Day 5

I made it to Friday!  

I did start my morning with duty...I'm not a fan of the gate.  I picked up my kiddos, took them off to Art, then planned math with another teacher in my grade level.  We had a grade level meeting yesterday and split up who is planning what subject.  This is an adjustment for me. Instead of planning everything, I'm planning one subject, writing up super explicit lesson plans, and making the copies for the grade level.  So far, I'm liking it!  I still read over their lesson plans and put my own flair on them, but it's nice that collaboration and team work is the norm for my grade level.

After I picked my kiddos up from specials, we jumped right into math.  For our number talk, it's "fact Fridays" where I gave them their first timed multiplication test.  

Last year my grade level split up multiplication and division facts into "easy", "medium", and "hard" facts.  We made 3 different versions of each test and would give them a chance every other week.  Today they had 3 minutes to do the easy multiplication ones.

Easy facts: 1, 2, 5, 10

Medium: 3, 4, 9, 11

Hard: 6, 7, 8, 12

Of those, about 6 of my students passed their easy facts on the first round.  I'll be making a tracker to glue in their notebooks and a brag wall similar to this:

For them to sign off when they pass each level.  Granted, this is a third grade standard, but many of my students don't have these facts mastered (yet!).  We'll alternate testing and practice weeks.

From there, I had them compare notes on what a good mathematician is before adding their thoughts (on post-its) to our chart:

 

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We also went over the first math practice (make sense of problems and persevere in solving them).  I had them record it in their math notebooks with sticky labels and added the chart to the wall.  I didn't want to put up all 8 without going over them because then students have no connection to what's on the wall.

I also raided another teacher's classroom and found the rods I was looking for!  I modeled that the rods and units represent tens and ones in this case, but made it clear this won't always be the situation.

I had the table teams model 43-29 for me using the manipulatives and they did a pretty good job.  I think most of our math this year will be hands-on because there are some major gaps to fill.  However, after talking with my grade level, I'm not the only one who feels this way so that's nice we're all wanting to give them meaningful practice to help make sense of numbers.

In science, they finished exploring the mystery bags and we had a conversation about all the skills they practiced.  They did a really good job with their team building task.

In writing, they finished their final drafts (which I accidentally left at school...Wednesday problem).  In reading, they took their STAR test to place them for AR and worked on building their stamina in silent reading until everyone was done with writing.

From there, I modeled the importance of previewing a text, again using The Lightning Thief as my mentor text.  I jumped right in and read, without modeling metacognition or stopping to think aloud parts.  A few pages in, they were confused (as they're supposed to be).

We talked about strategies that good readers use, one of them being to preview the text.  What this means is they need to look at the front and back covers, as well as the table of contents, to formulate an idea of what the text is about.  

I then had them practice with a book of their choosing, modeling on a post-it.

We reviewed phrasing and went over rate, adding to our charts in our notebooks.  We'll go over expression and accuracy next week.  We'll also go over buddy coaching and have some fluency practice before we take our beginning of the year Aimsweb benchmarks.

With the bell approaching, they did their classroom jobs and I sent them on their way with this:

They o-fish-ally survived their first week! It's Labor Day weekend and we have a staff development day Tuesday, so I won't see them again until Wednesday.  

One week down!

(On a side note, I did have to write my first citations and lock myself out of my room on Friday. I also forgot to send home last year's CRT scores, so I stapled apology notes to parents and those scores will go home Wednesday.  There were definitely moments of frustration on Friday, mainly due to me forgetting things...so a nice relaxing birthday dinner with B at Red Robin was so deserved!)

These are my students, round 3

Our awesome counselor started an after school peer support system with our fifth graders.  Her goal is to have some of the higher students help the struggling students with organizational skills and academics.  The program is a few weeks old but our counselor is receiving lots of positive feedback from the students.  Having a peer assist them privately after school is ideal because one, it's not a teacher so they feel they can connect better without feeling frustrated and two, it's a private support system where no one has to know.  As far as the rest of the grade level is concerned, it's a homework club...which is partially true.

One of my students from my small groups was assisting another student with his fluency.  He was giving him productive feedback as we've practiced, but then privately asked our counselor this:

"Should I model first, so he can hear what good fluency is like? I've been working on my phrasing."

I love that it's ingrained in them to model a skill or strategy first so that students know what is expected.  Considering I model different skills daily, I'm glad the importance of this explicit instruction is sinking in with my students.

Another one of my girls not only made her peer mentee a homework folder to keep himself organized, but she also assigned him homework.  Yes, she found her old fluency practice passages and instructed him to read them nightly and keep track of his errors.  Furthermore, she created a survey for him about his strengths and weaknesses so she could better assist him.  She also wouldn't accept "reading" as his answer for what he was struggling with.  Oh no, she flat out told him to "be more specific". I'm not sure he appreciated it, but I sure did!

