Tried it Tuesday: Fluency Center w/ Whisper Phones!

After the long heart felt blog post yesterday, I realized how good it felt to vent and write. Thank you all for the kind emails of support. It is really nice to know we have so many caring friends, even Internet friends. We are real people behind this blog. Real moms, teachers, and friends with real lives full of surprises, stress, emotions, and sometimes fun. Boy am I ready for break! Today we have a half day and then we will be off for TWO weeks!

So I'm happy to have the chance to share our newest center with you for Tried it Tuesday. Recently, I purchased these awesome fluency task cards from Teaching with a Mountain View. 

I printed them in color and put them into Dollar Tree 4X6 photo albums! Super easy, cute, and a huge time and lamanation saver! (Dollar Tree just restocked these albums for Christmas, so call around, they are easy to find!) Next it was time to make the whisper phones.  This was Robyn's job. She went to Home Depot, grabbed some PVC pipes, elbows, and some duct tape and put her husband to work. Luckily, he is handy and cut the pipes perfectly. It literally took him a few minutes. Robyn wrapped the pipes with some cute duct tape and Ta Da...whisper phones were created! These things work AMAZING too! 

 

So how do we use them? While I am taking a Guided Reading group, one center rotation visits the fluency center. Each student reads through task cards of fluency paragraphs and decides on one to read to their partner. They then time themselves whisper reading the same passage three times. After the third time, they read it to a partner at the center. The partner needs to give feedback to the reader stating one glow and one grow. Each student is responsible to complete this worksheet every time they visit the center. The sheets are collected and used for cold read data, fluency goals, and formative assessments. Since many of my students have fluency goals, this is a great way for them to get extra practice. It's also an easy way to have students reflect on their work, feedback, and progress.

Want to try this out? You can have a copy of the center sheet. Grab it here!

A Depressing Post: Losing a Best Friend.

Remember the movie, My Girl? Remember Vada and her best friend Thomas J. that passed away, unexpectedly, leaving his best friend to deal with the pain on her own? I think I've watched this movie a dozen or so times, but no matter how many times I see it, I always feel the same thing. First my throat starts to itch inside and slowly close, the next thing I know I start to cry. Soon it turns to ugly sobs while I feel my stomach tense up and turn into uncomfortable knots. I know, I'm pretty emotional. A sense of depression comes over as I see this poor little girl deal with the sudden loss of her best friend.

Recently, I've known this feeling all too well. It's been exactly one month since we lost a best friend. She wasn't just that...she was our coworker, editor, role model, and personal cheerleader.  She thought everything we made for our classroom, TPT, or blog was prize winning and praised and supported our work. 

She was the smartest and kindest person I've ever met... not just to her friends, but to her 50 fourth graders she taught every year. Every year for eight years. If someone did not have lunch, she would buy it for them. If a student had a birthday and the parents were not "around" to celebrate, she'd bake cupcakes for the student to pass out in class. If a student reached a goal in class, she'd bake their favorite treat for a celebration the next day. She'd devote lunch time to lunch bunch for getting to know her students better. There were times when her students did not have food in their homes and would write about it in their writing journals, the next day they would find bags of groceries on their door step. At Christmas time, she'd always adopt a family and provide the children with gifts, clothes, and food to fill up their pantry. One year, she taught her class how to knit comfort dolls and sent hundreds of them to children who needed comfort.  A few years ago, her class created soda tab bracelets, sold them, and raised over $1500.00 to help local families dealing with cancer bills. She frequently volunteered and was our school's Kindness Ambassador for Ben's Bells. She brought, modeled, and shared kindness everyday through actions and words.

