Read to Self and the Interactive White board

This past week I really started my kids on read to self. They are starting to take off as readers and this time of year is the perfect time for me to introduce something that becomes a staple in our routine. You have to remember I have my kids for 2 years. So we start read to self in Kindergarten but in first grade it is something we do everyday without fail. So this week, they had their book bags which had books from the leveled library that came with our reading series and the sight word readers they made themselves. They were getting all excited to tell me the popcorn words they found while we were reading. So I had to come up with something to get them to not yell them out but still encourage their reading. I hate to get on to them when they are so excited about being able to read a word. So I told them to be on the look for the words and then when we gathered on the carpet they could share a word they found. I just used an open flipchart on the board but it got me thinking.
I use my promethean board for everything. If you have followed my blog for a while, you know that I make flipcharts each week to go along with our reading series. I also use a calendar one everyday. So after asking some questions on my facebook page, I created this freebie. It is a pdf file that has several questions for your students to focus on during self selected reading time or really any reading time. This is just to try it out and see how it works. It has one for sight words (popcorn words as I call them), words that you stretch out, words that have g in them, words with short a and words with short i. These are the skills we're working on in my classroom. From my experiences with a promethean board, you can import the pdf into a flipchart or you can open up active inspire and use the desktop feature so your students can write directly on the page. I know nothing about smart boards but I've been told you can import pdfs into smartboard files as well. If you grab this freebie and use, I would love to hear some feedback. This is something I'm excited about but I'd love to hear how it works for others.

Click here to download the freebie from google docs. 

The weatherman is calling for snow Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. I was really hoping for a five day week again. We are suppose to celebrate the 100th day on Tuesday and then go on a field trip on Wednesday. We'll see what really happens with the weather. I'm so ready for spring break! I set up new centers on Friday so I can't wait to show you what they are later this week!

Daily Five Update

So last year I started implementing some components of daily 5 and had every intention of doing a full implementation this year in 1st grade. I use a lot of the components of Daily 5 but I had to find a way to make it work for me. I know i'm not alone in trying to figure out what works best for my kids and my class. I got as far as having the components of Read to self, Read to someone, work on writing and word work. I just couldn't get listen to reading going like I wanted. I also couldn't get  letting the kids pick what they wanted to do work for me. But I love that by trying daily five, it has forced me to spend some time on writing. I have been working on trying to implement writing workshop. So this has helped me carve out a time for this. I still need to work on the minilesson aspects but I think my kids are improving their writing and getting comfortable with writing. Usually everyday we do Read to self, Read to someone and work on writing. I try to carve out time for word work a couple of times a week. It took me a little while to figure out what would work for me and my class. I use a menu for word work. This has worked the best for me. The kids have several different options to choose from and it helps them from always picking the computer or the ipad. I took a few pictures this week during word work to share with you.

 These students are working on magnetic letters. They have the spelling word list and they build the words with the letters. I worked this summer on organizing my letters.  I think it has helped as long as they put them back like they are supposed to. I just use pizza pans I bought at walmart for them to build the words on.

 This student is working on popcorn words 3 ways. This is from my Words that Pop Up Units on TPT. (Check them out here.) These units uses the sight words from the treasures reading series for first grade.

These two students are doing write the room. This is one of my kids' favorite things to do during word work. I have tried making several different ones based on the season. This past week they were working on ai/ay from my Spring is in the Air pack. I'm in love with the clipart in this path. It is so cute and springy.
I thought I had the file on my hard drive that has my menu. I'll have to add the freebie on Monday when I get back to school. I have one that shared earlier this year but that one didn't work too well for me. There were too many choices. So I've revamped it and now there are 8 choices. So it lasts a couple of weeks. This is what works for me.
How is daily 5 going in your room? I'm not sure when I go back to kindergarten next year if I'm going to go back literacy centers or what.

Daily 5 update and questions

This is week  4 of school. It's the first week in about 3 weeks that I've been at school everyday. My life has been way too crazy lately on top of short weeks. We have had testing this week and last week that have disrupted our flow, but we've been working on daily 5 since day 1. I have my same kids from last year and they did really well with read to self. So building up our stamina wasn't too bad at all. We've built up to 20 minutes and I think sometimes we probably go a little longer if I'm reading with a child. But I just haven't gotten my rhythm yet. I'm trying to meet with my students and read with them. I need to be starting on some groups but I can't seem to get it all together. I think I'm not using my time wisely enough yet. I'm not sure what I need to do to get myself organized better. I'm having a couple of issues that I was hoping someone out there in the bloggy world would have some wisdom about.
The first is that my students don't pick out books that are on their level. We've talked about good fit books. We review the concepts before choosing our books. But I can't monitor each of them as they pick books. I redirect them to books that they need to be choosing. I have an issue with making kids read certain books. I want them to choose books they are interested in and want to read as well as books that are on their level. Anyone else having this problem?
We've been practicing read to someone for about a week now. It is not going as well as I would like. I'm having a hard time matching my students up. I don't really want them to pick their own partner because I have some pretty big discrepancies in abilities in the class. I have been encouraging the I read, you read method of read to someone. I was hoping that would help my students that aren't great readers yet be a little more confident if they were listening to someone read first. But then that means pairing up readers who aren't on the same level. Do you pair your students up? Do you do it where they are on the same level or where one is obviously a better reader? Then I have 2 students that won't do what they are suppose to do at all. They won't read with anyone. They just sit there or they argue with their partner. Right now I'm not letting them practice read to someone. They have to just read to self. Anyone else have problems like that?
I think we'll get there. It is just taking more time than I would like. I need some patience. Next week will be good because there won't be any interruptions. No testing and a five day week! Maybe we'll finally get some things done.
I would love to hear how daily 5 is going in your room. Be sure to leave me a comment and let me know.

