Happy New Year

Well I hope everyone had a great vacation...now back to the real world.  My goal for 2015 is to simplify my life at home and at school.  While brainstorming ways to make my life less complicated, I came up with the idea of making Daily 5 mini lesson units that had coordinating word work, listen to stories, work on writing, and partner reading activities.  The units would range in length from 2 weeks or more.  What do you all think?  Would this be something that would simplify your life when planning Daily 5?  What type of mini lesson topics would you be interested in?  Please give me your feedback and I will get to work ASAP!  The sooner I get started, the sooner I can get finished. When I finish each unit, I will be raffling off a free copy to all of you!

Hear from you all soon and as the sisters would say, "Live Daily!"

Mini Lessons...Where to Start?

When I first started teaching mini lessons I struggled with where to start.  I found this book and it helped me through the process. After doing several of the lessons in this book, I found I was developing my own.  Now, I feel confident in creating my own mini lessons that are quick and meaningful for my students. I just needed a little something to get me started.  Just thought I would share...HAPPY FRIDAY! 

Daily 5 is Common Core

We came, we saw, we presented! Thank you all who came to our presentation. We are so honored that you chose our session.

Preconference "selfie"

We had so many great questions.  One question at the end of our session has prompted me to write this blog post.  A participant asked, "When do you teach the Common Core standards?" Well, that is simple...the Daily 5 is Common Core.  Let me explain a little more by giving you the full picture of my day.

Here is a rough schedule of our day.  

7:55-8:15 Morning Work and Attendance

8:15-9:15 Daily 5 block

9:15-10:15 Math block

10:15-10:45 Shared Reading Block/Mini Lesson Time

10:45-11:15 Silent Reading

11:20-12:10 Recess and Lunch

12:15-12:30 Fundations (Phonic/Spelling block)

12:30-1:00 Special

1:00-1:30 Special

1:30-2:00 Writing

2:00-2:30 Science/S.S.

2:30-2:55 Snack and Assignment Notebook

2:55-3:05 Pack-up and go home

Where do I teach the Common Core?  At the start of the Daily 5 block, I do a quick mini lesson. Remember mini lessons should be about as many minutes as your students age, but no more than 10 minutes. I reteach a reading strategy that I have taught previously during my shared reading block.

I save my new teachings for my shared reading time.  I have blocked off 30 minutes for shared reading time, but as you can see I don't scheduled in bathroom breaks or flex time. My shared reading block usually is NOT 30 minutes because of this.  My shared reading lessons are longer than 10 minutes, but I do try to keep them shorter for my students attention span.  I often tell my students, "To be continued" if we need to end the lesson.   However, I always challenge them to try the strategy that I am teaching them during this lesson.

This year we were given a work book!  Eeek! Cue the scary music.

I am NOT a fan of workbooks.  However, this one has almost been a blessing.  (Never thought I would say that!)  This book addresses all the reading Common Core standards in it.  I start off my week with a lesson from the workbook.  This is an introduction to one of the Common Core reading standards. The rest of the week I create shared reading lessons that helps up dive deeper into the standard and practice the various strategies.  This book has given me a sort of scope and sequence to teach the standards in.

Here is an example...

 

Here was the first page of our workbook.  It addressed CCSS RI.2.1. 

On Monday we did this as a whole group.  We added the strategy Ask Questions to our CAFE board under comprehension. This is why I highly reccomend reading and implimenting The Cafe Book.

On Tuesday we read a nonfiction book about spiders.  Before we read the book, we wrote questions that we had.  As we read the book we added more questions and  wrote the answers down to our questions as we found the answers.

We continued in the same way with other non-fiction books on Wednesday and Thursday.

On Friday, just to spice things up and show the students that this strategy applied to fiction as well, I read the story, Where's Spot? by Eric Hill. We continued the same as we had all week.

After each shared reading lesson, I would challenge my students to ask questions before they read and to try stopping to check for understanding, by asking themselves questions about a book they were reading from their book bags.

While students are doing their Daily 5 task I am working with my guided reading groups.  During guided reading groups I reinforce the shared reading lessons and strategies that we are working on in class.  Again...teaching of the Common Core standards.

During silent reading students are practicing their reading strategies....common core in action!  While they are reading independently, I am conferencing with students one on one.  We read, discuss, and practice their strategies, which are all common core aligned.

