Daily Five Literacy Rotation

      I introduced math rotations a few weeks ago and it has been going well, so I thought it was time to introduce the reading/writing version. The students handled it so well. They did not want to rotate out of some of the stations, and I might get to the point where we truly do the daily 5 where they can choose how long they spend in a centre but for now, 15-20 minutes is how long each rotation lasts. During the summer I won a management system from the awesome Ashlyn Ellsworth  and I use that to help my students know what station to go to.  There are 4 stations that the students rotate though, and the only one missing is "Listen to Reading". I may add that one in, as we have an awesome app for reading that I want to introduce. 

This is a picture of my rotation boards. Green and orange is math and yellow and teal is reading. You can buy a copy here

So in our rotations we go through: Read to Self, Work on Writing, Word Work, and Read to Someone. We use the acronym R.E.A.D. 

R is: Read to Self

In this station, students read to themselves and fill in a sticky note using a bookmark I adapted from Pinterest. They read and when they come to a part they want to respond to, they draw a symbol on their sticky note and leave it in their book, at the end of the session they put their sticky note into their reading response journal and write a sentence or two about what the sticky note is about. So for example if they draw a heart on their sticky, that means that they liked that part of the story. then in their journals, they write down what they liked. Some of them got it, but we will keep trying.

The E is: Exploring words

In this station students sort their words (we are using Words their Way this year for the first time) and then they do a word activity. In our first rotation we did rainbow words. 

A is for At Your Seat Writing: 

For this station the students were either working on finishing their fractured fairytales, or writing in their free-write journals. (I love how she was writing).

Finally, the D is for Duo Reading or partner reading: 

I have a few bins of books that I have put 2-3 copies of the same book in, and they can choose what books to read with a partner during this station. Eventually I will add in a response element but for now, reading together is our main goal.

I was so proud of how well they did, I can tell that last years teachers did some Daily 5 stuff, and the ones that didn't, those students caught on quickly. I am really enjoying how quickly most of them adapt and just get into the flow of the routines and expectations, and that I can trust that the majority of them are doing what they are supposed to do. It has been a great start to the year! 

5 Ways To Engage and Motivate Student Writers

Have you ever been in the presence of teacher that you could spend all day listening to and wish he/she worked at your school and that you could be him/her when you grew up, all at the same time? Well, that is how I feel about Adrienne Gear. She is a teacher, author, speaker, new book smeller (her #reallife confession) and motivator. She has written 4 books, Reading Power, Reading Power for Non-Fiction, Writing Power and Writing Power for Non Fiction and she travels around and shares her reading and writing methods. She is AWESOME and so real and down to earth! Oh! and she fuels my obsession with children's literature and I buy so many books because of her!  I have been to many of her workshops and will continue to go for as long as I can. Every time I go I learn new things, and get inspired to teach reading and writing ALL DAY LONG!  I know, that's not possible but if it was I would be on board! 

Okay, enough gushing, here are some of the things I learned in her Writing Power workshop on Friday (and yes I know it's the middle of summer, but it doesn't matter, it was SO WORTH IT!). 

1. I re-learned that the process of writing is more important than the cute products we find on Pinterest. (although these have their place). For every 10 or so pieces of writing, only one should be taken to the publishing level. We want student's to practice how to be writers, and not everything a writer writes will be published. That's real life! 

2. I learned that to motivate students to write, they need to have a reason to write. That reason is their reader. They write so a reader will read their writing. They have a purpose when they write, to engage their reader. To entertain, to instruct, to tell a story, to inform or share knowledge, to connect, empower, impact, to persuade or share opinions, to describe an event. THIS IS KEY! Students need to know that what they write is important and that someone wants to read what they write. She uses the line with her kids, "You don't have to write, you GET to write!" 

