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!

8 weeks down!

8 weeks in and things are finally starting to feel normal :)

My students are loving our read aloud of the Lightning Thief and can't wait to figure out who Percy's dad is.  The ones that have seen the movie or read the novel are doing a great job of keeping quiet to not ruin it for the rest of them :)

We analyzed the development of Percy over the first few chapters of The Lightning Thief:

I modeled the first chapter and students worked in groups of 2 or 3 to re-read, looking for specific details about the main character's thoughts, actions and motivations.

We ran out of room in the classroom and since I didn't want to disrupt the learning of the other classrooms, we went outside to share.

Of course, my principal happened to walk by when she was observing PE and monitoring playground duty.  Luckily the student she asked about our learning was able to fully articulate that we worked in small groups to re-read, looking for evidence and recording our thinking on anchor charts.  Granted, he was off task a few moments later but at least he could focus for that short period of time :)

We are finishing up our first set of novels, so my students have posted their charts of our interesting words on our word wall:

Each time they met with me, they shared the words they found in their reading.  I recorded their answers and changed colors each time so they could easily see which words were new.

They also posted their logs for keeping track of characters:

For the Series of Unfortunate Events, it will be interesting to watch these characters develop over the next twelve books.  AM and PM also compared and contrasted the charts that they made and had some great discussions about the novel.

I also posted their writing ideas chart on our anchor chart about writing genres:

On Fridays, we do our formative assessment on our weekly phonics skill.

My students track their own progress:

We glued trackers inside the front cover of their word study notebooks.  On one side is the skill we're working on and on the other is where they record their score as well as if they're emerging, approaching, meeting or exceeding on that skill.

Happy Friday! 

(Unfortunately, this weekend is devoted to grading and preparing for parent-teacher conferences, so it's a good thing next week is only 2 days with one of those days being a field trip!  We plan well!)

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.

Survived the first day!

At 2:30 today, I let go a big sigh of relief.

I did it, I survived my first day with students.

I tried to explain my anxiety to others, but was met with "you've done this before".  Yes, I have.  This started year five.  But the kids are different and it doesn't mean it's any less scary.

Last night was riddled with nightmares of every possible worst-case scenario...all of course, occurring on the first day.

I started my day around six am by prepping their "you're just write for this class" pencils:

 Normally Target's dollar spot pencils are decent but this batch didn't hold up to my fifth grader's sturdy hands.  About half broke within the first twenty minutes...good thing they brought their own!

Next, I finished my word wall with scrabble letters:

'

The words will be color coded by content area.

I also finalized my pencil vase with a button:

I think it looks super cute :)

When my students entered, there was a slip of paper for them to write their feelings on.  Luckily it was early enough in the morning that they didn't question me.

While they were at art, I turned their feelings into this wordle:

Overall, they were excited for fifth grade and I hope that feeling continues!

This group of students might be the most talkative yet so I know I'll have to reinforce the norms of taking turns and using whisper voices.

We went through a lot of procedures, class room tours, etc.  

They had a lot of fun with our "No Way Jose" and "That's a Fact, Jack!" sort:

I love my job, but my oh my am I exhausted! I haven't talked that much in a while and my feet hurt from wearing shoes all day.

Bring on day 2!

Ready for the first day

It's that time of year again.

Come 8 am Monday morning, I'll have students.  28 of of them to be exact.

We had our school's open house on Friday and I met about half of my students and their families.  I must say, I think I lucked out again because my students are adorable.

Here is my room for open house:

I added a FAQs chart on the board so that students and families would have something to do while I was talking with their classmates.

Students will receive their welcome letter and a treat on their desks:

We are bursting with excitement about fifth grade!

They'll also get a pencil Tuesday morning that says "you're just write for this class!".  I'm using sticky labels as flags this year to save time :)

Here are the letters for our class competition for AM and PM:

The first class to fifty points wins the competition with a maximum of 4 points per day.

For my word wall, my awesome coworker gave me her old Scrabble tiles,

Which I added magnets to using hot glue and...

tada!

My new word wall magnets.  Granted, they are tiny but since I have fifth graders, I assume they know the alphabet. 

I'll be putting these on a metal filing cabinet and students will color-code our word wall (reading, science, math and other).

Outside my room is our bulletin board.  Using a pinterest idea, I added letters to paper plates to frame our bulletin board:

It says "what we're learning" and takes up the whole space above the board.

To make it less awkward, I'll add the standards and learning objectives on one side of the board and an explanation of our activity on the other, that way the whole bulletin board can be student work.

I just have to finish prepping a few centers but I think I'm all ready for Monday :)

Ms. Vice

Writing Ideas

As a teacher, I think teaching writing is my weakness. I'm constantly in awe of my former co-teacher who is now in the general ed classroom. She makes teaching writing look so easy and her kids enjoy it.  I love picking up ideas from not only her, but the rest of my grade level as well.

This year we are starting using a new curriculum called Being a Writer.  I read through the teacher manuals this summer and I'm pretty excited by all the mentor texts that are used.  The lessons seem to blend nicely with the Common Core and are worded very similar to how I would start lessons.  I'm rarely a fan of a provided curriculum, but Being a Writer seems to make sense, spiral nicely and be student friendly.  Plus, there are sample anchor charts included which is great for days you have a substitute teacher.

