Daily Five Visit Part 2

As you may have already read, my grade level partners and I visited my former across-the-hall-neighbor and one of my favorite teacher friends Mrs. R. last week to see how she runs Daily 5. Click the picture below to check out part 1 of my post which talks about how Mrs. R runs her Daily 5 rotations and what the kiddos do during each rotation.

Today's post will share all the other goodies I learned in Mrs. R's room such as launching Daily 5. I have 7 take-aways in part 2 of our visit to Mrs. R's visit.

[one] I have felt TERRIFIED to lose basically all my wall-space to the i-posters that are anchor charts for each of the Daily 5 choices plus the CAFE strategies, etc. However, Mrs. R. being so very awesome, created the anchor charts during each Daily 5 launch lesson, but when the kiddos met their stamina goal, she replaced the big anchor chart with these small print-outs... Still available for the kiddo's reference, but since they had mastered the stamina and knew what it should look like, it didn't need to be so big and take up so much space.

[two] I loved Mrs. R's visuals for each of the launch lessons for Daily 5. One of the first lessons the Two Sisters say you should teach when launching the Daily 5 is 3 Ways to Read a Book. Mrs. R's version of this lesson created an awesome visual... she's so crafty!

[three] You can probably see in the picture above, the edge of Mrs. R's IPICK good fit books poster, so cute with the visual of the flower, picking a flower... gosh I just love everything Mrs. R. does! I also like her stamina chart better than many I've seen that usually look like a temperature gauge. Mrs. R's room is filled with so many cute teacher-made posters, I love it because the kids are usually involved in lessons that lead to teacher-made anchor charts/posters as opposed to printed out or purchased posters.

[four] Another GREAT anchor chart Mrs. R has was one she made during the shoe lesson the Two Sisters share in the Daily Five book to introduce how to pick a good fit book. The lesson goes along with IPICK good fit books. Disclaimer... Mrs. R would want me to share that the high-healed shoe is NOT hers ;) The picture isn't the greatest, but I loved this visual since I think the shoe lesson is such a cool way for kiddos to think about what a good fit book is. You'll also notice her EEKK! poster for Read to Someone.

[five] In my classroom I use a what? and why? for each of my lessons. I stole borrowed this idea from Mrs. R last year and am actually still using her old what? why? magnets when she printed new ones to match her room better. She uses what? to write very briefly what students will do. I use what? as more of an objective, i.e. you will be able to choose a right fit book. I'm not exactly sure at what point of the lesson Mrs. R uses her why? sticker but I use it [when I remember] as a closure or to set a purpose. Either way our focus is usually why do we need to learn this or why is this important. So anyway, after all that back-story, I LOVED seeing this poster Mrs. R made to go along with the what? why? system for each of the Daily 5 choices. I really should make one of these for the rest of the year because it would be relevant to my kiddos since they are used to what? and why? in my room!

[six] When I read the Daily 5 book, I felt terrible for leveling my books and being sure my kiddos knew which levels were appropriate for them. However, I felt much better when I saw that Mrs. R has her books leveled by colors. She taught all the lessons about choosing books and believes that those are still very important, but she has found it easier for the kiddos to be able to quickly choose books to read and color coding was the way she went about this.

[seven] Mrs. R uses extra time during Daily 5 rotations to hold writing conferences. Although I don't forsee myself using Daily 5 time like this, because I have WAY more time allowed in my schedule for writing, I LOVED her system for when kiddos need a conference and plan to use something like this next year during writer's workshop! So simple, yet I never would have come up with it on my own!

Well that's all for today! I can't wait to work with Mrs. R over the summer to create a reader's log/notebook and hopefully some other Daily 5 (and Whole Brain Teaching) goodies! My grade level team and I were so grateful that she opened her classroom to us we truly learned SO MUCH :) Be on the lookout for our brainstorming of Daily 5 and WBT over the summer!

After School Fun!

I'm linking up with Doodle Bugs Five for Friday...

This week has been busy, busy, busy and on Sunday the hubby and I leave for our honeymoon (6 months after the fact!) Yay for April Break, I really need it this year!

 

Last Friday (after I had already linked with Doodlebugs for Five for Friday, we had a writing celebration. My kiddos had worked very hard to write a non-fiction piece, researching, writing, typing and illustrating so we had to celebrate! Half the kiddos read a section of their piece, then we had a "gallery walk" where the students walked around and could read stories out of each others' published boxes, then the other half got to read a section of their piece.

Remember the Marcy Cook workshop I went to last month? Well, I finally introduced these number tile task cards to my kiddos. If they had started using these earlier in the year I think these cards would be way to easy, but a lot of my kids are finding these as an exciting challenge because there is only one correct space for each of their number tiles and if you put the wrong one in one place you have to practically start over. Some of the kiddos are picking up on putting the "have to" tiles down first (places where no other number would fit) and working from there. So glad I purchased the tiles and cards. I think I may order more cards for next year from her website.

We are working on place value to 1,000 so I went searching for place value games on Teachers Pay Teachers and found loads of FREE games to use for math centers. Here are a few my kiddos have loved and a link to where I found them...