Daily 5, Reading workshop, and spelling

I go back to work Tuesday and the kids come on Thursday. I have now hit the time of year where my brain will not turn off and I can't sleep. It's terrible. I woke up at like 3 and had the worst time going to back to sleep. Although when I was asleep, apparently I pushed Chris and told him to get off me. I don't remember that at all. I do remember thinking I had no space to sleep.Oh well. In my tossing and turning, I started thinking about school and what was going on. I got a great brainstorm about spelling. I've been blogging about how I want to make a change in spelling and make it more on my students' levels. But I've got a lot of changes going on this next year with full implementation on Daily 5 and math workstations. In all the common core and assessment talk that we went through last week, one thing stuck out in my brain. Using pre-assessments, to push kids further. I've always done a "pre-test" in spelling on Wednesday but that's not truly a pre test. This year I plan to give a pretest on Monday on the week's spelling words. If the student knows 90% of the words then  that student will be given a little bit harder list of words for the week. I am not firm in my 90%. I am not sure how to handle that. If they get a 90% on the test then that means they missed one. I don't know that they need to focus on 9 words that they already know if they only missed one. (Any input on handling this would be appreciated). The second thing I'm not sure of is where to get the new list of words. I'm thinking that the words would still follow the rule that the rest of the class is focusing on. For example, the first week of spelling words are short a words. They are basic cvc words. I think several of my kids will know all these words. What I'm thinking is that I would find a list of words that still uses short a but involves some blends and digraphs. Any suggestions of where to get these words would be appreciated. I've also been thinking about the tasks that I'm asking kids to do during the spelling time. In the past we've done rainbow spelling. While I think they need some practice writing the words, I'm not sure that it's the best use of time. I added word sorts last year and I think that was great. We also practiced putting the words into alphabetical order. What other activities should I include that is worth the time?
Another thought going through my mind at 4 in the morning was how I was going to structure Daily 5. I'm starting to panic about actually implementing the structures of Daily 5. I have been setting up my room to support a daily 5 structure. I have set up the classroom library so more of my books are accessible for the kids. The next step was a writing area and a word work area. I'm worried that I don't have enough materials for word work. I think I might be panicking and am going to be more likely to fall back into my literacy stations comfort zone. So maybe I need a pep talk from my bloggy friends knowing that I can do this. As I've been reading more about reading workshop, I know that I want to incorporate this into my teaching as well. So I'm trying to figure out how to merge the two ideas. The way I'm thinking of this is that I use my read to self and reading workshop time as the same time. Instead of giving my kids the choice of read to self as part of the daily 5, that would be separate. I want there to be a focused time on reading and increasing their skills. Any thoughts on this from my bloggy friends? So this is what I was thinking about at 4 in the morning.
On a side note, I'm participating in the Back to school sale at TPT starting tomorrow. I also have all my items on my TN store on sale as well. So be sure to check it out.

Daily 5 Book Study

(Just a warning, the post is going to be a little rambly about my thoughts on daily 5)
I have been so slack in posting about the Daily 5.  I missed listening to reading and read to someone completely. I read the chapters and took notes on them but I never did get around to posting about them. I didn't really have much to add to what everyone else posted about the topics. I'm still working through all this is my head. I've sketched out schedules to make sure I can make this work. I think I am ready to give up control and let my students have a go at Daily 5 completely. I still have some questions about which things I want to teach whole group and what I want to teach in small groups. I'll have an assistant for most of the day so that will help with the small group part.
So here's what I'm looking at for a schedule for the upcoming year:
While I don't have my special times or my lunch time, I know that I'll have the mornings to do all my reading and language instruction.
8:00-8:30 - Morning Work time - What I'm thinking for this time is a writer's workshop type time here. We're going to journal time. I just bought Rachelle Smith's Journals through the year pack on TPT. I'm pretty excited about it. They will also have to answer the question of the day and take a bathroom break during this time.
8:30- Morning meeting - This time we go over rules, question of the day, morning message, and calendar. I need to try to squeeze in some language and grammar lessons using the morning message during this time. That's one of those areas I'm not sure what to do about with Daily 5.
8:50 - Minilesson #1 - This one will be a read aloud lesson that focuses on a comprehension skill. Then we will have round 1 of daily 5.
9:20 - Minilesson #2 - This one will be a phonics lesson or spelling. Maybe. I'm still trying to decide if I want to do this whole group or small group. Last year I did my phonics lessons small group and loved that. I'm not sure if I can swing individualized lists or not. I used Words Their Way when I taught in Nashville and liked it but when I looked into purchasing the book, my budget just couldn't take it right now. This is an area I'm still mulling over. Then we will have round 2 of Daily 5.
9:50 - Minilesson #3 This one will be writing and grammar. Then the 3rd round of daily 5.
10:20 Mini lesson #4 I want to still use some of the reading out of the basal so that will be this time. We will use our reading books during this time. Then they will have the last round of daily 5.
The order of the minilessons might vary. I'm not sure that it is important what goes where. During their group time, I'd like to work on phonics, spelling, writing, and reading workshop type lessons with small groups.
As I'm typing this, I'm starting to think maybe I'm completely crazy for trying this. Am I being too ambitious with this scheduling idea?
I realize too that this post isn't about working on reading or word work at all, yet. I feel like having activities for the kids to during that time, is the easy part. I use Deedee Wills's writing workstations and I also use some activities from Caitlin Clabby. She has a pack of writing center activities.

Then I've been working on word work activities to go with our reading series. We use Treasures. If you are interested in checking it out, I've finished unit 1 and am almost finished with unit 2. It's called Words that Pop Up. 
There's a freebie there. I like to use games where my students practice reading the word. Then I've included a variety of activities like a magazine hunt for the word and then popcorn words three ways. This is for high frequency words.
Last time I was in first grade, I had my students sort their spelling words, put them in alphabetical order, write with them. I think these activities that I asked them to do as a whole group would lend themselves to work work time as well. I'm seeing some spelling freebies in my future. I also reorganized my magnetic letters to make them easier to use. So I plan on having the kids use these as well.
Ok I guess I've rambled enough about my thoughts on Daily 5. I have a couple of other pieces of exciting news.
The first is my I just got my first Donor's Choose Project approved and posted. I'm super excited. If you are interested in making a donation, I would love it and so would my kids. The project is to provide my kids with a wider variety of non fiction texts on their levels. I discovered when I was organizing my books and making my classroom library more accessible to the kids. I was lacking in this area. Click here to see my project. If you have done several of these projects and you have some tips or suggestions for ways I can improve my project or get funding, please let me know I'm new to this and very excited about it!
The second exciting piece of news is my blogiversary is coming up next week. Tuesday July 24th to be exact. I've got some good friends helping me with a giveaway that will go up on Tuesday. I'm having a sale in my TPT store from July 24th -28th. Then starting on the 25th through the 28th, I'll be having a flash freebie each day. So be sure to follow me to get your freebies.
Let me know if my daily 5 ramblings made any sense. I'm liking up with Fabulously First. Be sure to check out the other posts on Daily 5.

