TWIMA- project

http://thetwimaproject.weebly.com/

Check out a project we are going to take part in soon!! Excited to have the help of one of our school techies, Elizabeth Adams with this! I'll keep you updated on our process/ journey of becoming a part of this poetry i-book. 

Daily five!

We've had a great week of guided reading groups using the daily five format. This weeks focus during reading groups has been to retell the beginning, middle, and end of the stories read. They are grouped on their reading ability for reading groups with myself or our TA and then they are mixed up on varying abilities for the other centers; read to self/buddy, listen to reading, word work, and writing. 

We started a new writing center based on writing prompts that are created from the app, "write about it." I can also create my own prompts from pictures I take to have a focus that goes along with the writing objectives for the week. During read to self they are picking a good fit book using the five finger rule(0-1 unknown words is too easy, 2-3 unknown words good fit, 4-5 too difficult). After they read the story they write what happened in the begging, middle and end in their reader response journals. 

For word work, the focus has been on writing this weeks word family words and creating more in the -op, -ot,  and -ock families. After they complete those word family houses they chose a word from each family to use in writing a compete sentence. Lastly, during listen to reading they are choosing a story to listen to on tumble books. 

Here's a look at this weeks centers! 

Math and More!

Math stations are up and running! This is one of my favorite parts of the day because it's incredible to see how they take charge of their learning to discover answers using strategies taught. Math block is usually composed of a whole group lesson followed by independent practice and/or stations if time allows. After each skill has been thoroughly taught and practiced I will assess for mastery to determine if I need to create skill groups to reinforce certain areas of need. The stations are created to review previous math strategies and tasks learned, as well as, provide exposure to knew tasks/skills that require applying knowledge and understanding of what was taught in the daily lesson. Math talk is modeled and teacher guided during stations to use higher level thinking and understanding of how they came to an answer.

Readers workshop weekly overview

Mrs Darrows, 4th grade class is going to be buddy reading with us on Fridays! We will do guided reading groups Mon-Thurs and then do an engaging project activity on Fridays to go along with the weeks reading focus. This past week we focused on classroom rules and readers workshop expectations. For our Friday activity, the students heard the story "No David!" and we discussed the importance of rules. Following the discussion they did a first grade rules writing assignment where they had to write about the important rules they have learned. Then they created a David character to remind us how crazy it would be if there weren't rules in school and if students didn't follow them!

Writers workshop

Our writers workshop has started off on how to brainstorm ideas for topics to write about. The kids brainstormed people, places, animals and things they can write about to refer back to through out the writing unit. We are focusing on writing detailed stories so we begin by telling the story to a partner and they ask questions to help each other make their stories more detailed. The students are also practicing how to sound out words by saying it, clapping it, and then writing it. I've been drilling in their heads that I don't want to hear, "How do you spell...?" It's important not to give them a crutch by spelling out words and rather have them work through tricky words by sounding them out, to help them become better writers! 

Learning in action

I am a firm believer of the power of working in small groups. We have been practicing how to collaborate and share ideas. Students are assigned roles at their tables to help the discussions and activities run smoothly. There's a table leader who passes the cone to whoever is talking, a recorder, time manager, and question leader. It's going to be a continued process to practice to work effectively in group settings. We are off to a great start and have heard great ideas being thrown around during our research(science/ ss) time.

It's been crucial to lay the foundation of how readers workshop runs and I have been slowly introducing reading stations. I've assessed all students reading abilities and will begin guided reading groups this week. We are using the daily 5 model. Students will read to self/buddy reading, guided reading, have a listening/computer station, writing station and word work station. We've gone in depth discussing their roles and my roles during readers workshop. We will be going deeper into how to pick a "just fit" book to read independently this week. One great trick to encourage your child to do at home is the "five finger rule" if they open a book and don't know more than 5 words on a page, it's too difficult. If they know every word on a page, it's too easy. They should aim for around 2-4 unknown words a page.

Starting off in first!

We had a great first couple weeks getting to know one another and learn the classroom expectations. Below they are playing a game on the iPods to answer questions about me, for a get to know me game. We will be incorporating technology a lot this year and using iPads and iPods to creating projects/ book reports and use higher level thinking.

Every week students have to synergize together with their friends at their tables to get table tallies. The table with the most table tallies at the end of the week gets to eat lunch with me! Below they are also taking a brain break to get the wiggles out. We had a lot if fun these first two weeks. I can tell it's going to be a great year!