This must be what mothers feel like.  

My students are verbatim, echoing things I say on a nearly daily basis.  They are internalizing the need, as a teacher/mentor, to provide positive, concise feedback, model strategies, help with organizational structure and be reflective about one's own learning.

I've created little minions.  I couldn't be more proud that not only are they willing to help their peers, but they have productive strategies to do so.  I love that they're willing to help their peers succeed as well.  High fives for team work.

Clicks and Clunks

This week, our school's power (vocabulary) word is strategy.

In honor of this, I'll share about one of my new favorite strategies: "clicks and clunks".

I'm aware this is in no way a new strategy and is taught in numerous teacher prep courses.  However, it's new to me :)

I read about it in my beloved CORE source book:

And it's really "clicking" with my students.

(By the way, I googled for an image of the CORE book and my own image from a prior blog post came up...weird moment.)

Basically, it's a formative assessment where students analyze thier own learning.  They share what's "clicking" in their heads and what is "clunking" (not making total sense).

We talk about the importance of being honest and talk about why things are clunking.

I have my students give me fist bumps on their way out the door and share their clicks/clunks with me.

Yesterday, one student told me that our weekly phonics skill (/s/, /sh/, /z/) was clunking with her because she was confused about the letters.  Using this clunk, I explained in a different way during our word study this morning and she got it :) 

 (Hopefully others did too but since she specifically told me that was a clunk, I wanted to help her with it)

Speaking of clicking and clunking, here are mine for the day:

Clicks:

Almost all of my students are making growth on RCBM for Aimsweb for their oral reading fluency and words per minute.  One that went down had a very honest conversation that he wanted to try reading without using his finger as a place holder to see if he really needed it.  Turns out, he does need to keep track of his place with his finger but more importantly, he realizes that it's a strategy he needs to use because it helps him. 

Some of my students have grown over forty words since their beginning of the year benchmark.  Yes, you read that correctly. 40 words. In a minute.  They're almost at their end of year ambitious goals.

Clearly our daily repeated reading, buddy coaching and fluency stations are working!

Clunks:

Voice levels still aren't where they need to be.

Our server was down today: no access to my documents, my premade lessons, my email or the internet.  We made the best of it but it was frustrating being without technology.

Happy Friday! (almost...)

Posters

I'm pretty sure I spent my entire prep today working on anchor charts.

Here are some updated images:

Our phonics wall:

We've been working on /s/, /z/ and /ch/ sounds this week.  I'm trying to use different colors each week for our phonics skills so that students know where to look.

Here is our updated writing genres poster (Being a Writer):

We're working on narratives during this writing unit.  We also just got new writing partners, so hopefully that help our writing time.

We also are working on buddy coaching for writing and fluency:

So I made a new pink sign to guide their conversations.

Here is another chart to help them with their partner conversations:

It was created for writing but can work for other academic subjects as well.

Next, here is our sentence starters:

In fifth grade, some of our standards (RL 5.1/RI 5.1) require students to "quote accurately" and "make inferences" from literature and informational text.  We have been working on responses to literature and constructed responses, so hopefully this will help my students with their answers.

Lastly, I changed the background on my classroom blog:

It's polka dots :)

Week 7

This week in whole group reading, we were working on main idea, supporting details, alternative perspectives and inferencing.

We used the passage "we were here, too" (grab it for free here) and the kids did a great job.

First, we made a list of people we associate with the American Revolution:

 I was really proud of my students for acknowledging that slaves were important.

They read the passage with their table teams:

They also were working on their metacognition and recording their thoughts and predictions on paper:

They did a really great job with this activity :)

They were also shocked to learn that George Washington had slaves, but we talked about the historical context and how he treated his slaves.  I think I blew their minds with that fact though!

They are also working on fluency passages in small groups as a station/center:

One person watches the timer (the passage is to be read for one minute).

One person reads.

The other listens and provides meaningful feedback in the form of buddy coaching.

They have made some great growth on their words per minute (WPM) for their Aimsweb RCBM probes!

Also in stations, they were working on sorting different scenarios into survival elements:

(The groups that did this are reading Hatchet and Hunger Games, so survival is one of the themes of their novels)

Students then analyzed my sort and added suggestions on how to improve it or add cards to sort.

I like that they help me improve my centers and then have more input, thus more investment :)

(As a side note, you can see one of my polka dot rugs and my polka dot center bucket in these images...I love polka dotted things!)

Small Literature Groups

While typing up notes for a novel unit on TpT, I realized I needed to revise my SG notes.  What worked for me my first and second year of teaching doesn't work for me now.