Daily 5 Chapter 4

I debated about whether to post on this chapter or not. I read the chapter and then I've read a ton of posts about the book. I wasn't sure I had anything new to add and I'm still not sure I do. But I'm going to try. Read to Self is the only part of Daily 5 I've implemented and had work with my students last year. I loved it. My kids loved it. I can't wait to start this next year with my same kids when they are in first grade. This is the good part of looping. I know most of my kids already and know what to expect of them. We spent a little time on how to read a book last year but this year I plan to do the lessons the Sisters suggest about how to read a book. I hope to do this lesson on day one and start practicing on day 1. I've got to be careful to not rush into anything and not give my kids the time to retrain and to learn from the modeling. I don't think that I tried multiple times in a day to practice read to self and I think I'll do that for sure next year.
I loved read to self. I did this and literacy centers last year. I've been trying to decide what I wanted to do next year. I love the idea of Daily 5 but I'm not sure I can give up the control. I've been going round and round with myself. The truth of the matter is I hate trying to come up with centers every week. It's hard for me to get my act together. I've been trying to figure out where my technology centers that I've worked on come into play too. I guess that I can use them as listen to reading or word work choices. This choice business is hard for me. I want to give my kids choice but I want them to be accountable for their choices too.
So who has some solutions for me? Does anyone use the checklists I see all over pinterest for keeping up with daily 5? Then I think of using a clip chart kind of system for the different parts of Daily 5. I think I've seen these on Mel from Seusstasic Classroom Inspiration who does this. I'm linking up with Jennifer at First Grade Blue Skies. Be sure to check out everyone else's thoughts on Daily 5.



 My head is spinning with all the things I'm trying to figure out. I'm starting to feel that crunch of having lots of things I want to do before school starts back. It seems like after July 4th I start to feel it. I haven't been back in my classroom since the last day of school. I'm thinking of going tomorrow. I have a bunch of stuff I need to take to my classroom. Things I found when cleaning out and then the new purchases I might have made a t Walmart and Hobby lobby today. I even had my first back to school dream last night. I dreamed about having to explain to my kids they couldn't just leave the room whenever they wanted to. Then Chris woke me up by getting out of bed and I about told him that he couldn't get up without asking permission. Then I woke up fully and realized I had been dreaming.
I guess I have rambled about not much of anything long enough. I hope to link up with 4th Grade Frolics for Made it Monday tomorrow. I'm not quite finished with my projects plus the trip to Hobby Lobby might have added a couple of new projects. So be sure to check back with me. Plus I'm only like 20 followers away from 400 and my 1 year blogiversary is coming up. Hopefully I can get a big giveaway together.

Daily 5 chapter 3

So I'm skipping chapter 2 of the Daily 5 book study since I was on my honeymoon while that was going on and I don't feel like going backwards. I'm linking up with Mrs. Freshwater's Class to share my thoughts on chapter 3. Check her blog out to see what others had to say.

So on to my thoughts on the chapter:

• A Gathering Place : We have a gathering place in my classroom. It's just the carpet area in front of my promethean board. I use to have a rug but it got kind of gross. I'd love to have one of those rugs where they each have a square of color to sit on. (Maybe I'll work on a Donor's choose for one of those.) Currently I just put a piece of tape on the carpet and they know that's there spot. We have our morning meeting here and any whole group learning takes place there. I also do a lot of my small group phonics instruction in this spot too. 
• Good fit/Appropriate books: Last year I introduced some of the Daily 5 concepts to my classroom. The first being the Read to Self component. I never got around to do the official good fit book lesson. We talked about different places we could get ideas for books. I partnered with my librarian at school and she gathered AR books for the kids that were our lowest levels. I also used our leveled readers that are part of our reading series. They were great because I knew my kids could read these leveled readers. I probably had too much control over this than I should have. I hope to do the shoe lesson for the good fit books. I think it's a great lesson. I also downloaded an i pick chart from the Teacher's Cauldron that I plan on using. (Well unless, I decided to make one of my own since I've changed my theme of my classroom. ) I loved the idea of including this in your newsletter so parents know how to help kids pick out good fit books. I definitely plan on doing that and think I might talk about it with parents at open house night. We have an open house about 2 to 3 weeks after school starts. I plan on revamping my classroom library this summer. (It's almost July and I haven't even thought about starting this project.) I would like for my books to be more accessible for the students. I asked parents about sending in books and I got some decent ones from a couple of parents but I don't think I was as proactive about it as I could have been. I plan on checking out our public library as well for checking out some books to use. In the past, I've always had baskets of books on the kids' tables from day one. I've found some of their favorite books to look at are board books that have colors, numbers, vocabulary. The Target dollar spot usually has these this time of year. These are especially good for ELL students because they work on vocabulary.
• Book boxes: Last year I used ziplock bags for the first half of the semester, but they started to tear real easily and bigger picture books didn't fit well. I found some bags at the Dollar spot at Target and started collecting those. Then I found some Dollar Tree. The Target ones didn't hold up well at all while the Dollar Tree ones were still going strong at the end of the year. I thought about asking other teachers in the school and parents about donating tote bags they don't use anymore. I have my students keep their book bags under their backpacks on the hook. I saw this pin on pinterest where they used a coat rack to store the bags. I'm on the hunt for a cheap coat rack.
• Anchor Charts: I have a love/hate relationship with anchor charts. I love all the cute ones I see on Pinterest and blogs but I just don't have the room to put them up in my classroom. I understand their importance for creating meaning. I currently make a lot of my charts on my promethean board and we review them as needed that way. I love the cute ones but I'm not that great of an artist so it works out for me to type them up on the computer. Maybe I'll do a little better this year with this piece.
• Signal/check in: I don't have a great signal for stopping my students. I try turning off the lights but then I'm across the room reading with kids. So I think I'm going to investigate some chimes. I found some wooden chimes when cleaning out my things recently. So maybe I'll figure something out with them. I love this quote from the book " One of our goals is to help children become self reflective about their behaviors and learning." The check in piece is so important for this quote to be true. I think I made some improvement last year about checking in with my students and I hope to better next year. They truly understood last year, why were working on reading and building our stamina. It cracked me up because they loved using the word stamina. I really liked the Sisters idea to use thumbs up and thumbs to the side to check in with students. 
• Model correct and incorrect: This part of this chapter changed how I was doing a lot of things. I realized that I was not modeling enough in any area in the classroom. I love the idea of modeling the correct way and the incorrect way. Although some of my students had a hard time with understanding what I meant when I wanted them to do the wrong thing. The other piece of this that I think is so important is the building muscle memory the correct way. I had never really thought about kids' muscle memory getting use to doing things incorrectly. I had 2 students that really struggled with read to self and doing it correctly. I stopped the class every time those students were off task at first. But then the rest of the students were doing so well, it was hard to stop the whole class for 2 students. I chose a spot for one of the students to sit at and that helped him. I also just had private conversations with those students. There were some language issues that were going on as well. But as they all got on track and we had met our goal of 15 minutes of stamina, I did stop the whole class if someone was off track. I think it helped. 