At Pecatonica, we use Wilson Language Fundations program as our phonics/spelling program.  This program is aligned to the Common Core standards.  During this block is where I teach the foundational reading standards of Common Core.  During word work for Daily 5 students are working on repeated practice of previously taught word wall words or "trick words" as they are called in Fundations.  Sometimes, I will also have my students do word sorts, syllable sorts, or do other activities that were previously taught during my Fundations block. I never have students work on something that they have not been exposed to during our Fundations block!

We also use Write Steps Writing program to teach writing. This program is also aligned to the Common Core writing, language, and foundational standards.  During this block is where I model writing for my students.  Students also write during this time while I conference with individuals.  During my writing for Daily 5 students have writing activities that reinforce previously taught writing skills. 

There you have it folks. Our day in a nut shell.  Please, don't let the Common Core standards steer you away from the Daily 5 and CAFE!  Daily 5 is COMMON CORE.  The integration of the standards are done through out the Daily 5 block and our day.  I refuse to sell my soul to the Common Core Gods and sacrifice a balanced literacy program. I use Daily 5 time as the time where students are allowed to have the repeated practice of the strategies and standards that I have taught previously.  That's what makes the Daily 5 program rigorous.  If you have any questions, please feel free to email me any time and I will do my best to answer your questions.  Please share your Daily 5 experiences with me as well so we can learn from each other. 

In case you did not get your coupon for your free Graze box, here it is!  If you have not tried Graze yet, here is your chance with no obligation. I look forward to checking my school mailbox every Monday to find my week of healthy snacks nicely packed in the Graze box. For $6.95 each box...it is TOTALLY worth it!

Life Size Game Board!

We have all had one of those great ideas hit us at an unexpected time. The kind of idea that you get while your showering, in bed ready to fall sleep, running...you know what I am talking about.  The other day I had an EPIC idea, as one of my sweet little firsties put it.

I was tutoring one of my first graders after school one night and we were trying to memorize our high frequency words.  I could tell he was getting frustrated and bored.  I started writing words, with dry erase marker, on the square tiles on the floor.  The idea was to make him walk his words. As he was smiling and practicing his words...an idea hit me like a TON of bricks!

What if I made a HUGE game board on the floor so that all my students could practice their words. (Perfect Daily 5 Word Work activity!)

Here is the finished product!

To make this game board I went to Walmart and bought the cheapest electrical tape I could find.  You will not believe it, but I got it for $0.52 a roll!  What a steal.  I liked the idea of using electrical tape, because it is more durable than masking tape or painters tape, but not as intense as duct tape. 

The actual sticking of the tape did not take me very long.  I just followed the lines from the tiles on the floor.  No measuring, not thinking...my kind of prep!

After making the board itself, I started writing one high frequency word per square with Vis-a-Vis marker.  I also liked the idea of Vis-a-Vis because I could keep the words on the floor for a few days.  Dry erase markers would just rub off every time a student would walk on it. 

As I was writing words in the square, I thought to myself, "What is a game, without a few twists and turns?"  So, in some square I wrote "lose a turn" or "STOP, jump 5 times and say all the digraphs."  You could put any type of phonics review in the square.  

To play this game, I had students roll a giant, soft, not annoying quite dice.  Students would move that many squares. Once at their square, students had to read the word.  If they read it correctly they were good to go for their next turn.  However, if their partner said that they read the word incorrectly, they missed their next turn.  If they landed on a special square, they had to do what the square said before their next turn.  On the FINISH square, I had a very special ending task. 

I would say that my students LOVED this game. The best part about this activity, my students enjoyed it so much that they asked if they could play it at recess! WINNING!!!  The second best thing, I can wipe the words off and make another high frequency word game, vocabulary game, or math game. WINNING WINNING! (That's double winning for me!)

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Contraction Surgery



Mrs. Wanke's Wonderful Whales: Contraction Surgery:   Our reading group performed contraction surgery today! We had to take two words, cut them apart, and put them back together with ...

I met The Sisters!

For those of you who have been following my blog, know how much I L-O-V-E the Daily 5 and CAFE!  So when I got to meet The Sisters this week at the IRA conference in Chicago I was a blubbering mess. I wish I would have been a little more coherent and shared with them the impact their books have had on my classroom and my teaching. 
Oh well, who knows maybe I will get to meet them again and be able to compose myself enough to speak professionally.

