I gave in

I gave in.

I tried to avoid the whole I have to go back to work situation by quickly changing the channel whenever back to school ads came on...but I failed.  I gave in.  I was out running errands and I ventured into the dreaded back to school supply aisle.



I bought my classroom supplies today.  I snagged some deals at the Dollar Tree and Target.

New classroom supply buckets:

(Round 2).

I'm hoping the smaller size will mean less mess.  I used these supply buckets last year and well, they didn't work.  So now, round two!  I plan to make cute table cards like these:

I will either color code or number code the supplies, depending on if I can find the appropriate sticker colors.  I'll print the cards, laminate them, and use a hole punch and binder rings to attach the cards to the buckets.

I found this cute chair cover at the Dollar Tree:

I think it's a fun way to add some joy into the classroom and make students feel special on their birthdays.  Plus, it's not related to food, so no need to worry about allergies!

I found this gem in the dollar aisle:

It will be a nice reference for students after I've explicitly taught these roots.

While I love my old classroom sign, 

It's time for a new one.  I haven't decided on what colors or fonts I'll be using so until I make up my mind, this is how it will stay.

I do love dollar tree stationary and will be using this for my classroom welcome letter.

I snagged these and will create a cute "survival" kit for my fifth graders.

I don't have everything fully figured out yet, but something about it's okay to make mistakes because it's proof you're trying and that I hope they sparkle (since the pencils are sparkly).  I'll post the final version once I've made up my mind.

I also stocked up on some new cups, which is one of my favorite classroom management strategies.

My old ones had been through hundreds of students...so it was time for a fresh start.

I found these at Target and think they'll go nicely with the bright colors I've picked out for my classroom decor.

I am excited for decorating my classroom!

Now, it's time to relax and enjoy my last few days before headed back for training.

Student Input

Since we are doing affixes and Greek & Latin roots during our whole group reading classes, I decided we needed to revise what we're doing in our small groups.

However, deciding what we need for word work isn't entirely up to me.  I'm not in their brains and I wanted to make sure our 5-10 minutes of phonics/word work was well spent in our small groups.

So I asked both periods a series of questions and had them respond with what they wanted and needed:

By allowing them to have input, they feel more of a sense of ownership in our small groups.

It's not my classroom, it's our classroom.

Word Work

We've been working on affixes and roots, so here's a snapshot of one of our weekly activities:

They identify the word parts (including the base word) and discuss how the word parts work together to make meaning.  They're doing a really good job with it!  You can snag a sample of our word work ppt here!

Phonics

This is the first year I've ever explicitly taught phonics and I'm seeing such a huge difference with my inclusion classroom!

Before taking Explicit Phonics and Lively Letters with my district, I was falsely under the assumption that phonics was taught in primary grades while my sole job was to focus on affixes (prefixes & suffixes) as well as roots.

While I do teach those roots and affixes, there are also grade level skills my students need help with.

I found this great, simple diagram:

We need to be teaching advanced phonics in the upper grades of elementary as well.  FCRR has some awesome free advanced phonics centers that I know my students love!  

We have been working on the /el/, /en/ and /er/ sounds, so I added these to our phonics wall:

Happy decoding!

New anchor charts!

Here are some of our updated anchor charts:

Theme and constructed responses:

Affixes:

Greek & Latin Roots:

Inflectional Endings (phonics):

I need more wall space!

Word Work

I've switched up how I'm doing the layout of my small groups for reading.  Because we switch students, there's the awkward minute or so transition time that is lost instructional time.

So instead of waiting for everyone to come in, get settled, get out their fluency passages and charts, then give me a thumbs up to begin, we are going to start with affixes instead.

We have our ongoing anchor charts for affixes, but I'm going to start explicitly teaching them next week.

I decided to review ones they should be familiar with (re, un, s, es), then go through the rest of the year with roots & affixes.

My planned schedule is this:

Mondays: introduce prefix, suffix, practice with a few words of how the affix changes the meaning, add to anchor chart

Tuesday: review affixes, go over non-examples and any helpful hints.  This week, they need a quick mini-lesson on what happens if a word ends in y (change to i) and when to add es (ch, ss, x or sh) or just add s to make a word plural.

Wednesday: word sort (prefix, suffix, both, neither)

Thursday: decoding multisyllabic words: Isolate the affixes, chunk the rest of the word into syllables (identify with CLOVER), practice blending through

Friday: encoding: adding affixes to change the word's meaning

I made my template and posted my first one on TpT, which you can download for just a buck!  I did make the template with the swagger font, which you can snag for free here.  I made it editable, so you can change the font & the words if you'd like!

Syllables

We have been working on decoding multisyllabic words this week during our word study.

Well, day.  Monday was the only day we actually have word study since today was parent/teacher conference day, tomorrow is a field trip, Thursday is staff development day and Friday we are celebrating Nevada day and have no school.

I'm revising my small groups next week to start with blending through multi-syllabic words with a focus on specific affixes and roots.  We'll start with blending and word study, that way when students come in a minute or two late, they don't miss fluency and buddy coaching.

Our word attack strategy:

We also reviewed where to break apart syllables:

And hung this near our CLOVER chart:

Happy word work!

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

It's Friday

We will celebrate the little things in life.

Here are our updated anchor charts for roots and affixes.

Here is our topographic map.

We talked about elevation and contour lines today in science.  We also made our key and shaded in our contour lines.

We also had some great discussions about the different covers of Hatchet:

My students really dug deep into what the illustrator's intentions were and how the covers set different tones.

Classroom Updates

Our classroom is a work in progress.

Our word wall, for example, frequently gets new academic vocabulary words.

The words are color-coded by content area.  I also moved our interesting words anchor chart to the word wall.

Here is our affixes anchor chart:

We are currently working on syllables and short vowels which is why our chart isn't very detailed.

I will be making a Greek and Latin roots one this week since we keep referencing geo in science.

Here is a snapshot of our classroom behavior expectations:

Here is the list of classroom jobs, which I borrowed from my awesome neighbor.

She is so cute with her creative names!  I'm lucky to work with such amazing women (aka my sister wives).

Here are some of our attention getting signals:

I saw what is in black and they respond with the magenta response.  I like the options :)  It keeps me (and them) from being bored!

I also utilized the magnetic bookshelves:

To hold fluency scripts, reader's theater and timers :)

Here is a super cute gift from another coworker:

She knows my love of football and even though she's a Cowboys fan, she supports my devotion to the Arizona Cardinals.  That's teamwork for you :)

Here is one of our mapping sorts:

 I printed the center in 5 different colors for each of my table teams and laminated it for durability.  The large ziplock bag contains all of the smaller ziplock bags and centers.  I find this double bag system works best for my classroom management.

Here is another example, but of our syllable sort:

Here are our new dry erase markers:

Each student has his/her name printed on an address label.  The address label is then wrapped in clear packing tape for durability.

I upcycled an old tackle box

to hold our classroom supplies!  Sticky address labels have so many uses!

I also posted our classroom norms:

Again, wordle is a great resource!

We talked about landforms today in science

then created them!

I discovered this note on my board at the end of the day:

It's the little things that mean the most.