This was just the beginning. In the classroom, she was a reading rock star. She didn't just teach her students to read, she taught them to be passionate readers. She shared her love of reading with everyone she met. Anywhere she went, she'd always have a book available. Oftentimes she'd be reading two or three books at a time. She was a role model for all. She was a passionate educator. When she found an educational role model, she became a "fanatic." This started with Nancy Boyles and continued with Donalyn Miller. She was awesome at Twitter and "stalked" her favorite authors, joined in on edu-chats and tweeted people around the world. Always learning from others. She met authors, invited them into her classroom, and went above and beyond in everything she did.

She spoke the truth, and stood up for who/what she believed in. She was smart. Really smart! She was worldly, having traveled all over the world and even growing up in Africa. She spoke a few languages and always showed genuine compassion for everyone, especially ELL students.

She was an amazing mother to three teenage boys  and wife to an awesome man. She loved to laugh and make others smile. She was a perfectionist and never stopped thinking about how she could better herself. If there was an idea or suggestion, she would try it, but would first ask as many questions as she could about the topic. She loved to exercise, be outdoors, and be with friends.

She loved to talk. She had such amazing and hilarious adventures in her life. She would often entertain us at PD or lunch with her tales. We had many memorable memories in our eight years together, working a few classroom doors away from each other. She referred to me as her "Young BFF" and always laughed about the fact that she could be my mom. She gave the best advice. For advice on students, children, marriages, diets, exercise, and motherly opinions...she was the one to go to!

Then...just like that, like when Thomas J. was stung by tons of bees, had a fatal bee allergy, and died. She passed away. There are so many "what ifs?" that we can think of now, so many things we want to say, and so many more ways we could have helped our best friend, if we knew.  We are full of anger. And sadness. And pain. Why didn't she let us help her? Did I let her down as a friend? 

A month has passed. Thirty days of daily tears. Cleaning out the classroom. Boxes. Tears. Interviews. Demo lessons. More tears. More moving. Changes. To little, too late. Life will never be the same. 

My stomach is in constant knots, my heart aches. My mind is a blur. A smile is forced. A laugh seems guilty. How the heck do I still have tears to cry? We miss our best friend. The shock has worn off, now the pain is stronger. It's knowing she isn't coming back that makes me feel like Vada missing her Thomas J.

I wrote this as a way to reflect on my feelings, not as a plea for pity. I hate the response, "I'm sorry for your loss," because I feel like it is SO much more than MY loss. As much as this hurts me, I am sick over what it has done to her family, school, and community as well. Maybe someone understands or has experienced similar thoughts and feelings. Death is hard on everyone any people experience grief in their own unique ways.  For me, I thought blogging/journaling and putting thoughts into words would help. 

Let your friends, near and far, know how much you appreciate them and how much they mean to you today and always, but most of all... Be kind! Thanks for reading.

Three Strategies to Implement in a Guided Reading Group Using Any Text! Bonus Freebie Included!

So it's been a while since I've blogged and I've been feeling SO guilty. There is nothing I'd like to do better than to sit down and create a blog post, but unfortunately, life has been getting in the way. Report cards went home last week, conferences were last week, our goal setting meetings were last week and this week I can FINALLY breathe! 

Anyways...our school is diving head first into guided reading this year and the number one question all teachers had was, “What are the ‘other students’ doing while I have a small group?” Once I started thinking about it, centers were the way to go for my classroom. I implemented this idea a few weeks ago and it has been working out fantastic. It is a great way for the students to learn responsibility, collaboration, independence, and skill building. I have so much to share about guided reading, so this will be PART 1 of many posts on the topic!

While I am meeting with my small group we are focusing mainly on reading strategies to help with comprehension.

1)   Summarizing: This has been a difficult skill for most of my fourth graders to grasp and continued practice on this topic (fiction and nonfiction) is always needed.

2)   Fluency: Believe it or not, my students can never get too much fluency practice.  Repeat reading of paragraphs during small group time is a great way to focus on speed, expression, accuracy, and punctuation. I sometimes even time the students for a cold read and count the number of words read correctly in one minute. After practicing the paragraph throughout the week, they then read it again and get a new number count. Charting this on a bar graph is an amazing motivator for all students.