I think those are all my thoughts about this chapter. Be sure to check out the rest of the posts. Chris just asked me if I was writing a book over here, so I guess that is a hint to get off the computer. I will back tomorrow with a freebie or two for my new classroom theme, Super heroes. I'm super excited about it!

Daily 5 thoughts and a bloggy get together

First things first, Natalie from Teachery Tidbits is coming to my hometown to visit. (I live in a touristy area so it isn't all that strange.)
We are planning a lunch get together on July 5th at 12 at Smoky Mountain Brewery in Gatlinburg. We would love it if you would join us. I know that a Thursday isn't the normal day for a get together but when you live in a tourist town the weekend is a little crazy. The restaurant is a local favorite and there is parking. Parking can be an issue in this town I love. There is also talk of later in the month having a Dollywood day. So look for information about that if you can't make it on July 5th. Please let me know if you plan to come. So I can alert the restaurant of how many people will be there. If you don't hear from me for a week or so it's because I'm MIA on my honeymoon. I don't plan on getting on any blogs while I'm on my honeymoon so starting Saturday I will probably not be around. You can also let Natalie know if you plan on coming. You don't have to have a blog. Blog stalkers are welcome.
So there are several Daily 5 book studies going on right now. I was having trouble deciding whether to join in on the Kindergarten one or the first grade one. I think I've decided to go with first grade since that's the grade I'll be in next year. Switching back and forth can give you a little identity crisis. So here are my answers to the questions posed by Mel D at Seusstastic Classroom.
 1. On pages 4-6, the authors present two different pictures of their classrooms. In thinking about and reflecting on your own practice, how would you characterize your literacy block? Does it look more like the first or second scenario, or is it somewhere in between? How will you change it
This past year, I tried out some of the Daily 5 after Christmas.I had spend the first semester of school teaching my students to use literacy centers. We had developed routines that worked for the first time since I started teaching almost 8 years ago. So trying to figure out how to both was way too difficult. By the end of the year, my literacy centers became more like the structure of Daily 5. I had a listen to reading, word work, writing, read to someone center. I also had a computer center and an ipod center. This really worked well for me. I think one of things that really helped this finally come together for me was reading Debbie Diller and Daily 5 and finally getting that what I hadn't been doing all these years was the modeling piece. I finally understood that it took a lot of modeling to get the behaviors that I wanted. So I guess that my classroom is a mixture of the two classrooms. I did find myself scrambling trying to get centers together but I tried to make them more about reading and writing and less about producing something.

2. The typical teacher is very busy having students do lots of different activities. How is what you are having students do now in your classroom creating quality readers and writers? 

I try to give my students lots of practice with reading and writing. I probably focus more on the reading piece than the writing piece. After reading most of Daily 5 and the Book Whisperer, I really challenged myself to have my student read more. Writing is a different story. But that's a goal for this upcoming year.

3. What sets the Daily 5 structure apart from what you are doing in your classroom?

The biggest challenge for me is letting students have more of a choice or control over what they are doing. I have a hard time letting go of the control piece and I don't always trust my students to make the right choice. But I need to work on that. I need to work on giving up some of the control and allow the students more choice. I try to give them some choices in their center that they were at. They can choose their books they read. They can choose the books they listen to. But that's probably as far as it goes. 

I guess I'm still trying to make sense of all this myself and where I see my classroom next year. I'm leaning right now towards a mix of literacy centers and daily 5. But maybe it's my desire to have control that is keeping me from going full force for Daily 5. I'm looking forward to continuing on in this study to hopefully wrap my  brain around it all.

Looking forward to the next chapter. If you want to join the fun, check out Mel D's blog.

The Good, The Bad the Ugly! and an update

Holly at Crisscross Applesauce is having a linky party to show the good, the bad and then ugly of our classrooms. Right now mine is just bad. It is a huge mess. I had intentions of cleaning up yesterday but I was mid project when I sliced my finger with some scissors. It gushed blood. Meanwhile, my class was lined up to go deliver a note of encouragement to some fourth graders. I thought I had stopped the bleeding only to have start back again several times. I thought I was going to have to go see Chris and let him stitch me up. (He's a vet.) Anyway, I came in this morning and saw the disaster of a room I had going on. I decided to snap a few pictures and share my mess. It's bad. I'm not sure I even see it getting much better til the end of the school year. I have too many ideas and too many things going on.

