell and sing their praises for reading and then I gently point out what they can improve on. We model the correct and incorrect way to Read to Self again. Then I tell them we will keep building our stamina/time every day until we meet our goal. They get excited the closer they are to their goal. This year I’m going to pass out coupons that Mel D has made from Suessatasic Classroom Inspirations to help my kids stay motivated and focused on their reading.

An added bonus to all the independent reading is having Accelerated Reader (AR) put in place too. After having my kids take the STAR reading test they pick out good fit book on their level, read them, and take a quiz on them.  I have my students read the book 3 times before they take a quiz. It is a rule I try to monitor but basically have to take their word for it. The first time they don’t do well on a quiz and feel the disappointment of knowing they didn’t read the book like they said they usually keep to reading the books 3 times. For students who read chapter book I only make them read it once but they have to either thoroughly retell the story to me or write a summary of the story before taking a quiz.  This was my first year using AR so I’m still working out the kinks. I think it helps the students pick books on their level and makes them feel proud of their progress when they move up in points. (I could go on and on but I’ll save it for another post another summer day!)

I hope you are following along with all the Daily 5 blog readings and getting some good ideas for next year! Read what these other fabulous teacher bloggers are doing in there Daily 5 classrooms!

Daily 5 Book Study Chapter 3

 

I’m a little late to the game on this chapter but better late than never! This past week has been busy with my birthday and 4^th of July.

Melissa Freshwater from Mrs. Freshwater's Class & Jana from Thinking Out Loud are hosting Chapter 3 of our book study. If you choose to participate through your blog please link back to the chapter hostesses. I’m linking up with Mel D at Suesstastical Classroom Inspriations.

Establishing a Meeting Place: 

When you are designing your classroom keep this in mind. Make sure that you find a place where everyone can gather on the carpet for mini-lessons, creating anchor charts, modeling, and meeting when you check in and pick. I use the floor as our meeting area since I have first graders. I have my teaching easel set up there with my rocking chair and it’s a comfortable spot for us to meet and easy for me to have access to everything I need to teach. It is great when asking kids to turn to a partner and they don’t have any distractions like they do when sitting in their desks. These are not my meeting areas I can't find a picture anywhere but you get the idea.

Good Fit Books:

 Choosing good fit books is something that you will have to model and teach all year long. Most of the students pick up on how to choose book that are good for them but other students take awhile and require more modeling. This is also something I will teach when meeting one-on-one with students or I’ll choose a group who is struggling picking books and go over what they should be picking. Students should be reading books that are on their independent reading level (99% accuracy or better when reading) or their guided reading level that is (95% or better when reading). I suggest that only students who are really into reading and want to challenge themselves read on their guided reading level and frequently check in with you to make sure they understand.

This leads right into the awesome acronym that the 2 Sister of the Daily 5 set up I PICK.

I-I choose a book

P-Purpose-Why do I want to read this?

I-Interest-Does this interest me?

C-Comprehension-Do I understand what I’m reading?

K-Know-Do I know most of the words?

I take the lessons out of the Daily 5 books to teach about good fit books and I PICK. I model books that are too hard, too easy, and just right. We also make an anchor explaining about this and then hang it up all year in our library so students will be reminded when picking books. You can find a ton of these charts all over blog land, TPT, and even if you just google it.

Book Boxes:

Each student gets their own book box to hold books that are good fit, that they picked, and are interested it. On the first day of school I teach the good fit book and I PICK lesson and have them start choosing books in small groups with me. It’s nice because I can kind of see their level of reading when they book up a book and start to read the first page or aren’t able to read the first page. I start them off with only 4 books so they aren’t overwhelmed and so they get used to picking books on their own. I stress re-reading books for fluency and fun because a lot of kids will want to switch out their books everyday. Gradually my kids start choosing their own books in their book boxes and I frequently check to make sure they are good fit books and if not review about good fit books.

The students book boxes are the ones on the left that are empty at the beginning of the year. The notebooks were their readers notebooks/poetry notebooks.

This is what full book boxes look like! Wonderful books and great readers await!

Anchor Charts: 

Anchor charts are pretty essential when teaching how to do Daily 5. They are constant reminders of how to do each rotation. I usually do mine with the kids then go back and make them pretty and hang them in the general area of my room where the kids do that rotation. You can make your own or you can find some on TPT and blog land. 

Checking In: 

I ring my chimes to signal my students need to clean up and check in with me. I used thumbs up or down with them to see how they feel they did and give reminders if I saw something not going correctly. I also give them a lot of praise if everything went smoothly or if I noticed someone going above and beyond.

Modeling: 

When you are teaching each mini-lesson make sure that you do the modeling part because this is the part that the kids love the most! In each lesson a student will model the correct way to do each rotation, another will model the incorrect way, and then you end with modeling the correct way again. The students simply love doing this! They love getting the attention of everyone looking at them and getting praise for what they are doing correctly. When modeling incorrectly the students get silly but they really remember what they are not supposed to do during Daily 5 time. This is a crucial part to getting the correct Daily 5 behavior you want during this time.