3)   Sequencing: With some of my friends, we use sticky notes to write out the most important events from fictional stories. We then practice retelling the story mentioning all of the post-it notes. We use the notes as a resource to manipulate and start writing a summary.  If the book is nonfiction, sequencing the growth, development, or timeline of the event/animal is always another great idea.

How do you stay organized with so many groups? This might be something you struggle with (like me, up until a few weeks ago). It really isn't that hard. One idea is to have a select space for each group's materials. I use magazine holders for each group. The students know where to get their books and where to put them back. 

Another tip for organization is to be prepared. Have something for everyone, not just the students in your group. The work should be engaging and meaningful, not just a filler.

Check out my center rotation list to see where the students go. This is an organized way to answer the constant question of, "What are the other students doing?" Since the groups are fluid and always changing based on reading abilities and/or student interest, the students’ nametags have the number of their current group. As soon as my students enter the classroom in the morning, they know to look at the center list to see what they will be doing for a morning activity.  I used Velcro to attach the groups to the bulletin board. This allowed for quick and easy moving.

I have centers set up for Guided Reading (meet with the teacher), Wow Words (Vocabulary building through independent reading), Spelling Center (Spelling words used on a choice menu), Writing Center (Responding to daily prompts), Listening Center (Audio chapter book while students follow along), Task Cards (Constantly changing based on student needs), and Seat Work (Work for the lesson of the day). Most of the materials for each center can be customized to the current unit or curriculum.  I also like to give students a choice of what they work on in the center, so I use menus or choice boards related to the activity.  The information at the centers are usually created by me and for my students. Check back for another post on what is in each center, but for now, grab your free copy of the center rotation list! Enjoy!

Three Foldables to be Used with Any Nonfiction Text! Including a Free Download!

Have you heard of a foldable? Are you familiar with interactive notebooks? They seem to be the new fad and not only are they fun and a wonderful hands-on learning experience for students, they are also a great resource for a student to refer back to throughout the whole year. I used some high interest nonfiction books about sea life that my students were begging to read. Although we do not teach this topic in our curriculum, I tried to sneak it into my small group instruction. While teaching different ELA strategies, I was able to break the students up into small groups and allow them to use the underwater collection as a resource. This week my groups read different chapters in Clever Crustaceans and then jigsawed as a class to share out their information on the whole book. Together students from each group made a presentation sheet for the foldables they created. They were very proud of their results and LOVED sharing their posters with the whole class.

I had the most success with the students creating and completing

·            An accordion nonfiction summary

·            A vocabulary flip flap

·            A Venn-trifold

Nonfiction summaries are very difficult to write, and my students often struggle. The accordion summary foldable is a great hands-on approach to breaking text paragraphs up into shapes. While giving students one or two pages, from a nonfiction book, they can easily create a short summary. We focus on the five W’s, (who, what, why, where, when, and how) when writing a nonfiction summary. The students are easily able to locate the main idea and important details from each paragraph and write them into the boxes of the foldable.

The vocabulary flip flap foldable is always a student favorite. Not only is it a fun paper to cut and fold, but it also organizes information very well. When using this foldable, I choose eight vocabulary words, with a similar theme. The students write the vocabulary words on one side and define them on the other side of the little blocks. In the center, they try to guess the theme or the commonality between all words. When defining the vocabulary, they can use the nonfiction text features such as the glossary, index, bold face print words, or even context clues.

Using a Venn-trifold is very easy. It is just like a Venn- diagram, except the two opposite sides open and the commonalities are written in the center. Students usually use bullet points when writing on their trifold to keep it neat. It is a great visual aid when one side is colored one color and the other side is colored a completely different color. When the trifold opens, the students usually mix both colors together to signal “alike”.  

The students in my class were excited for group this week and could not WAIT to find out more information about the underwater sea creatures. 

 

Check out the materials by clicking here or on the picture below! 

