A Peek At Our Week: Characterization and Text Structure

Hello, friends! I hope that everyone had a great Monday!  Last week was our first full week of the Daily Five and overall it went really well.  Of course we have a few things we need to work on but I know we will be pros before too long!

I changed up my rotation board and some of the things my students will be doing during the Daily Five a bit this year.  I purchased my new rotation cards from Jessica, aka The TeacherTalk.  I loved all the different options; you can find them in here store {here}.

This year I added a vocabulary station, a journaling station, and a task card station.  So I guess you could say that my Daily Five block has more of a workstation vibe this year. 

This reason for adding the additional stations was because I wanted to provide my students with additional exposures to our vocabulary words/skills and I also wanted to give them additional opportunities to work on some of the anchor standards and skills that are often on our end of the unit/year assessments.  Including these two stations has made a difference already. 

Responding to reading is huge part of our PBA PARCC assessments, so I wanted to make sure we all got a head start when it came to responding to our reading. I just started introducing responding to reading to some of my groups and I'll share more of what my students do later in the year.  

Last week our task card station had my students reviewing main idea.  Most groups used {these} task cards, which you will see below, and my below level/IEP students used {these} task cards. 

Since I have a large number of IEP students this year, I knew additional exposures to our vocabulary words would help them better understand our anchor text and allow them to be more successful on our biweekly comprehension tests.  This week our vocabulary station had my students reviewing the meanings of our Treasures vocabulary words for The Raft.  My students played vocabulary memory, vocabulary dominoes, filled out a crossword and then wrote sentences with our vocabulary words.  I somehow forgot to take pictures of this station but I think you get the gist of how our vocabulary station works/functions.  

As the year progresses, my students will do more with Greek/Latin roots and figurative language for their vocabulary station work but this certainly works for now! 

My students always love our word work workstations, which I use for my spelling stations.  I use parts of Amanda’s Words Galore pack and other materials that I’ve collected throughout the years.  Their favorites this year are sign language, sandpaper words and magnet words.

During our reading rotations I focused on characterization and informational text structure with my students.  I got lucky last week because the main selection from our basal,The Raft,  is a great book to use for characterization because the main character, Nicky, makes such a drastic change from the beginning to end of the book. 

On Monday, I modeled how to use a character’s actions, thoughts/feelings and words when choosing his/her character traits.  I used the following anchor chart, no judging, and passage for this mini lesson. 

In small groups, we examined Nicky’s thoughts/feelings, words and actions from the first half of the book carefully in our small groups to choose character traits that best described him the first time we met.  I sadly don't have a picture of this activity but I did use of the character graphic organizers from this pack. 

We finished the book as a whole class later in the week and discussed how Nicky’s character changed during the story. 

I noticed while meeting with my small groups, many of my students wanted to use words like “not nice” or “mad” to describe Nicky.  Which was true BUT weren’t the best words to describe him.  We used several of Rachel’s characterization task cards as a whole class to practice choosing good fit character traits throughout the week.  I had my students work with their shoulder partner to choose character traits to describe the characters in the passages I showed on the Smartboard.   With lots of practice, they got much better as the week went on.

The students that needed a little bit more practice with choosing good character traits worked with me later in the week.  I used these task cards from Teaching With a Mountain View! I love that these cards are good context clue practice as well!

If you use Treasures, you know the third text of the week is always nonfiction.  I’ve been trying to use these more and more, especially to help teach different text structures.  In our second round of small groups this week, we read a passage called Into the Swamp.  We identified its text structure, completed a graphic organizer, and also learned how maps can be helpful text features. 

We also reviewed the types of sentences this past week because I had noticed that so many of my students needed review with ending punctuation.  We started by watching the following Brainpop Junior video, which was fantastic!

We also took notes on the four main sentence types with the flip book from my Types of Sentences Activity pack.  

Later in the week, we also did the types of sentences graffiti wall activity from my Types of Sentences pack as well.  I had a meeting before school that day, so I wasn't able to to prep the actual templates from my pack like I would have liked to because I teach writing/grammar first thing in the morning.  However, they still really LOVED the modified version. :)

Well I think that recaps our week! :)  We were certainly busy but we sure did have fun and learned a lot too! 

