A week in small groups

I spend 1/3 of my day doing small groups for reading.

My 12 groups range from DRA 40-70 and are split up by both DRA level and students' interests.  My afternoon group also has all the fifth graders in GATE/TAGs (advanced course work for gifted & talented), so I have to make sure to never schedule their group meeting days on Tuesdays or Fridays.  I also had to group them in the same 3 groups for this reason.

When they meet with me, we do close reads of important parts of the passage, go over comprehension questions, zoom in on vocabulary and work on predictions and inferences.  Lately they've been running more of their small groups, which is awesome.

We have daily word work and fluency practice.  I have to RCBM two kids a day (fluency progress monitoring with AIMSweb), so during this time, they read our weekly flueny passage (leveled passages from reading A-Z).  During that time, they coach each other on the components of fluency (rate, expression, accruacy and phrasing) to help each other improve.  By doing the same passage over the course of the week, they practice repeated reading and their accuracy improves over the course of the week.  I get to use this time to progress monitor so I don't fall behind on my case load.  I love that we multi-task and it's not wasted time.  

We have been working on weekly "must do's" as well with the A/E/I/O/U strategy and our science readers.  I chose informational text because they struggle with main ideas and supporting key details.  In fifth grade, they are expected to pick out the main ideas and make connections within text, including scientific ones.  Our science CRTs (standardized tests) are up first on the testing calendar, so I'm utilizing old science content to not only review science material but informational text as well.  If I give them a task, there should be a clear focus!  (Or in my overachieving case, several)

Here are some snap shots of what they're doing when they're not at my kidney table:

Collaboratively adding details about the characters in their novels on their large graphic organizers.

Using fifth grade description cards to analyze characters.

Responding to a post on kidblog.

Referring back to the text for evidence in a written response

Keeping track of characters in a novel

Collaboratively recording information about the novel, including juicy words, character development and settings.

Happy reading!

Tech Support from Facebook

I have a teacher facebook.  

It's in no way linked to my personal one and I use it as an extension of my classroom.  It's a nice way to remind students and parents about what upcoming events we have happening at school.

I'm friends with current students, parents, former students and other colleagues.  My profile picture is of the sign outside my door and I think every other status is related to books or being kind.  There is truly nothing on there that I wouldn't feel comfortable showing my principal...or her boss.

I had a message from a student that she had something urgent she needed to ask me.

Immediately I went into uber-protective teacher mode and assuming the worst.  Was she being bullied?  Is there a problem at home?  

Oh no.  

Her urgent question was how to customize her Google chrome background because she was jealous of my Avengers one.

These are the urgent problems my kiddos need help fixing!

I walked her through it because well, who wouldn't want an Avengers background?!

I love that they feel comfortable asking for help and that I've created a safe space for them.  Obviously technology is important and part of my job is to turn them into digital citizens (one customized background at a time!).

On a side note, we had the impromptu mini-lesson that we DON'T WRITE IN ALL CAPS because it looks like yelling on the computer.  I'm glad they're enjoying blogging so much!  It's so great that they're internalizing that they're writers and have different audiences.

(We did have to have the conversation that LOL JK :)  does not belong in our final draft papers.)

At least they're learning and enjoying it!

Elf on the Shelf, Classroom edition

Perhaps I'm a little behind on the times, but this was the first year I heard of the "Elf on the Shelf" phenomena.

I don't have children of my own yet, so I didn't see the point in purchasing one for myself.

However, after browsing pinterest, I kept seeing lots of ideas for a classroom adaptation.  Granted, there are blog posts like this that discourage the Elf, so you might need to treat it cautiously.  I'd set up the elf as a winter visitor without religious ties and send a note home to parents & families before hand to cover my self.

Fellow teachers at my school used it this year and said it was very helpful with management!

Here are some of my favorites:

I'd need my sign to say Winter Break, not Christmas break but still a cute idea

I could easily hide him/her in my bookshelves...

In this case, it'd need to say "I will be a good listener"

The elf could totally hang out with our school supplies...

Or take a nap with a tissue blanket!

Perhaps the elf could use technology to leave us  messages...

Creepy...but in a fun way.

I can definitely see the elf blogging!

This would be easy to duplicate!

We already have jenga boards that have been upcycled to be character questions or multiplication problems...

He/she could be reading our grade level read aloud...

Or be mischievious!

I'm a fan of these simple (no mess ones) as opposed to these ideas:

My classroom is messy enough. I don't need to create additional messy areas.

I think I may need to pick up my own elf for next year!  Of course, I'll wait until after Christmas when it's on sale :)

I'm still debating between the "traditional" elf (which apparently can be dressed up!) and this version:

We'll see what's on sale!  Good thing I've got a year to think about it!

Tech Tip: Kid blog

One of my favorite websites this year is kidblog.  It's free to sign up but you can only have 50 students.  I had to use 2 different email addresses since I have large classes but it was easy enough.

I used first names & last initials for student names and their ID numbers for their passwords.  

There's a super helpful "bulk import" option where you create a word document:

student name, password

Then save as .txt instead of .doc or .docx, then upload!

Change from .docx to .txt by using the dropdown arrow

Much faster in comparision to uploading 40 students individually!

I also love that if you view kidblog without a log in, this is what you see:

Nice and safe for my students!

I gave my principal a log in as well. She logs in and leaves them inspirational comments, which makes them so excited :)

Small groups in action!

I love small group reading :)

I feel like I'm a literacy specialist since so much of my day is spent with literacy:

9-9:40: phonics, whole group reading
9:40-10:40: small group reading
10:40-11:25: writing
11:25-11:55: science
12:30-1:05: intervention/extension block (fluency, comprehension and vocabulary)
1:05-2:05: small group reading 

Here are some snapshots of our centers:

Blogging:

My students are using kidblog to respond to one another online:

Snapshot of our afternoon blog:

They're doing such a great job!

Reader's theater:

They're doing a Greek mythology passage this week :)  I love that they picked one that aligns to our grade level read aloud, The Lightning Thief. We're also going on a field trip next week to see a performance of Jason and the Argonauts

Our new centers, based on the novels they just finished:

All are available on TpT!

We're also doing our weekly affixes:

On Tuesdays I challenge them to find non-examples of this week's affixes.  Today, it was words that appeared to start with un- or re- and end with -s or -es that were non-examples of these affixes.  They did a good job at coming up with ideas.

Since both of my groups (AM and PM) finished Hatchet, I had them compare their anchor charts:

They did a good job with picking out the same big ideas from the novel and analyzing how Brian developed over time.

Since I don't have enough books for both groups, one is reading The River while the other is reading Brian's Winter with the idea they'll switch when they're done.

We also looked at how the cover illustrations had changed over time:

They were highly amused by the early 90's version :)

My students are so excited about our books and that's just awesome.