Managing Transitions and Drawing Conclusions Fun

This week, I finally sat down and made what has become a LIFESAVER in my classroom.  

Inspired by my blogging BFF, Sandy and Mary Lirette, I made a Powerpoint with all the songs I use for my transitions anyways and it has been a lifesaver.  I'm no longer fumbling with my iPod or my iTunes account.  It's been a great addition to our class.  I use TV theme songs as transitions, they really are the perfect length and it's so cute to see my big kids get excited about their favorite show's song playing.  Their favorites are our line up for specials song "Spongebob, Squarepants" and our paper pass out song "Saved by the Bell."  I LOVE having the slide up all day and having a song for practically every transition we have in our class has saved us SO much time!  They are now challenging each other to finish transitioning BEFORE the song ends.  Love it! :)

In reading, our skill for the next two weeks is drawing conclusions.  I LOVE when our skills back up to one another because we can really dig deep with our skill.  

Our Treasures story of the week was The Blind Hunter.  Before actually reading the story, we used the little vocabulary story in Treasures to create an anchor chart for drawing conclusions. 

 
On the day we focused on our main story, we completed a page in our reading notebooks.  I've been TRYING to include an entry for each skill we do.  Just another way to try to make our learning visible and permanent. 

Today, we become Conclusion Detectives! :)

I used pieces of Rachel Lynette's Drawing Conclusions Task Cards with an organizer that I whipped up before school today.  I can't say enough how much I LOVE her task cards.  She has them for ppractically every reading skill.  They are perfect for introducing skills, formative assessments, reteaching, centers, etc! Rachel's pack does come with one but I also wanted to see their thinking while they were working through the cards. I also used parts of Tiffany Gannon's Drawing Conclusions Packet as well to pull it all together, namely her Conclusion Dectectives name tags and anchor charts.  My kiddos loved this! It was the perfect thing to release the excess energy they had because it was snowing when they got to school today.  I gave each table an envelope of cards and they did so well.  Since we've been encoporating more Kagan structures in our classroom, group work has become so much more successful in our room. :) 

I will look over their recording sheets this weekend to help me plan my guided groups next week.  Our story next week will be Dear Mrs. LaRue.  I know my kiddos will LOVE it.  

As if being Conclusion Detectives wasn't exciting enough,  we got to use our school's brand new set of iPads today. :)  It was a great but exhausting day, so I'm going to curl up on my couch with Glee on Netflix. :)  

Have a great weekend!