As also if you have any questions feel free to ask or e-mail me! Hope you’re enjoying your week!

Monday Made It

This past weekend was a busy one, it was my birthday weekend! I had a wonderful pool party with friends and then went out with my fiancé to Cirque du Soleil and our favorite nice restaurant.  Yesterday we hung out, went to the mall, got wedding things done, and had a relaxing Sunday. Even though a totally forgot to watch True Blood! It's okay I'll catch up on it today!

Since it was such a great weekend I didn't have time to get things to make a craft for this Monday. But you're in luck! I did make some Reading Response Cards for Primary Students that you can get FREE  at my TPT store. 

Enjoy! 

Enrichment & Interventions

I have been doing Enrichment/Intervention time for two years now and each year it looked different with the more knowledge of how to use this time. I have posted in the past about this time but I think I have a better perspective on it now and I'm actually excited to start it up next year. I also wanted to repost because some folks had questions after reading my recent post on my reading block schedule.

Enrichment/Intervention time is a 30 minute time during our day in which classroom teachers switch students and they are put in classes according to their reading abilities. Some classes need help with fluency, some with comprehension, some with decoding, some with letters/sounds, some need to be pushed to the next level, others need to try new projects or book reports. The classes are so that we meet the needs of each of our students and give them what they need outside of the regular curriculum.

To organize our students into classes we come together as a team to discuss our children's assessments, test scores, running records, and our general observation of how they are doing in class. Then we place them into an Enrichment/Intervention group. This does not mean that student stays in that class all year though. Most of the time we switch students around according to their growth and needs during the year.

In our Intervention group (which is our below grade level students) our Special Education teacher pushes into the class to provide extra support, help plan lessons, and to work with more students one on one. Our Speech Pathologist also pulls students out during this time so those students are not missing regular curriculum or specials times in the class since everyone is getting Enrichment/Intervention during this time it works out well. We do not have an ESOL teacher that pulls out however most of our staff is ESOL certified and we make ESOL accommodations throughout the day.

Everyone in the school participates in Enrichment/Interventions at different times so that the resources teachers can be available to all grade levels. This past year we had Enrichment/Interventions first thing in the morning. So students got settled watched announcements and then left for their other class.

During this time we do not have a set curriculum. We have to create activities for our groups needs. It has been a challenge coming up with ideas not because there isn't a curriculum but because of the limit of time you get with that group of students. It takes time to know students needs and 30 minutes it is hard to get a full lesson in. Often times one lesson can be carried over for the whole week. Now that most of the teachers understand through trial and error how this time works they can better prepared for it next year. Next year a couple of teachers (one of them is me!) are going to be teaching using Braidy, the StoryBraid which helps with retelling, comprehension, and writing. I'm excited to start using this program and think it will really help our ESOL population. I will be study more about this program over the summer and keep you updated.

So that's my Enrichment/Intervention time! If you have any further questions please feel free to ask! Have a beautiful day! It's finally sunny in Florida again and I think I'll be sitting in the sun/pool all day long!

Summer Shopping

One of my favorite things to do besides teach and blog is SHOPPING! I love getting new things! I  just went to Atlanta last weekend for a girls shopping weekend. I like buying clothes, house stuff, and of course anything teacher related. This is probably why I love to switch my classroom theme around every year. I just get sick of looking at the same old things and get the itch to switch. So I'm linking up with Kristen from Ladybug's Teacher Files  to share all of my awesome teacher/classroom purchases from June. If you want to know about some of my other purchases check out my Major Purchases post. 

I bought some fun decor in green and white polka dots for my classroom. I really wanted a new alphabet since the one I have now is old and reminds me of Kindergarten. I also just wanted to tie in polka dots a bit more to my room so I got the welcome sign and border. I might end of getting more of the same kind of border but for now I'm sticking with this and some plain lime green bordette. I also want to try a scrunchy border I just saw on Pinterest that just requires paper.

I got some ribbon that matches my color scheme of blue and green. I also got this basket from JoAnn's and will most likely have the kids keep their supplies in it if I can find enough of them. I bought Schoolgirl Styles bird theme to help decorate my room.

I bought a cute little blue bird from Carson Dellosa to add to my bird theme and color scheme. 

I just bought some storage bins today from Really Good Stuff. They are having a 25% sale on their mix and match storage. I am going to sort all my word work games in these by month. I also bought some paper storage bins in these fun neon colors. I think I'll have the blue and green ones be visible for use in the classroom and the pink and orange ones be behind the scenes since they don't match the color scheme. 

Yesterday I also bought these wonderful display frames from Lakeshore. They were having a buy one get one 50% deal so you know I just had to buy something off my wish list. I think these will be a great addition to my classroom and an awesome and neat way to display students work.

I still have a few items (rug, easel, smart board...oh wait I don't get 3 wishes from a magic genie?!) that I want but don't know if I actually purchase. I'm sure I'll see plenty of little items at Target that I'll get for my classroom. Can't wait to see what everyone is getting for their classrooms this year!