A Day Our Way Link Up

Happy Saturday! I hope that all of you have a little extra time for some R&R this weekend. :) We have Monday off and I'm excited to have a little bit more time to relax this weekend, even if the snow ruined my plans to hang out with some of my dear blogging friends.  

A question I commonly get asked since I shared that I am using the Daily Five literacy model in my class is how I schedule it.  It wasn't easy to come up with a schedule but luckily I have a coworker who loves doing that sort of thing and we have found a plan that works for us.  I have four groups and meet with three out of the four each day. I think that's the beauty of the Daily Five.  It's so adaptable! 

To answer some of those questions and to collaborate with others in the blogging community, I'm linking up with a fellow Buckeye, Amelia, today for her A Day Our Way Linky.  :)  

I spent some time last night looking through all the other entries,  and I got a lot of great ideas! Fabulous idea, Amelia. :) 

I teach ELA, reading and language/grammar, to two classes.  I keep my homeroom until after lunch and my afternoon class until dismissal. 

My students start arriving at 9:25. Until 9:45, we conduct our morning business.  Since so many of my students participate in our school's breakfast program, I do not do any type of formal morning work.  My students come in, vote for their lunch count on the Smartboard, fill out their planners for my class, return their classroom library books, read, or write in their journals.  They really value this amount of choice and I typically have no problem with behavior during this time.  Our school announcements also are shown on the TV at this time. 

At 9:45, we go to specials and I have my plan period.  First period plan takes some getting used to but I really like it! Especially on the mornings where you have other meetings.  

At 10:25, I pick up my students and we go back to our room.  Then most students do fluency tubs while I work with a group of students on cloze reading passages.  You can read more about my fluency tubs {here}.  My students love this time of the day, they love playing games! It's made a huge difference in their Dibels and Daze scores too! 

At 10:40, some of my students leave for Title One reading or Junior Great Books, an enrichment program.  During this time, I start to pull my first guided reading group.  This time is a little longer than the other groups, which works out great.  For the first ten minutes, I do fluency checks or reading conferences.  Sometimes we do a Text Detective sheet together OR we just have a longer group time. 

I often start off with a little vocabulary activity for the vocabulary/language activity we are working on.  Then we work on our comprehension skills/strategies.  Our district uses a 2008 version of Treasures.  Often we read part of the weekly story, use the leveled readers, or work with a passage from Storyworks.  We have to supplement a lot. I don't mind as I really enjoy being creative and have wonderful bloggy friends who have helped me out tremendously.  

At 11:10, all my students come back and I do a ten minute mini lesson on one of the skills we are working on.  This is very much a work in progress.  Sometimes we read a short passage and practice our comprehension skill or a game related to our vocabulary strategy of the week.  It varies. Some days, like on Mondays, I combine the two together to introduce our weekly vocabulary works and make an anchor chart for our comprehension skill.  

As the week goes on, I plan what I do with my mini lessons based on misconceptions I see in small groups or on formative assessments I give.  

At 11:20, we typically have our second rotation of the Daily Five.  

I try the best I can to differentiate these group lessons as much as possible, especially if it's the second time we've worked with the skill.  Sometimes a lot of groups need more concrete practice, so we often do a lot of task cards.  While some groups are ready to apply the skill with another text.  I also use their Descartes reports from our MAP tests to help plan as well. 

At 11:40, we have another mini lesson if I didn't combine them.  For vocabulary/language, I download a lot of free little games from Smarttech Exchange.  Typically we will have a mini lesson on vocabulary and a mini lesson on comprehension if they aren't combined. 

At 11:50, I see my last group of the day. Typically this is one of my higher groups.  I spend most of time working with them, trying my best to enrich them, and then spend time explaining their extension project of the week the first time I meet with them.  These projects are completed during the rotation times where they don't meet with me. 

Often these are journal prompts or response menus about a text we read that week from my sweet friend, Amanda.  They often work on Jen Jones, Hello Literacy, Shades of Meaning Center as well.  As the year has gone on, and most students are aware of our expectations, and I am introducing these activities to my other groups as well. :)

At 12:15, we clean up and begin writing.  We use the Being a Writer program.  I do supplement a bit with units on TpT, especially when it comes to organizing their writing.  I usually begin with a mini lesson and then giving the kiddos time to work on their pieces while I try my best to conference with some of them.  