Since I took those yesterday, I spent some time yesterday straightening up a bit. But it's still pretty bad.
I wanted to share my new book bags. You can see them on the floor in the second picture. I was making duct tape labels for them when I sliced my finger open. But I got them finished and the kids were so excited about them today. We had been using ziplock baggies for book bags and it just wasn't working. I saw a pin on pinterest that had a coat rack and then cloth bags for book bags. I've been working on gathering bags to use when I found the Hawaiian ones at Dollar Tree. I might have to go back and get the rest of the class those. I think I like them better than the ones I got at the Dollar spot at Target.I still need a coat rack. I'm hoping to find one of those this summer pretty cheap.
I really don't know how people do all they do. I'm in desperate need of some tips for getting things done and organized. Since I've changed some of my instruction to small group rather than whole group, I feel like I have no down time in the classroom. I'm constantly on the move and making a mess in one area. Plus it takes more time to plan for the small groups. I have ideas in my head for units I want to make but they just don't get done. By the time I get home, I don't feel like doing anything for school. Here lately I haven't felt like exercising or cooking. I can usually muster up the energy for those two things but beyond that I'm wiped out. So, please share any great organization tip you have. I would love to get some new ideas for how to get things done.
Meanwhile, check out all the other Good, Bad and Ugly posts at Crisscross Applesauce in First Grade.

Loving small group instruction

Since I started blogging back in July, I have been trying all kinds of new things. I'm sure I say this weekly on my blog. But it's true. I've been introduced to so many new ideas and been inspired to give things a try. I started the year by really working on my literacy centers. I got Debbie Diller's Literacy Work Station book. I adapted some of her ideas and started making it work for me. I also tried to do Guided Reading. I've been struggling with these concepts since I've started teaching. I've never been able to get either one to work for me. This year was the first year I had really gotten literacy work stations or centers to work for me. But Guided reading just wasn't happening. I was starting to work with my kids some one on one and I enjoy reading with them and working on what they needed. In January, I introduced Daily 5. Well actually I just introduced Read to Self. We built up our stamina. Now I was struggling with doing guided reading, literacy center and daily 5. Oh and by the way I wanted to introduce math work stations. I read a blog post from Mrs. Patton's Patch about how she wasn't doing guided reading anymore but reading conferences. This stuck with me and helped me to finally be able to let go of something. But I still was having trouble getting everything I wanted to do done. Before spring break, I really looked at my schedule and completely reworked it. I decided to do my phonics/word study lesson in groups rather than whole group. While I've only done this one week, I can say I love it. I feel like I'm slowly making things work for me. Here's my new schedule:
7:50-8:20 - Morning work and bathroom break. As I check their work, they start going to read to self.
8:20-8:35 - Read to self - During this time I meet with several of my kids. I also have a list for my assistant to read with too. I worked this into my lesson plans. I made a plan of what kids to meet with on each day. My goal is to have them read to someone every other day.
8:35-8:50 - Morning meeting and calendar
8:50-9:15 - Whole group reading and phonemic awareness. We practice a poem everyday and do some kind of activity with that.
9:15 - Snack and go over letters and sounds.
9:20-9:45 Literacy centers and small group work - During this time I am lucky because I only have 10 kids in my class. My ELL students are in their pull out class. I have 6 out of 16 students out. But next week I'll get to see how this works with a larger group. So my group is split into 2 groups. One is approaching and on level. I work on what is in the reading basal usually with this group for phonics. The other group is  my above level group.
Here's an example of what I did with each group on the day we introduced the letter v. My students for the most part know all their letters and sounds because we go over them all everyday. The first group we read a book about v, worked on a circle map of v and then did the workbook page together. The second group we added to the circle map of v and then they made a little book. On each page they wrote a sentence and used a v word.
On another day, we sorted different words and wrote sentences with them. This was great for differentiation because I used cvc words from on and approaching group and then some harder words for the other group. I was also able to use this time to work with them on writing.
 9:45-10:00 - We work on writing. I would like to meet with kids during this time but it's not happening right now.
10:00-10:15 - Sight word practice
10:15 -10:50 we do math. This is my next small group area to work on. I want to do a whole group lesson and then during their math station time meet with some students on specific skills. But I haven't gotten it together with that.
We're technically a half day kindergarten. So most of my instruction is done by this time. But I only have 3 kids that leave at 12:30. The rest of my class stays in the extended day program. I use the afternoon time to do a lesson with my ELL students. I usually do the phonics lesson I did with the on and approaching group but try to increase the vocabulary part of the instruction.
I am in love with this! I feel like I'm working really hard all day long but it's so rewarding. I am so glad that I'm laying the groundwork for this method for next year when I'm in first grade with these kids. I feel like I'm really meeting my kids where they are at.
I'm also so excited I finally found a way to make this all work for me. I think that's the biggest part of incorporating new ideas. There is no one way to do things. You have to take a little bit here and there and eventually it works for you and your class.
What is something that you've made work for you? How do you do small group instruction in your class?
Don't forget to enter my giveaway. It ends tomorrow night. Click here to go to the post.