When reflecting on my teaching, I often come back to one of my favorite quotes by Maya Angelou: 

"When you know better, you do better"

Well, I'm going to do better.  I revised my units to add  in answers and increased the complexity of the questions by making them more open-ended.  I also included suggested homework questions for students.  These revised units are available on TpT.

I always have my students divide their notebooks into four sections:

I give them four questions to answer based on the chapter(s) for homework and we discuss those in depth.

For my small groups, I have them keep track of characters, analyze shifts in setting and make note of interesting vocabulary words in their small group notebooks.

We spend most of our time in our group meetings digging deep into the text.  I check their notebooks, set them up for the next discussion (usually allowing them to decide how much they want to read because I set the minimum) and then dive into the text.

Since I have six groups and only an hour each period, I can't meet each group every day. 

Here's our run-down:

First 8 minutes: fluency.

Students work with a partner to "buddy coach".  I set the timer for one minute and half the class reads in a whisper to their coach.  The coach keeps track of errors and at the timer, gives feedback on rate, expression, accuracy and phrasing.  After one minute of coaching, the students track their progress on this chart (from the CORE sourcebook).  Then they switch roles and repeat.

My beloved:

(yes, I'm a little type-A with my tabs)

I get my leveled fluency passages from reading A-Z but I know there are lots of websites and teacher's guides available.  I print them double sided so the students keep the passages for two weeks because that's better for our planet.

They chart on their fluency tracker:

After that, we spend a few minutes going over the week's phonics: Greek & Latin roots.

We look at the roots, add them to our anchor chart and then decompose multisyllabic words to decode the word's meaning.

From there,  I divide the remaining time in two and start pulling my groups.  I leave 2 minutes at the end for clean up and transition time.

To make sure all my groups get equal time at stations, I make this chart for my lesson plans:

That way I can make sure all my groups get the same centers.

This week, our stations are:

1. Fluency binder (like buddy coaching except they select the passage and can work in groups).  I've printed poems, songs, speeches and passages for students to read and buddy coach with.  I used FCRR printables to have students guide their discussions.

2. fluency quiz-quiz trade cards: they rate each other on their expression and accuracy, using these guides which are glued in their notebooks:

3. character jenga (I upcycled a jenga game and put open ended discussion questions for students to quiz each other).  This one gets a little loud but I love the discussions students have with one another about the book so it's worth it.

4. Kidblog.  This great, free resource allows students to respond to each other and to my blog questions on a safe, secure site:

If you view our page, that's all you see.  Students need a log in (their id numbers) and I get full approval of their posts.

5. "build-a-word": They take syllables and create multisyllabic words, recording their answers in their notebooks.  

6. "word-o-matic" (an FCRR center) where they create words.  I printed vowels on one color and consonants on another to make for easy clean up :)

Most of my centers are in manilla envelopes with instructions on sticky labels.  It helps keep students accountable for their behavior.

7.  Writing thank you letters for donor's choose :)  We got our new materials and love them! Thank you again donors!

8. Idiom cards: one of our new donorschoose centers to help with figurative langugage, which we've been working on during whole group reading!

I also posted our group norms:

I got this sweet card from a student today:

Happy reading!
-Ms. Vice

Small Group Reading

Small Group Reading

Our school is fortunate enough to subscribe to Reading A-Z, which provides all sorts of great resources.  I am a fan of the leveled fluency passages, which I started using last year for timed repeated reading at the start of my small group reading block.  Students would whisper read for one minute, keeping track of their errors and charting their own progress.  As the week progressed, they would see their scores rise and begin to internalize why they should read at home both silently and aloud.

However, I noticed that not all of my students were being honest and accurate, so I've tweaked my plans to have them buddy read and buddy coach this year.  They will work with a partner (a new one each month who is in a different reading group) and provide feedback  for improvement.

I've used the Reading A-Z leveled readers for science lessons on heredity and genetics.  This topic isn't really covered in our text book, so we utilize this instead.  Students explore Punnet Squares, examine their own dominant and recessive traits, the works.  I like that the books have chapters, lots of informational text and plenty of text features to make the concept accessible to all my students.

I've used the books in small groups but didn't like how I would print fifteen pages (per student) and end up throwing them away.  Then I saw this idea on pinterest:

For some of the higher level books (W and up), I can print the books and keep them separated by reading level with different colored duct tape (which happens to be in the dollar bin at Target, score!).  That way the books can be used over and over again.

I also like this poster because even as fifth graders, they still need some reminders of what they're supposed to be doing.

 I'm excited for a new group of readers!

I also love doing things like this as easy rewards for my readers!

I can't wait for a new school year and a new group of readers!

Happy reading!