CAFE and Daily 5

Here is my CAFE menu board.

I use the CAFE board to show students all the areas of good reading.  When I teach a specific comprehension, accuracy (decoding), fluency, or expanding vocabulary strategy I add it to our CAFE board.  Then when I conference with students we put their names on star Post-It notes for them to mark what strategy they are specifically working on.

I teach a CAFE lesson prior to starting Daily 5. My lesson will last any where from 10 to 15 minutes.  Students then use their Daily 5 card to select what Daily 5 activity they will do for the first 30 minute rotation.  After 30 minutes, I ring a bell two times, which signals students to clean up and meet me on the rug.  Then, I will teach another CAFE lesson or I a writing lesson. (10 to 15 minutes)  After the lesson, students use their Daily 5 card again to select what Daily 5 activity they will do for the second 30 minute rotation. 

What do I teach for my CAFE lessons?

A while back I found a teachers website that had a Beanie Baby for each of the comprehension and accuracy (decoding) strategies.  I LOVE this as did my students.  So when I embraced Daily 5 and CAFE I did not want to lose this.  However, with the CAFE board, I no longer had room to display all the Beanie Babies. I came up with a solution!  I added picture of the Beanie Babies to each of the CAFE menu cards.

**The link to the Beanie Baby Reading Strategies, is off of my classroom website. I am NOT the creator of these strategies.  The lady who created them no longer has them up on her website.  The last I heard she was working on publishing them, but has not done so at this time.**

http://aschilb.emsd37.org/reading/ReadingSTR.htm

I do not teach all of the CAFE strategies that "The Sisters" have laid out in their book.  I do use Cross Check, Tune into Interesting Words, and Read Good Fit Books.  I also do not introduce strategies in a specific order.  I introduce what the majority of my students are needing at the time. 

I use trade books for interactive read alouds/shared reading, anchor charts, science and social studies big books (content area) to teach and model each of the various comprehension, accuracy, fluency, and vocabulary strategies. 

My goal is to slowly upload some of  my "go to" lessons that I use to introduce these strategies. Please keep checking back often!

Pinterest...a GREAT place to find lesson inspiration for Daily 5

Now that you have implemented the Daily 5 in your classroom, you need lessons to teach before sending students off to work independently. I am planning on dedicating an entire post about how I implement CAFE into the mix.  However, I wanted to share a lesson I did with my students this past week.  I was inspired from an anchor chart that I saw on Pinterest.

This is the anchor chart that inspired me!  I found it on Pinterest...of course!  I <3 Pinterest.  Seriously, how did I teach prior to this amazing sight?  I found it on http://theinspiredapple.blogspot.com/.  Fabulous blog, you should all check it out!

Each of the questions are tied to a Common Core standard.  The problem for me was that these were first grade standards and I teach second grade.  After checking out the second grade Common Core standards, I found lots of questions that students should be asking...for fiction and non-fiction. So I started by making an anchor chart titled, Questions We Should Ask When Reading Fiction. It is my intent to make one for non-fiction as well.

I also only wanted to introduce the first two questions.  I wanted to create the anchor chart with my students, model what this looked and sounded like before adding the next question to the chart.  I believe that if students are apart of the making of the chart, then they will be more likely to reference the chart later on. However, I do NOT want to create this again next year, so I will be laminating this cart after this year.  Next year though, I will cover up all the questions and reveal them as we learn them. 

Here is what I did for the my lessons for the first two days of introducing this strategy. I did each lesson prior to my first rotation of Daily 5.  

Day One: RL.2.1

I explained to my students that good readers ask themselves who, when, when, where, why, and how WHILE they are reading.

I read the book, The Wednesday Surprise by Eve Bunting

I would read a few pages, stop and do a think aloud, modeling how I ask myself a who, what, when, where, why, or how question.  Then I would answer what I was thinking.  I would continue reading then I would pause and have students share with a thinking buddy a who, what, when, where, why, or how question.  The other partner would try and answer it.

Day Two: RL.2.6

I explained to my students that good readers pay close attention to who is telling the story.

I read the book, Almost to Freedom by Vaunda Micheaux Nelson 

 I read the first two pages, but paused before reading...being Lindy's doll baby was a right important job.  I asked students to turn to their thinking buddy and share who they thought was telling the story and how they knew. After sharing with their buddy, I ask students to share with me their thoughts.  Then I read the sentence...being Lindy's doll baby was a right important job.  I asked students if their predictions were right. 