3. I re-learned that students should have two goals as writers. Their goals should be to not bore their readers or confuse them. I love how simple these goals are and yet they encompass everything that students need to be taught in order to have effective writing. To engage readers writers should have: interesting details, interesting words, similes and other literary techniques, engage their readers five senses, and have a writer's voice. This will ensure that their writing is not boring. To make sure they aren't confusing their readers,writers watch out for spelling errors, they use proper punctuation, they use correct spacing, they organize their writing and they stay on topic. I have these goals in my room as an anchor chart and I refer to it A LOT! I love that it is broken down in a way that makes it easy for all students to understand. 

3a. I learned an new acronym for those students who constantly have their hand in the air during writing, waiting for you to spell a word for them ( I had one child who wanted every word spelled for her, ain't nobody got time for that!). You simply tell them to G.U.M it! Give it a try, Underline the word, and Move on! When I heard this, it was like a Hallelujah moment let me tell you! I will be making this into a anchor chart ASAP, believe me! 

4. I re-learned that having a writing routine is important so kids know what to expect (this is true of teaching in general, but I loved how she broke this down in an easy to follow way). 
           Day 1: Kids plan to write about a topic that they are given by the teacher who is using an anchor book as the model. Their plan can be a web, list,  or a drawing with labels.  
           Day 2: Write: kids share their plan with a partner, you teach a mini lesson referring back to the anchor book from day 1 and then kids use their plan to write. 
            Day 3: Conferencing and Editing. Kids share and edit with a peer, and the teacher takes 3-4 students and conferences about their writing. 
            Day 4: Have 2 or 3 students share their writing. (Author's Chair type idea)
Repeat!

5. I  learned some technique lessons that  I will share with my students during our mini lesson time. I will share more about them here as I do them with my class, but one that really was an "ah-ha moment" for me was her mini lesson on Robot Writing. Sounds fun right? Robot writing is not fun, they are sentences that go: I like my mom, I like pizza,  I like hockey and I like summer. "I like" over and over again (read them with a robot voice, it's fun and makes a point).  No details, no voice, no connections being formed.  Big ol' BORING! So we tell our students that they need to add in detail and we get, " I like summer because it's fun" ARGH! So what can we do???  I learned that using the word"and" or "because" to add detail to writing, will never produce an interesting sentence! Instead teaching students to use these 4 magic words will take that robot writing and turn it into effective writing. Are you ready for the words? they are.... when, sometimes, once, if.  Use those words and you get: I love my mom when she.... I like pizza, once I had.... I like hockey, sometimes I...  See? MAGIC! I think that introducing these words to students in a Hogwarts cloak and using a wand would be really cool! (But that's just me). Using those 4 words will set up your students for successful writing that will engage their reader and will banish the robotic sentences to Azkaban. 

So if you haven't checked out her books and are wondering how to set up and engage your students to become better and more effective writers, check out the link at the top of this post or here: http://www.readingpowergear.com and remember, this is not a program, it can be used with any literature, any program, and anywhere! She also has a blog, and it has lesson plans and great resources as well. https://readingpowergear.wordpress.com

Horton Hears a Who!

So we are in the middle of our literacy unit on Dr. Seuss. This week we read, Horton Hears a Who. I found this awesome project on Pinterest and knew that I had to do it! Thanks to Jodi from "Fun in First" for the idea and template, the project was a snap! The kids were super excited about making their own Hortons and I must say they turned out pretty darn cute!

I had the students write a thank you message, as though they were a Who, to thank Horton for saving them. Then they put their Horton together and added a clover (made from a pipe cleaner and a sparkly pom pom). They signed their names and added the surname "Who" for an extra touch of whimsy.

I just love some of the things they wrote!

Mexico, Snowmen, and Seuss Oh My!

So a lot has been happening this week, we are in the middle of our Social Studies Unit on Mexico, and we painted ponchos on Tuesday, and we had a Mexican Market today. The ponchos are 12"x18" pieces of art paper that we painted stripes on with watercolour paper. Next week we will tape the two papers together, cut out a head hole and Voila! Poncho-riffic!

 The Mexican Market is where students bring small items from home (toys, books, candy, cookies etc.) and trade them with the other kids for things that they want. Students are not quite sure about it at the beginning (they don't always want to part with their things) but by the end they are over the moon excited about their new treasures.