I hope you can incorporate these fun foldables into your small groups or whole class lessons.

Spark Student Motivation Saturday: Realistic Cursive Fun!

Hello Friends, Today I am linking up with sweet Joanne for her Spark Student Motivation linky. Yesterday, I posted about teaching cursive and my Instagram friends and I had some great conversations about what we use as resources, when we can squeeze it into our busy schedules, and how the kids feel about learning cursive. I was excited to see that many teachers feel strongly that cursive should not be a lost art. It should be taught, practiced, and used throughout school. 

 As we introduce a few letters a week, I am going to be creating, printing, and correcting self made worksheets for the students so they can practice their first and last name in cursive. They were SO excited when I told them about this because the thought of having their own personalized worksheet, was amazing. They cannot WAIT to start. So this weekend, I am typing up worksheets for all of my students. The trick is to always keep one master copy so you do not have to recreate sheets on the computer. 

First, I found this great worksheet maker online. (Click the image to check the site out!) It's super easy to create and the best part is, it's free. 

I will have first and last names for each student, but didn't for the picture. The students will trace their names and rewrite it directly below the traced line. Once the students master this skill, we will be moving onto our fun cursive project. I am going to test this out this week with my own name, hang it up in the classroom, and see if any students actually get what it is. 

Scholastic put out an awesome tutorial on making cursive/name skeletons. The ribs are actually students' names, using a line of symmetry! These are going to look awesome in the hallway and the students are going to FREAK out when they hear they can use paint in class (meanwhile they will be hitting CCSSs in Writing and Science).

Don't you worry, I will be posting pictures as soon as my students complete these cute skeletons! Have a great weekend! :)

Five for Friday with a Special Freebie! :)

Wow! It is Friday and I am actually able to post a 5 for Friday! Is it a miracle? Nah, just my little Kindergartener is home sick, so I am taking care of her. Unfortunately, I think I am next. It's that time of year and I have a monsterous migraine. Anyways, here are FIVE things we did this week that were note worthy! 

1. We worked on our first interactive piece for our Interactive Reading Notebook (from Nicole Shelby's IRNB on TPT). The kids loved, cutting, gluing, coloring, and seeing the end result. Inferencing is something we are working on for the next few weeks.

2. While continuing with inferencing, we read Mercedes and the Chocolate Pilot.  One of my personal favorite stories. After reading the story, we read a few pieces of nonfiction about WWII, the Berlin Blockade, and the Berlin Airlift. The students absolutely LOVED this and were so emotional over the issue when they realized the book was based off of a REAL EVENT.  The students wrote down quotes on post its while listening to the read aloud. The quotes were examples that led the students to infer how the people of Berlin must have felt during the Blockade. I charted on a T-Chart while the students copied it into their notebooks.

3. The next day, the students were supposed to refer back to their notes and write a narrative journal entry from the perspective of Mercedes. As a example of the (I do, we do, you do) gradual release model, I modeled with the perspective of Lt. Halverson. When I started writing the entry, the students became really involved.  After turning and talking with partners, they helped me add on to the journal entry and we were really pleased with the results. When I gave the students their assignment (To write a journal entry pretending they were Mercedes, the night she received a package from the Chocolate Pilot) they were more than ready to begin. I will post some of their responses next week, after I get to grade them.

4. Do you teach cursive writing or did your district give it up? Robyn and I usually supplemented our own material for cursive, but this year our district is adding it to the report card for a standard grade. So we are actually expected to teach more into it.  They consider it to fall under the CCSS 4.4 (To produce clear and coherent writing.) Do you agree? Since we are grading it on a report card in a few weeks, we got to work. Believe it or not, my students LOVED it. The hardest part is remembering not to let the letters float. The three lines seem to mean nothing to them right now. lol

5. Time for the special freebie! I made this sheet for my principal who passed it around at the staff meeting this week. Do you do staff breakfasts? Do teachers donate to them? What does your staff do to boost moral in the school?  I'd LOVE to know and hear any suggestions!