A wild hair

After blog stalking all summer and then starting my own blog, I have seen so many great things going on in classrooms and have changed a lot of the things that I'm doing. I am seeing a lot of success from these changes. The biggest thing I've implemented this year is slowly introducing Daily 5. I've really focused on just Read to self since January. My kids have built up their stamina to 15 minutes. They could probably go a little longer but that's about all I have time for. Last week I took them to the library to allow them to pick out 2 books for their book bags. We discussed a little bit about how to choose a book. I hope to introduce the IPICK chart this coming week. Today I introduced my kids to read to someone. It needs some work but they seemed to be excited about it and doing what they were suppose to be doing. My ultimate goal is to be able to fully implement Daily 5 next year when I have my kids for first grade.
I've been doing literacy centers this year but I get overwhelmed trying to fit it all in and trying to figure out what they are going to do each week. I really want my instruction to be more small group and less whole group. I want to implement math stations as well. So last week I got a wild hair that I would rework all that I've been doing this year.  I'm starting small.
This week my students only have 5 centers to go to. They are stamping, reading, computer, games, and writing. I then added a 15 minute block of time for math stations. I had every intention of starting this on Monday but it just didn't happen. I couldn't get my mind around what I want to do before leaving school on Friday and then Monday I couldn't get up early enough to get it going. So today, Wednesday we did some math stations for the first time. The kids loved having that time to practice some math. (I need to add a disclaimer. I haven't read the Debbie Diller book yet. It's been on my list for a while but I just haven't had the time. Hoping to get to it this summer.) When we finished our time, we discussed what kind of math we were practicing so they realized that it wasn't just about playing games. This is going to be a slow process of getting it all together and implementing it. But with the goal of having it ready to go by the time we start First grade and starting the school year with Daily 5 and math workstations, I think it's manageable.

So I created some new signs for my centers and math stations. The frames are from Graphics from the Pond. I've included numbers 1-8 and then some for literacy stations. I wanted them to be a little more uniform. If you can use them, please leave me some comment love. Math Station Card Have you ever completely changed things in the middle of the year or really almost at the end of the year? I'd love to hear about your experiences.

Reading update

I appreciate the comments on my last post about scheduling issues. There were some good suggestions and I'm always open for more ideas. I try not to be too rigid in the way I do things so I'm open to finding the way to best meet my students' needs. One of the suggestions was about integrating my daily 5 and my literacy centers. That's my ultimate goal but I'm not sure how to transition into that. Right now we're only up to 8 minutes of read to self so I haven't been working with any students. I finally have literacy centers working for me and my students trained. So I'm not sure how to combine them. I think it would work if I didn't do some math and art in literacy centers. But that's the only way I can get some math centers in and some of the art projects in. So I'm still turning this all over in my head. I guess I want the best of both worlds and that isn't always possible.
Daily 5 is progressing pretty well with my kids. I've only introduced read to self. As I understood from reading the book, that's the way the sisters recommend it. Did any of introduce more than one at a time? All my students but two are reading to self with no problem. We haven't shopped for books yet or discussed i pick. I've just been letting them pick books from the library that are on the lowest AR level. The two that aren't I'm not sure what to do about. We would be at 10 minutes by now if it wasn't for these students. They won't read. They just flip through their books and don't even try to read the words or the pictures. They are two of my ELL students and I think they understand what they are suppose to do. At first I stopped us when they started flipping through the books. We modeled the bad behavior and the correct behavior. Then I just let them flip through the books as long as they were occupied the whole time. Yesterday they were finished in no time and they were just staring around the room. So I stopped us. The rest of the kids are getting frustrated because they can do the read to self. I would love some input or suggestions on what to do. I have talked to both students individually during read to self time and after. I hate for two students to prevent the rest from success.
I wanted to update about 2 of the things I've tried from Tim Rasinksi. The first was fluency practice with a poem. They are doing pretty well with this. Friday was the first opportunity we had for some of the students to read the poem to the class. They did awesome. I had a couple that could actually read it, some who had memorized it but it was ok. Then I had a couple that couldn't read it but were content to track the words and repeat after me. I think it was a valid experience for all of them. The other thing was the mining for interesting words. The kids seem to be noticing words more as we read. I finally made a poster to post them on and I think after a week on the interesting word wall they will move to our word wall. I'd love to post some pictures but my camera is still mia but I did get an iphone last night so hopefully I can post some that way.
This isn't the most exciting post but it's a peek at what we're doing for reading. Friday is the 100th day of school so check back to see all the fun we had.

Reading Update

We've now been back in school for three days and I've started implementing some new things in my class. The first new thing is Daily 5. The first day was wonderful and magical. The kids read for the whole 3 minutes with no problems at all. Yesterday and Today not so much. We've only made it like a minute in a half. It's really only one or two kids that are struggling with reading the whole time. They seem to understand why we're practicing reading and are buying into it. We'll just keep practicing.
Another new thing that I've started is the bucket filling. This is going really well. I haven't made my bucket yet for class bucket filling. I've got way too many things going on right now. But we've been discussing it everyday and using the language. It seems to be affecting the way they are treating each other. They are being kinder to each other and all I have to do is say are you being a bucket filler or a bucket dipper. I've been proud of them. Then again it's only 3 days in. We'll see if we keep it up.
I've mentioned several times about the fluency and phonics workshop I went to before break with Tim Rasinksi. Dr. Jean mentioned me in her blog yesterday which was unbelievable. I also found out that she's coming to Knoxville in April and I'm determined to go. She said she'd love to give me a hug and sing a new song with me. Made my day! Anyway, we haven't tried out our song books yet. I've got them all made but they haven't made it to the carpet area yet. But I've been working on some other fluency and vocabulary ideas.
The first is our poem and fluency routine. We are working on the poem Five Little Fishes. I read it yesterday and then they echoed me in reading it. They took the poem home for homework for the week. Monday night they had to read the poem with their parents and then illustrate it. Tonight's homework was to find all the letter f in the poem. We reread the poem today where our student of the day tracked it. Then we looked for our sight words. I've been telling them that we're learning to be good readers and practicing. I also told them that on Friday they will have the opportunity to read the poem to the class. I'm excited to see how many of them try to do this.

Click Here to get the sheet.

The next idea that  I got from Rasinksi is using word walls that the kids create themselves. He calls it harvesting words. When you read books with the kids, you have them look for words that interest them. So yesterday we read our book for the week, "Animal Babies: An ABC book." I told the kids to listen for words that they thought were interesting. We read about half the book and they I asked them what they thought. This was a mistake. They didn't really understand what I was talking about. They just named different animals. So then we talked about how we were looking for interesting words that maybe they didn't know what they were. So we stopped after a couple of pages this time and they came up with a few words. I wrote nightingale, snug, quills, and herd . I want to make a poster that says interesting words that we can use each week. But right now they are just written on the board. Today we talked about what the words meant and read them. Then when we reread the book they added two more words; cria and kits. They were into looking for interesting words. My plan was to have the students use the words in sentences today but the day got away from me. So tomorrow we'll try this. This seemed to get the kids thinking about words. They also were on the look out for these words as we read the book. We're studying about animals this week so we should get some good vocabulary in. What do you do for vocabulary building in your class? I loved the discussion that followed my last post on fluency and Rasinski. I'd love to keep the discussion going.

