Thanksgiving

For Thanksgiving the kids put together a special play for their parents. We invited parents up to our room for a mini-play and then for a Thanksgiving feast afterwards. We had so much fun putting together this play and making our costumes. We recited several poems and songs for the parents, then performed a readers theater for them. Afterwards the room was transformed into a family feast for parents and students to enjoy spending time together while sharing Thanksgiving lunch.

After our play we had a special guest speaker come up with authentic Native American artifacts (and a few replicas) to help us better understand the Native Americans of Arkansas. It was such a great day!

Finally we ended our day with getting to touch some real turkey parts. The kids were so fascinated with all we did and I know it'll be something they'll remember!

5 little turkeys

We are slightly obsessed in my room with technology. I'm always trying to find ways for my students to challenge themselves and respond to literature, math, and science using technology. Our current obsession is iMovie. After reading the five little turkeys poem the students wanted to act that out and create an iMovie. We talked about how movie creators begin the creative process for a movie and the kids drew out a picture story to match the poem. Here is our final product...

Guided Reading

Guided reading is definitely a passion of mine. Don't get me wrong, when I started teaching the scariest thing in the world was the thought of teaching these babies to read. So I dove right in and with the help of my amazing Literacy Coach Kelli, some great ELLA training, and lots of research I found my way. Over the years I have developed my own method to my madness and it has become a sort of obsession of mine. After all, I feel like this block of teaching is possibly the most important block of time for my students. So to get started I began with organization. How was I going to keep track of my groups (and how on earth do I group students), keep track of my lessons, their individual work, the books, and spend hours each afternoon doing so. Ok, so let's start with the very beginning. 

1. How do I group my students?

At the beginning of the year I take my students DRA scores and sort them onto my guided reading folder. As you can see it's separated by levels so that helps me to group them by level and see how many kids for each group and if I can move a few kids around to make the groups more manageable.

Then I use my folder from  Debbie Diller's Making the Most of Small Groups to make sure I know the skills they will most likely need to begin with.

Now it's time to put the groups together on my baskets. I got this shelf from Lowe's with the colored bins. On the handle is the list of students in that group and inside is the materials I will need, mostly books. I use colored bins to correlate with my small group folder. This way everything is more organized.

Then I can begin planning for my groups. Debbie Diller inspired me to create these lesson plans for all the levels. I will try and get these uploaded to my tPt account

After that it's just a matter of staying consistent, making it fun for the kids but still keeping a routine, and having everything handy and organized.  Here are a few more pics from behind my desk area.

My routine for guided reading for the most part stays the same, at least until I know the focus should be more on comprehension because they have the word attack strategies down. After I call my kids to the table I listen to one student read and take a running record. The other students are reading quietly from their book as well. I take notes on a notecard (another one of Debbie Diller's brilliant suggestions). I have found that having these notecards helps me to plan better.  After they read I of course give a praise and something to work on. We review skill from previous day and discuss the story (some comprehension). This is where I might do a writing response if appropriate, or a sentence building activity.  After that we do a quick sight word review where the kids use their dry erase boards to write two or three sight words from the new story. Then we build a new word (usually a sight word or a new skill) with magnetic letters. If we are working on a skill or strategy I will do this at this time. Then I'll do a book talk with them and we will locate tricky words as well as words with that featured skill. We make predictions, connections, etc. during this time as well. Then I have the students read independently while I listen and take notes on their cards. Afterwards we discuss one more time the skill and I'll make some more praise points and remind students of things to correct. I send them off to read to a partner in the classroom, then they take their new book home.

This all happens in about 15-20 minutes, depending on the speed and attention of the group. Again it stays basically the same until they get to around level 12-14 in which time I'll begin diving into more comprehension.