 Thanks for reading! Have a wonderful Friday and weekend! 

How to use the Writing Process to Create Small Groups!

Due to the awesome amount of emails I received over my recent blog posts here and here, I decided to go into more detail of our writing process plan. Thank you for all of the sweet emails, it makes me so excited to know I am helping other teachers out by sharing ideas and suggestions. 
 

Going through the writing process does take a lot of time and effort, but it is so rewarding for the students AND the teacher. As a teacher, I am able to really take note of my students’ individual needs as well as give them meaningful feedback to take their writing to the next level. We started using writing goals a few years ago, but completely rethought our process and made it student friendly. This year, we have put it into action and love the results. We really hope it helps you out as well.

We just put everything mentioned in this post into a bundle. Check it out here: 

We follow the Writing Process of: Plan, Draft, Edit, Conference, Revise, & Publish
We do not do this with every single writing piece, but maybe one per unit. 

Planning: While planning, we like to design a plan for the students to use to help them organize their thoughts as the year moves on we start to take away the plan and they learn how to create one from memory. Having a good plan is a key necessity to having a strong paper. They keep this plan on their desk whenever they are working on this assignment. We constantly ask the kids to refer back to their plan and encourage them to follow it.  

Peer Editing: After the students plan and complete their rough draft.  Students partner up to proof read eachother’s papers. They complete the check off list and give each other verbal feedback. The more you teach into this step, the better the students will learn to peer edit. 

Conferencing: At this time the teacher meets with each student individually. I usually have a sign up list on the board and when students are ready to conference, they sign up. After a student meets with me, they check their name off and move on to the next step. At this conference, the child reads their paper out loud and we edit and discuss ideas and progress together. Together we decide on a goal for the student. 

During this meeting, I am actively taking notes on the child’s goal sheet that I keep in my student data binder. I always add the date, title of story, notes of progress, and highlight the goal for the child. We designed these sheets with two to a page so we can easily compare as the year progresses. Once a student has a goal they move their clothes pin (with their name written on it in sharpie)  on the correct goal on the bulletin board. 

This is helpful because it is a great visual for me to  see who is working on what goal at the same time. Also, during our WIN time, we now take writing groups based on goals. For example, if a child’s goal is to work on having fewer grammatical errors in their writing, the group will work on punctuation, spelling patterns, and/or grammatical rules when they are pulled for a small group. We actually keep the groups organized by printing a second set of goal posters, stapling them to folders, and filling the folders with worksheets appropriate for each goal. It is a great way to prep for many weeks at a time. 

Before the student leaves the conference they are also given a revising check list specified for their needs. We do not hold every child responsible for every part of this list, we make it work with the goal. If their goal is to focus on adding better vocabulary into their writing, they would probably have the first idea highlighted, which states, “Circle four words you can replace with a synonym. Cross out the words and rewrite the new word above. Use a thesaurus for help.” By the student working on this part of revising, they are also hitting their goal. We hope that by doing this multiple times, they will learn to do it automatically and/or build their vocabulary up so it comes naturally to them. Some students have one revising idea highlighted while others have three. 

Writing Folder Goal Sheet: One more way for the students to keep track of their goals is to have this paper stapled to the front of their writing folder. Every time they conference with the teacher and discuss a goal, they will record the date, title of assignment, and goal. We understand that some students will stay on the same goal for more than one assignment, but we think it is also important for the students to see the time line and how long they have been working on their specific goal.  This is also great for administration to see when they come into the classroom. The students will be able to explain their goals, how they are working on them, and why they have them, all from this simple worksheet! 

This interactive bulletin board is GREAT when paired with our “Writing Process” Bulletin Board as well! 

I hope this post can help you organize your Writers' Workshop and create small groups for easy targeted instruction. If you have any other ideas, suggestions, or questions, please let us know!