Giveaway Results and other stuff

I celebrated reaching 100 followers right before the new year with a giveaway. Here are the results:

 

So congrats to Julia at Loving and Learning In Pre-K. Be sure to leave me your email so I can get you goodies to you.

So over the break, I made this great schedule of how I was going to start posting on my blog. I don't know what I was thinking. I'm not that good at sticking to schedules. I like to post when I've got an idea. Here lately my brain has been full of ideas to post about. I had planned on getting ahead on posting and have some scheduled ones done this weekend. Plus I'm working on a word work valentine's day packet, and I have several things to make for school for this week. But my weekend is half way over and I've gotten nothing done yet. Friday night, we went out to eat with my sister and brother in law to celebrate our engagement. Yesterday morning, Chris and I went hiking with his aunt and then we had a surprise birthday party for Chris's grandmother yesterday. Today I'm off to a bridal show with my friend Sarah, who is also engaged.  So maybe I'll get my stuff together eventually.

Friday was our first day back and my kids did so well. I think they got smarter over the break. They were very excited to be back. It was cute. When I told them I was getting married, one of the girl's response was "That's cute." Then another little boy wanted to know if I had two beds in my house. It was pretty funny. 

I read the book How Full is  Your Bucket?. They really responded well to the book and the idea of being bucket fillers. I tried to use the language as the day went on. One of the kids said that his bucket was kind of empty so all the kids started giving him and other kids compliments. It was cute. I need to decorate our bucket I was going to use and find something to fill it with. It's always something I need to make. 

The other new thing we started on Friday was Daily 5. I introduced Read to Self. We talked about why we need to practice reading. One of my kiddos that's really smart, said he wanted to read like his Dad reads. It was cute and exactly what I wanting them to say. They practiced for 3 minutes and they did awesome. There was only one student who looked like he could have been a little off task. I know according to the sisters you're suppose to stop a soon as someone is off task. But I honestly couldn't tell if he was off task or not. He's an interesting child. Next week we're going to keep practicing and modeling. I'm not sure if I'm going to add a minute on Monday or not. It'll depend on their moods. We're also starting our centers back up. I'd hoped to post about them and offer you a freebie or two. But that will have to wait for another day.

Hope you're enjoying the last of your weekend. I should probably start on breakfast and get ready for church or something.

How I Spent my Winter Vacation

I had this whole post written yesterday and I thought saved and scheduled to post this morning. But when I looked this morning, it was no where to be found. No idea what happened to it. So here I am on New Year's morning writing it again and watching Mad Men on AMC. I should probably be doing something more productive like showering and getting ready for church or making breakfast but this is much more enjoyable.
Over my Winter vacation, I haven't really been that productive. At least not quite like I planned. I've blogged a lot thanks to all the great linky parties out there. I reached over 100 followers before the new year and am having a giveaway. (Check it out here. It's open until Jan. 7) I've become a contributor to another wonderful blog, The Best Endings. It's all about books and reading. I'm so excited about this venture. Check the button out on my sidebar. If you like to read, it's a a great blog to check out. I've already downloaded a sample of a book recommended and will probably get the book. I've been reading The Daily 5 and some other books on my new Kindle. I am enjoying Daily 5 and can't wait to implement some of this in my classroom. I'm still looking for some answers to some questions. So if you're willing to help, please let me know. Holly at Crisscross Applesauce in First Grade has some great posts about Daily 5 on her blog. So I've read some of those.
I've downloaded some clip art to use in some packets but I haven't made the packets yet. I did update my items on Teacher's Notebook. Hadar from Miss Kindergarten suggested that I show some pictures of what is in the packet so I've fixed those. I've worked a little bit on a letter detective packet. I hope to have it finished and some freebies to offer by tomorrow. I also made a song book to go with the songs we sing everyday. I went to an amazing fluency and phonics workshop right before break and this was my interpretation of on of his ideas. I would love to share it but I'm not sure if I should. They are all Dr. Jean song lyrics that I got from her website. Does anyone know if it would be ok to share?

I've spent a lot of time with my fiance and family. I'm still getting used to using fiance. We got engaged the Friday before Christmas and I am so excited and happy. We're planning to get married in June at the beach. I haven't really started wedding planning yet. I've also gotten to spend a lot of time with my niece Sophie. I love her to pieces and she's always learning a new word or song. It's so much fun.

Here she is pointing out my eye. It's one of her favorite things to do.I'm going to miss not seeing her every couple of days. I still have a few more days of break. I don't go back until Thursday and the kids don't come back til Friday. So I have more day of fun planned with my beautiful niece. I also have one more day of shopping planned with my mom. And a birthday party for my fiance planned tonight.
I could have written a post about the things I should have done or need to do. I still need to do my lesson plans. I still need to make my flipcharts for the next few weeks. I still need to write Thank you cards. I still need to put clothes away and clean my room.I still need to clean up and organize all my craft supplies that are now all over my guest room. I did a lot of crafting for presents and now I need to get stuff put back away. So good thing I have a few more days of break left. How did you spend your break? Link up with Clutter Free Classroom.

New Adventures for the New Year

I'm so excited about this new blog I've gotten involved in. Erika from The Honey Bunch has started a new blog called The Best Endings (You can check out the button on my sidebar.). This blog is all about books which are some of favorite things. I love to read and am always looking for new books to read. Anyway, check out my post over at The Best Endings and all my other blogging friends who are contributors.


Speaking of reading books, I'm reading The Daily 5 on my kindle. I've read almost the whole book. I still have 2 chapters left. I can't wait to start this new adventure in my classroom. I've taken copious notes and I've been working it out in my head. I have a few questions for those that use Daily 5.