At 12:45, we start to get ready for the recess and lunch.  If we have time, we pack up our book bags too.  We have recess before lunch at my school this year and I love it! This way, I am not dealing with all kinds of recess drama when I pick them up from lunch.  It's great!

After lunch, we head upstairs and my partner teacher and I switch classes and my day starts all over again.  The only real change then is that I haven't quite found the ten minutes to do fluency tubs with them.  Ideally, this is right after we switch classes but most of time after the kiddos are done unpacking, telling me about any dismissal changes, etc., we only have five minutes until many of them leave.  It's my goal in this second half of the year to really find the time to do it! They do make such a difference. Many of the kiddos in my morning class saw gains of 20+ words per minute in their Dibels scores. 

My schedule isn't perfect, but works for us. Somedays, our groups run over a few minutes, so writing starts a little later, but that's okay. I love teaching reading this way this year.  I've seen huge growths in a lot of my kiddos and I feel that I know them as readers in a much more personal way.  Sometime soon, I'll share how we do Word Work, Work on Writing, and Read to Self, the tasks my students complete when they aren't working with me, in my room.  

Thanks, Amelia for a great link up! Have a great weekend, friends!

A Peek Into Our Week: Mighty Jackie

 

Happy October, everyone! :) Even though this month has only been four days long, it has been jammed packed with SO much. I completed my first set of OTES evaluations, our first night of parent teacher conferences, papers for graduate class, and a sickness to boot.  Even though this week was super busy, we had a lot of fun in reading this week!

Our Treasures' story this week was Mighty Jackie. 

 

Mighty Jackie is a great little book about Jackie Mitchell, a seventeen-year-old who played against the New York Yankees in an exhibition game and struck out Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig.  Since baseball's post season just started, it was the perfect week to read this story.

Our district has a 2008 version of Treasures, so we've been aligning each story to the Common Core ourselves. This past week we focused on point of view and using specific details from the selection when responding to questions about the text.  

On Monday, I introduced point of view by reading two versions of The Three Little Pigs. 

The True Story of the 3 Little Pigs

The Three Little Pigs

Fairy Tales are a great way to introduce point of view, there are so many great options! 

This is what our focus wall looked like this week. I got the posters from my fabulous friend, Nicole Shelby's Point of View pack. I also her pack in my small groups this week.  

I used the point of view paragraph's from Nicole's pack at the beginning of the week with each of my groups.  They were great for quick formative assessments, and my students really enjoyed them!

I put the recording sheets in page protectors and just reused them throughout the week, loved it! :)

In the beginning of the week, we focused on point of view as read Mighty Jackie.  Later in the week, we practiced some Close reading techniques as we answered questions about the story. 

Again, I just put the questions in page protectors and reused the questions with most of my groups.  It was a great way to save paper and added some novelty to increase engagement in groups this week.

 

I have a large percentage of gifted kiddos this year, so I've been extending their thinking with Amanda's fabulous  Just Glue It! Multi-Step Response prompts.  My students LOVED writing journal entries from Jackie's point of view and I was blown away by how amazing their writing was! 

My kiddos LOVED Jackie's story and kept asking so many questions about her, so luckily I found this video on You Tube.  They really enjoyed seeing some actual footage of Jackie striking out Babe Ruth. 

Today, with some of my groups we read a passage I found about Lizzie Murphy, another woman who played professional baseball during the same time period as Jackie. 

We compared the two women after reading about Lizzie and it was a great way to squeeze in a review of comparing and contrasting.  

Today we read Players in Pigtails as a class as a mini lesson. Players in Pigtails is about Katie Casey and the All American Girls Professional League.

This book is also available on United Streaming as well and is narrated by Zooey Deschanel.  My students really enjoyed this book too and it lead to a lot of great discussions about the advancements that have been made in the opportunities girls have in sports now, compared to when Lizzie and Jackie were girls and during the 1940s.  We also used specific details from the text to answer questions about the story. 

All this talk and reading about baseball lead to a surge in interest in some of these books.  :) My boys have quite the waiting list going on with these. :)


Well, that was a little recap of our week.  We had a lot of fun this week, and I'm almost sad the week is over.   Have a great weekend!