The above picture show a mystery number game, available free from Love to Learn here.

This shows a penguin place value dice game. This game came bundled with a few other games as well. Get it for free from Stephanie Stewart here.

This picture shows a Place Value Go Fish game that can be played with or without recording matches on the recording sheet. Find it free from T is for Teaching here.

As a part of my grad class that I am currently in (Multicultural Literature) I had to do a community outreach project. So I recruited a high school teacher who happens to be a mom of one of my students and some of her high school juniors and seniors. The recruits came after school one day this week and helped as I read The Legend of Blue Bonnet by Tomie DePaola and then did a craft with BLUE popcorn. Find the craft idea here.

The kiddos and high school folks had so much fun, we already planned for another event in May! So excited :)

In celebration of the FINALLY feeling like Spring weather, here are a few pictures

The Writing Process

Writer's Workshop & The Writing Process

This year is my first year implementing writer's workshop. I luckily was also starting grad school and my first class in September was The Writing Process, where we read Fletcher's fabulous book Writing Workshop the Essential Guide which I've talked about in other posts as well. It is super "user-friendly" and really talks you through the basics of writer's workshop but in a way that you can mold to fit in any classroom. I don't like books that try to "script" anything in your room, I like to make it my own and this book leaves lots of room for that!

So anyway, Writer's Workshop is going really well in my room, I like the "freedom" of it, giving the kiddos a lot of choice in what they write about, what they choose to publish, etc. Sometimes it is hard to meet my district's requirements, such as ensuring students have a published personal narrative when most of my kiddos preferred to make up a story rather than tell a story about themselves, but we're making it work.

One area that I've struggled with is knowing WHEN my students really need to conference. I really don't like when I am not able to meet with a certain kiddo for a few days and when I finally do meet with him or her I find out that they have needed to conference for days about their piece.

A few of the teachers in my building have a system where the kiddos velcro their name to a poster with each step of the writing process as they move throughout it. That way, they know when a kiddo needs to conference. Since I like "cutsie" and the sound of velcro gives me goosebumps, I decided to make a set of posters to display in my room to serve the same purpose.

So, I've created a TPT product with 2 sizes of writing process posters as well as a writing process "bookmark" to keep in their writing folders. I am planning to begin using the posters in my room after break. Each kiddo will have a clothespin with their name on it and will clip their name on the part of the writing process they are currently working on.

If you would like a different step or you call a step something different in your room, please contact me through TPT or here and I would be happy to customize the product for you! Click the image above to check out the product and stay tuned for more posts about Writer's Workshop in my classroom!

Math, Writing & a little Fall!

Now that the wedding is over... I can share a little of what's been going on in my class (in the midst of my mind being in pure panic mode!)

A couple weeks ago we had our Basic Addition Facts unit. The kiddos had a lot of fun with the math games I pulled from last year as well as some new math activities I found this year.

Make a Ten...

 

  

First the kiddos completed a mystery number sheet, coloring in the given addend to find the missing addend.

 

 

Next, they could create their own 10 trains and 10 facts.

I found this fun activity from Tunstall's Teaching Tidbits! She has these and a few other make ten activities for free on her fabulous blog!

Letter Writing...
This makes me realize how behind I am... here are some pics from my kiddos writing letters to their parents for when they came in on parent night. They were so cute deciding what they wanted their kids to look for in their classroom.

 I bought these templates along with a bunch of others from the writing templates from A Cupcake for the Teacher Writing Center Starter Kit.

Sensory Writing...
I taught this lesson last week and LOVED IT!
I had a whole bunch of sour gummy worms left over from our candy bar at the wedding, and just so happened to have read My Abuelita by Tony Johnston and asked them to listen for sensory words. We then created sensory word webs describing different items in the classroom. The kiddos were having such a hard time coming up with words for taste and smell, so I decided it was the perfect opportunity to get rid of the crazy amount of leftover candy we had...

First, I had the kids describe a sour gummy work (without showing it to them)

Then, I held up a couple gummy worms (while the kiddos drooled a little) and asked them what other sensory details they could add.

Finally, I let the kiddos have a couple gummy words. They had to create their own describing web of the worms and they had to do taste last or else they would have had nothing to describe.

The kiddos LOVED it and even started putting some sensory details into their writing during the days following.

Door Dec...
 The 2nd grade team asked parents to sign up to decorate our doors throughout the year (best idea ever considering my door was decorated all of 2 times last year... here is the amazing October door...

 Pumpkins...
One of my grade level partners showed me this adorable way of making paper pumpkins...
Cut out 11 equal sized orange circles and a green stem. Fold 10 of the circles in half. Cut an inch slit from the folded part inward on the 10 folded circles. Glue the stem on the flat circle. Use the cut slits to slide onto the flat circle...

spread the folded circles around and ta da you have a really cute pumpkin!

Fall Wedding...

And here's a little peek at our lovely fall wedding 2 weekends ago :)

Hopefully I will be more on top of posting now that the wedding is over... we shall see!