•  Are there other Kindergarten teachers out there who use Daily 5? (Any of you live in Tennessee so I can come observe.)
• Do you do any other literacy centers or do you just use Daily 5?
• Where does your basal fit into Daily 5 or do you abandon it all together?
• How much time do you spend on Daily 5 each day?
• Do you do other writing workshop time?
• How did you set up their book boxes the first time?
• If you do this in kindergarten, what kids of materials do you use? It isn't always easy to find on level reading material.

Right now I'm just going to work on introducing Read to Self. Once that gets going I'm really wanting to introduce Read to someone. I'm not sure about the other components yet. I will have my students again next year in first grade and I think I can definitely get it all up and running then.
This is the idea of how I want this to be structured:
1. Mini-lesson on Comprehension skill with a read aloud
    A session of Daily 5
2. Mini - lesson on Phonics and Phonemic Awareness
    A session of Daily 5
3. Mini lesson on Writing and Grammar
    A session of Daily 5
I'm trying to figure out where I'm going to fit in some fluency practice. I attended this great workshop about fluency and I'm super excited to try some of his ideas. I hope to post something about these ideas in the future. I'm thinking that Read to Someone and Read to Self might be the best ways to fit in fluency practice. This would also tie into the kinds of things kids have in their book boxes.  I would appreciate any advice, suggestions, or tips that you have. I would love to have someone to bounce ideas off of so if anyone is interested in that, please let me know. Leave me a comment or email me kheinrich9@gmail.com

Goals for the New Semester!

There are several linky parties I'm wanting to partcipate in. I can't wait to do Kristin and Hadar's 11 in 11 party. But my answer to some of the questions I still can't share in the cyber world yet. (I know I'm being really mysterious and I don't want to be. I'm busting at the seems to share my great news with my blogging friends.)
So I've been wanting to post about my goals for school for the upcoming semester and I thought I'd join the party at A Teacher's Treasure and include my resolutions in general.

 

My personal  resolutions are:

1. To start running again and get healthy. My mom and I are joining Weight Watchers in January and I miss running a lot. So I'm not setting a weight loss goal but just trying to get healthy. My stomach has hated me the past few weeks with all the junk I've been eating.

2. To get organized and clean. I have pinned a ton of things on pinterest about cleaning schedules and being organized and I really need to get on it. I've lived by myself for the past 8 years and now that my boyfriend spends a lot of time at my house I need to do a better job of keeping things clean.

3. To have quiet time in the mornings - I was doing really well with reading my Bible and praying every morning before school until the last week of school. I just need to get back in the habit. It's the best way for me to start my day.

My professional resolutions are:

1. I want to start Daily 5 this semester. I downloaded the book on my brand new kindle on Christmas day and I'm almost half way through it. I plan on introducing a little at a time in hopes of having the structures in place when I have my kids in first grade next year. 

2. Working on writing workshop type of structure in my class as well. I have been slowly adding in more writing in my class and I hope that this will tie in with Daily 5 as well. 

3. Tailoring lessons and groups more to my students' needs rather than trying to do what is always expected of me. I want to really use the common core to guide my instruction and where my students are at.

My blogging resolutions:

1. To blog 3 or 4 times a week.

2. To offer a freebie once a week

3. To create a unit for Teacher's notebook every 6 weeks ( I have not been successful with Teacher's notebook so far but I need to finance my addiction to buying stuff.)

I'm only 5 followers away from 100. Once I reach 100 followers I plan on having a giveaway. So if you're just checking me out and not a follower yet, please consider following me or at lease leaving me a comment. I love getting comments.

Problem Solving strategies

I should be working on report cards right now but I'm choosing to blog instead. I'm sure I'll pay for it later. There is so much going on right now. Report cards go out on Monday and I have conferences on Thursday and today I was out at a math training. I was not looking forward to going to the training because I have so much to get done and I had heard from a 4th grade teacher it wasn't great. But I'm so glad I went. It was really good. Susan O'Connell was the presenter. I didn't know anything about her but she has a book called Introduction to Problem Solving that we got a copy of. She offered a lot of strategies and practical ideas that I can take back to the classroom and use. That's my favorite kind of workshop. The biggest thing I took from her presentation was a method for teaching math. You pose a problem. Have the students think and talk with a partner then bring it back to the group. As you discuss the problem the key is in your questioning. These are good teaching strategies that I know. It helps to hear it again and see it in action.
She used some good literature to give context to the problems that you have the students explore. One of the suggestions was using the book If you give a Mouse a Cookie and have the students explore chocolate chips in a cookie. She posed a problem, then we explored some, came back together and created a chart, then offered some games to play to practice fluency. I loved this idea of tying in problem solving with literature. The wheels in my head are turning on how I can use this in the classroom with books that we're reading in class.
I'm still processing all that I learned but it has me questioning some things about my teaching. We adopted a new math textbook this year and there are lot of people complaining about it. We have so many new things going on: common core, new teacher evaluation and then this textbook. I try not to get tied up in a textbook. I try to use it as general guide and then go from there. Now that I've got these new problem solving ideas and strategies to think about, I think I'm going to find myself moving further from the textbook. I've already been thinking of tweaking things I have been doing with reading. I would like to incorporate some daily 5 but the only way to do that is to cut something out. My time is so limited in the class. I don't know much about daily 5 but I'm hoping to explore some over Christmas break. It will probably mean changing the literacy centers I've been working on. I try to be fluid and change what needs to be changed depending on my student's needs. The literacy centers are wearing me out a bit. I'll think that my kids are getting into a routine and we're making improvements and then they seem to forget everything they know. Maybe I just need to simplfy things and the Daily 5 seems to lend itself to that. Of course all I know of daily 5 is seeing other bloggers.
I have some questions for my blogging friends:
Do you deviate from your prescribed textbook or do you stick to it?
What's the best resource on Daily 5?
How do you balance it all? I would love to seem people's schedules if you're willing to share. I want my classroom to be a place where kids are exploring as they are learning. I want learning to be fun and meaningful.