At our school, we have writing conferences with our students and I keep all my information in a spiral bound notebook.

I use colored post-it tabs down the side with students' names.

I color code them for who I need to meet with more frequently.

I grade their essays and write my feedback on post-its.  I make a copy of the essay for the students to keep in their data folder, place the post-it on the student's page in my notebook, then we discuss their paper.  I try to have most of the conferences student-led by asking them the following questions:

What did you do well on?

What part are you the most proud of?

What did you take away from our mini-lessons that you tried in this paper?

Who did you peer edit with and what feedback did they give you?

How would you make this better?

What is still challenging for you as a writer?

However, I'm excited to try these new ideas this year:

Personalized word wall in their notebook.

 I'm awful at keeping up with word walls.  I try to do anchor charts of the vocabulary words we learn in our novels or our school's "power words of the week", but it's one of the things I tend to let slip through the cracks.  I love the idea of having students make their own because then the words are personalized.  With my inclusion classroom, some students are working on spelling sight words while others are working on multisyllabic words.  This allows students to feel empowered and write down the words they truly need help with.

On the subject of word walls, I also like this teacher's idea:

Instead of using a bulletin board (because I have so few and they're usually covered in anchor charts), a recipe box was used instead.  This would go great in our resources are of the room next to the dictionaries.  

This TpT freebie is great for students to organize different words and phrases:

I always teach "fanboys" with a fan shaped foldable, but I like this teacher's structure with an anchor chart:

I also found this idea on pinterest and it'd be a great review of text structure and topic sentences.

By using different colored sentence strips, you can review structures of a paragraph.  This idea also has potential with reading cross over by showing how to summarize an informational text.

This was developed by a primary teacher, but I love that it could be adapted as an extension center for early finishers.

It could also be used to review parts of a sentence with more struggling writers.

This anchor chart would be great for reviewing types of sentences:

I might modify it into a foldable in their notebooks because wall space is limited.

This is another great one for helping students with the different type of verbs, which is part of the Common Core standards:

I love new ideas!

Literacy Ideas for the real world

I love literacy ideas that actually will be useful.  Sometimes I see beautifully decorated classrooms, but if the teacher is working way harder then the students...something is wrong.  Way way wrong.

I don't know what it is about word walls, but I am awful at keeping them up to date.  Our school does "power words" of the week to improve our students' vocabulary, but around November, I get overwhelmed (shocker) and forget to staple up any new words.  

However, I stumbled upon this idea on Pinterest:

Using paint chips from Home Depot or Walmart, students work with you to create the word wall.  Students can also make their own mini-thesaurus by using the longer, skinny paint chips, a three hole punch and binder rings.  The binder rings are to clip all the paint chips together to a desk so the pages don't go missing :)

Alternative Ideas:

1. Using these paint chips for "shades of meaning" for vocabulary

2. Using these paint chips for synonyms & antonyms, as shown below

3. Using these paint chips for affixes or Greek/Latin roots

4. Using these paint chips for operation strategies (math)

5. Using these paint chips for test-taking strategies

6. Using these paint chips as a monthly book challenge where students must read one book per color (can be modified by using paint strips with less colors), as shown below

7. Using these paint chips for word families (for younger grades), as shown below

8. KWL (what I know, what I want to know, what I learned) charts, as shown below

Second issue: editing and revising

I'm constantly looking for real world examples beyond my students' notebooks.  Then I stumbled upon this gem:

Students here are shown with tweets from NFL stars, but this could be changed to celebrities or other sports depending on students' interests.  I love how it hooks them by using technology references (Twitter, tweets) and by incorporating their interests.  Students can work in groups to be the stars' "publicists" and edit the tweets.  These can also be used as mini-lessons to address specific skills that are seen in students' writing.  Plus, students can see the real world implications of poor grammar :)

Idea #3:

Dollar Store picture frames = instructions for centers, stations or computers.

I would probably use this to display website links, user names and passwords for computer sites because the picture frame can be easily stored on top of the computer.  Obviously I'd use a larger font, but this helps students become self-sufficient at stations.  You can list the do's and don'ts of each station, thus eliminating (or at least reducing) the number of interruptions you receive while with small groups.  Plus, you can easily switch out the pages and the cost is relatively cheap :)

Idea #4: The Class Journal

Now, these composition notebooks aren't cheap and I certainly wouldn't devote an entire notebook to a single prompt, but I like the idea.  You could put in post-its or tabs to differentiate the prompts or have the journals for table teams.  This would be a great back-up plan for when technology chooses not to work (since many of my lessons are on the smart board) or for students who finish standardized tests early :)

Idea #5: Peer Reviews and Book Recommendations

I found this image on pinterest and while it is a bit juvenile for fifth grade, I like the idea of students recommending books to one another.  I mean, we do this all the time as adults, so why not have the students do the same?  (Ok, I may not do it as an adult, but Oprah does and I like her book recommendations!)

This makes me want to have a mini-book fair between the classes and have students do a book share :)