This week we also had the Spanish 11 class bring 4 pinatas to our campus for our class and another grade two class to break open. They taught us the pinata breaking song, and we had a lot of fun hitting the pinatas, it was a little wild but so worth it!

Our second art project this week was the first project in our unit on perspective. We made torn paper snowmen. It is amazing how hard tearing paper is for 7/8 year olds! But they always end up looking great!  It's amazing how many expressions snowmen have!!

sad/troubled snowman

 content/reflective snowman

We also started our Dr. Seuss Author study. We are working on rhyming words, and using our imagination to create fantastical objects/animals. We worked on creating our own zoos after reading "If I Ran the Zoo"

I can't wait to see them when they are finished, but we had a lot of giggles and sharing happening during this activity!

A New Year and Patterns

So we started the week off with patterns in Math, and our culminating activity was making a quilt block. We were able to talk about symmetry and design as well. It was hard for some of the more spatially challenged to place the triangle pieces correctly, but in the end I think that they are quite stunning and the prep for them was very minimal!! The dimensions are 2" squares cut from coloured photocopy paper and 11" square from white photocopy paper and a 12" piece of construction paper. The students needed 4 squares of one colour and 7 squares of another colour. I had them fold the white paper in half both ways to create a centre line, then they could line up the points of the diamonds with the centre and the line. The triangles were harder to explain, so I went around and showed them one if they couldn't get it. Next week we are starting our math rotation for measurement. I will be doing the measuring weight strand and the other two are doing linear measurement and capacity. (More to follow on that). 

We also wrote some new year's goals. I stole borrowed two ideas from two amazing sites (via pinterest of course) and mashed them together with a little tweaking for this project. 

The students used 2013 as the number of examples they needed to provide for each goal.

They wrote 2 ways they could be a better student, something they wanted to try and do more often or better, 1 person they want to get to know better, and 3 ways they could be a better friend.

Then they coloured in a new years hat, and drew a face, I added a little noise maker when I put them on the wall. Pretty cute, and a good way to start the year, thinking about little (but concrete) ways to be a better them.

Student Writing

I love reading students' writing. Here are some gems, the first batch is our "triple scoop words" writing project, the second is our simile project and the last are our rendition of the story, "Never Take A Shark to the Dentist" by Judi Barrett

Triple Scoop Words

So this week I went to an Adrienne Gear workshop. She is a teacher/Language Specialist from the Vancouver School District. She is an amazing speaker and has a great reading and writing program. I have been using many of her ideas over the past couple years, but not as consistently as I should would like to. One of the biggest ideas I got from her this time, was the two overarching goals she has for her students' writing. She explains that good writers keep their reader interested and to write in such a way as to not confuse them..She has several writing techniques that teach kids how to engage their reader, and to keep their writing organized. In my class we will be talking about these techniques over the course of the year and putting them into practice as much as possible. This week we started talking about the writing technique of triple scoop words. One way that writers keep their readers engaged is by choosing interesting words that convey ideas and meaning more effectively than more simple words. We read some books, in particular, Max's Castle by Kate Banks which is a great book, and talked about what makes a word a triple scooper. I had them think about ice cream and how getting one scoop of ice cream is ok, but it doesn't make you excited or happy, it doesn't leave you satisfied, but if you got three giant scoops of ice cream with toppings you are way more excited and are totally satisfied with the amount of ice cream you got. The same goes with words in your writing, you can say something is fun, but the word fun is a little boring, it doesn't make the reader want to read more. However the word entertaining or engaging or stupendous would be much more interesting. So we went through a bunch of single scoop words and came up with synonyms for those words (for older kids a Thesaurus would be a great tool to use), and wrote them down on a piece of paper to have for future reference. I was amazed at some of the words they were able to come up with.

Triple Scoop Words

The next day we did a fun little project that showcased some of our triple scoop words.

Most of the students understood the concept of putting the single scoop word on the bottom and the better words on the top....as you can see not everyone listened...... ;)
Next week we will be putting our triple scoop words into action when we write about emotions (because good writers want their readers to connect to their writing). We'll see how it goes....