I continued the book the same way as I had on with Wednesday Surprise, modeling who, what, when, where, why, and how questions and having students do the same with their thinking buddies. 

This book was longer, so I stopped after reading the page where Lindy and Miz Rachel were getting up in the middle of the night.  I told students I was going to level them in suspense. 

I will continue to post the lessons that I teach to go with each question on my chart and the finished anchor chart.  I promise in the posts to come I will touch on how this fits into CAFE, even sharing my literacy schedule to help it all make sense.  :)

Please feel free to let me know what you think!



Student managed rotations!

I am a firm believer that children need to take ownership over their learning.  Therefore, when it comes times for students to go to the various Daily 5 activities, I allow them to select what activity they will do...with parameters of course.  :)  Getting students to be independent when selecting their activity, takes lots of time and modeling at the beginning of the year, but totally pays off!

Each students is given a laminated Daily 5 card.  Notice there are only 4 of the 5 Daily 5 activities.  My students do not have a choice whether they will silent read on a particular day.  This is something that every child does every day.
We start off Daily 5 with a CAFE lesson. (More on this during a later post...some stop on back.)  After the lesson I direct students to go back to their seats at take out their Daily 5 cards.  These are kept in their book bags.  (All materials needed for Daily 5 are kept in their book bags.)

With a Vis-a-Vis marker, students write the date that they chose to do the particular activity. Students are taught that the must do each activity once, before the can do it a second time. They can't do an activity a third time until they have done everything a second time.  This ensure that students are getting equal amount of practice of each Daily 5 activity. Please note that not every square will be filled in by the end of the week.  If we have a full week of school, each activity will be done at lease twice.

While students are doing their Daily 5 activity, I am working with my guided reading and strategy groups. (Again more on this during a later post!)  When we are done with the first rotation, I ring my bell two times.  This signals the students to clean up and meet me on the rug for our writing lesson.  After the writing lesson is done, we begin our next rotation of the Daily 5 the same way that we began the first.

First Things First...Read to Self

If you are familiar with the Daily 5 the 5 components of the Daily 5 are Read to Self, Listen to Stories on Tape or CD, Work on Writing, Word Work, and Partner Read.  Students rotate to all the activities every day with mini lessons in between each rotation.  I could NOT make this rotation schedule work for me because of time and specials. 
I only had time for 2 or 3 rotations each day, but I felt very strongly that Read to Self should be happening DAILY....period!  So here is what I have worked out in my classroom.
Every morning when students arrive they drink milk and silent read for 30 minutes.  (We do 2 or 3 rotations of the other activities later in the morning during Daily 5 time. More on this in a later post.)  While my students are reading I am holding reading conferences.
During Read to Self time, my students are reading books from their book bags.  Each student has a Book Bag that has books they have selected that are at their independent reading level. Fridays are Free Read Fridays and students can read any book from our room they would like.  The goal is they will use the I PICK method taught earlier in the year. :)

How do I know that  my students are getting books at their independent reading level?  Well, I have two classroom libraries in my room.

This is my leveled library.  The books are leveled using the Fountas and Pinnell guided reading levels. The baskets are given a color coded sticker rather than the actual level so as to not put too much student focus on the level. After I conference with students I direct them to the appropriate basket where they can pick out 10 books for their book bags. 

This is my classroom library that is divided into a fiction and nonfiction section.  Books are organized into various categories.  Some are organized by subject and others are organized by author.  Each basket has a sticker indicating what books are in that location. On the back of each book their are two stickers.  The first sticker is a fiction or nonfiction sticker so students know what section of the library the book belongs.  The second sticker is a label sticker that matches the sticker on the basket.

This is the nonfiction section of my library.

This is the fiction section of my library.

Daily 5 and Cafe.

I am a huge fan of the Daily 5 and Cafe, but like many teachers have adapted the two methods to better meet the needs of my students and classroom.  I am going to dedicate my posts in April to sharing how I have implemented Daily 5 and Cafe into my classroom and sharing some of the resources that I have created to help facilitate the process.

If you are a fan of Daily 5 and Cafe share your ideas as well.  Let's make April Daily 5 and Cafe month!  



Both of these books can be purchased off of Amazon.com.  I highly recommend both of them.

http://www.amazon.com/