Five for Friday

Hi Peeps!

It's been a crazy few weeks, and while lots of learning has been going on, not a lot of picture taking as been going on!

It's nuts at how busy my class is keeping me-I often forget how far we come in a school year.

So, here is an update of what we've been working on - mostly anchor chart style. :)

First and foremast, the most important thing that has happened...

MY SHELVES WERE FIXED!! :D

Look at that beautiful gloriousessness! It's so pretty. It's so organized. I'm in love. :)

We've been spending some time talking about perseverance and how mistakes are okay.We've also been talking about how everyone is smart, but just in different ways. To go along with that, I recreated a chart I found on Pinterest.

We've also been learning about different ways to get along, and how we can start solving some of our own problems.

We've been focusing on sentences and meaning in writing.

Now for the biggie!

We've been spending a lot of time learning alllllll about reader responses and how to do them (as well as practicing them!). {Here are the posts I did last year, which is guiding my instruction this year. Post 1, Post 2}

We've just started learning about character traits, and have already learned about plot and setting.

We've covered a lot! We also been working on math-not to worry about that! We're almost done chapter 1, and will be starting chapter 2 soon.

Here's to the busyness of the beginning of the year starting to slow down soon!

Smiles and Sunshine,
Kaitlyn

Summer Reading

Even though I have 9.5  (+4 PD) days left until 'summer', I'm already thinking (and reading!) books for next year!

(End of June seems to be really productive for me school-wise-maybe because I have it fresh in my mind what I want to fix and the possibilities are endless?)

On that note, I'm linking up with Adventures of Room 129 for her summer reading linky!
Now, you can bet that I'll be downing the romance novels like candy. :)

So I thought I would focus on my professional reading instead!

First up is Learn Like a Pirate. The Primary Gal has a book study on this that I'm doing-I love reading different perspectives!

It was a nice, easy read, with some very interesting ideas about doing a student-led classroom. I enjoyed it (and took lots of notes!). I'll definitely be trying to incorporate some of the strategies next year!

I'll also be trying out Academic Conversations on for size!

I'm very interested in having more classroom discussions-and more thoughtful ones at that! I'm hoping this will be a good starting point!

I'll also be doing a reread of Guided Math, which I read for the first time 3 summers ago-and have a series of blog posts because it was a book study with Primary Inspired!

I'm not happy with the way my math block is running (and part of that was learning a new program this year), and don't feel like I'm reaching all the needs of my students.

I'm hoping to do an overhaul for next year, and I think rereading this will help me refocus on what I want to accomplish!

I'm sure that they'll be more books in there-after all, I'm a voracious reader (and wonder why some authors can't write faster so I can have new books! ;)-but those are the three I'm hoping to spend the most time with this summer!

What are you reading?

Smiles and Sunshine,
Kaitlyn

Fact and Opinion

This week, our focus has been fact and opinion.

Obviously, we started with a chart ;)

After we had discussed it, I separated them out into pairs to read a Scholastic News (an old one-from March-I'm so behind on all of these...)

Students had to pick something from the text, decide if is was fact or opinion and tell why (of course!)

The next day, I wrote a bunch of different topics on index cards.

I held them in my hand like a fan of cards (with the backs to the kids, of course!), and had each student pick a card.

I loved their reactions to see what they had gotten! I didn't tell them ahead of time what I had written, and they couldn't see what they were picking. Made for some interesting reactions/faces :)

Students then had to 'research' their topic-using books from our library-and write down 5 facts and 5 opinions about their topic on a piece of paper (the facts and opinions needed to be all mixed together).

Then they had to switch with a partner, and the partner had to figure out which were the facts, and which were the opinions.

 Of course, they needed to know the answer in order to correct their friends' work!

For the next day, they had to read a story out of our book, and pull out sentences and determine fact and opinion.

Students did pretty well with this unit! I love that we are at the point with this program (this is our 3rd year), that when I go over certain skills it doesn't take nearly as long as it did in previous years (one of the only good things about the program...)

Next up, classifying and categorizing!

Smiles and Sunshine,
Kaitlyn

Notebook Evolution ~ Reading

I've talked before about my reading notebooks, but they went through an evolution just like all the others!

The first year, we had composition books.  I switched to a 3-subject notebook for subsequent years.

In year 1, I made an attempt to have foldables and information.

We wound up using the notebooks for reading responses-which I didn't have very well organized or really graded.

I feel bad for that class-I was experimenting with different things, and not all of them worked out. My style has definitely changed in just a few years (both literally and figuratively! I used to wear higher heels when teaching-now it's super low heels (like less than an inch), flats, and on rare occasions-wedges. I've embraced my shortness :)

The next year is when the revelation occurred. I discovered Nicole Shelby's Reading Notebooks!

That's all I used for reading.

This year, year 3, I've started adding in some of my own things, and having the students do examples as well.

I still use her notebooks as a base, but I'll change up the writing, or add in another page, or example for practice.

Inspired by the blizzard that started it all this winter:)

Nicole Shelby on the right-me on the left!

I'm excited to see how my notebooks will evolve next year!

That's one of my favorite things about teaching-we're always looking for ways to be better, to change it up and to make it more meaningful. Every day, every year is different!

I hope you've enjoyed seeing how my notebooks have evolved-it was very interesting to me to lok back and see how they've changed!

Smiles and Sunshine,
Kaitlyn

Close Reading: Poetry Style

Earlier this week, we worked on some of our close reading skills. Using what I've learned from my workshops, we close read some poetry.

We started off with 'Let It Go'. I had my paper passer pass them out blank side down, and then I had the kids flip them over at the same time.

The reactions were awesome! There were some cheers, as well as lots of moans and groans. Most of my kids have little siblings who constantly play the song/movie :).

I had them do the first read on their own, and write down what they thought the message the author was trying to get across was.

After we shared, we came together to do the next part.

I read it a second time, asking them to listen for figurative language as I read. There were some giggles during this, as I was trying hard not to sing...and I guess it came our serious/sarcastic to my kids!

We marked up our text together, numbering the paragraphs, different types of figurative language and rhyme structure.

Then I had them find two examples (from the text-one group somehow got a little confused-even though everyone else knew it was text evidence) of the author's message we came up with. I had them work in pairs for this part, so they could discuss it.

Then I showed them how to do the Poetry sheet I got from the Mailbox ages ago.
Now it was time for them to do it on their own! And by on their own, I mean with partners :)

I had them do the same steps we did for 'Let It Go' for a Robert Frost poem I typed up a few years ago.

Some groups worked very well together, and some needed a little more guidance.

But all of them worked fairly hard!

This lesson took a lot longer than I thought it would-the whole afternoon! I definitely this is was worth it to expose them to more poetry and get those thinking caps going!

Smiles and Sunshine,
Kaitlyn