Fluency Fun

One of my groups has been really struggling with their fluency while reading. I wanted something quick and easy to help them, that we could do every day-practice makes perfect!

I found exactly what I was looking for in Teaching With a Mountain View's shop (she has amazing stuff btw!)

Fortunately, she had bundled her task cards!


So after printing, laminating, hole-punching, we were ready to use them!

Each day, I give the kids two cards to practice on (They practice independently when group is over).

The next day, I have them read the cards that they had. When they are done, we discuss (as a group) what they could have done better. This way, I have the other kids listening for what good fluency sounds like-and they may pay more attention to it in their own reading!

After we discuss what they need to improve on-we talk about what they did well! Now they are feeling good about themselves, knowing they are doing some things well with their fluency.

Since I have four students in group, we switch cards for the second day (ex. Student A has cards 1,2 and B has 3,4. Now Student A has 3,4 and B has 1,2). This also makes the students 'experts' on the second day, so their critiques are more thoughtful, because they know what the card says and have an idea what it should sound like.

I've also found this book helpful-it's full on fun poems!

We used this last week on Thursday and Friday (because we are on vacation this week and I didn't want to start a new book).

On Thursday, I introduced the poems and we did a 'cold' read. We talked about how we could improve-and then I read it to them and asked them what they noticed. Then on Friday, we read the same poem again-with 100 times improvement!

These small strategies has really helped this group! One of my girls basically reads word by word, and just by doing the cards, her fluency has improved (I'm not saying that it is awesome and amazing, but it is better!).

My hope is that this group will be fluent, expressive readers by the end of the year!

Smiles and Sunshine,
Kaitlyn

Monday Made It

Happy Monday!

Time for Monday Made It!

My first made it isn't something I personally made...


Well, I made a big purchase-I had to get a new laptop!

Mine died on Saturday-which is making me sad (It's truly dead-it would cost almost as much to fix it as it was to get a new one.). Especially because I didn't really want to spend any money. :(

Oh well.

So I went from this...

So sad, Dell! I'll miss you. It was a good 5 1/2 years.

To this...

This will take some time...

I'm still getting used to it. There has been some frustration and tears-but fortunately, I didn't lose a lot of stuff (only about a week's worth) because I have an external hard drive (if you don't have one-GET ONE!). It saved me more frustration and money than trying to recover data from the lost hard drive.

On to more fun things!!

Remember this-way back when?

My Super Secret Christmas Project?

Well, it turned out to be a blanket for my sister-which she LOVED and brought back to school with her!

I also made a smaller, couch-sized one for myself since I like the pattern so much!

This is the wedding card I made for my cousin's wedding-back in November! I kept forgetting to add it. :)

I was also working on some really cool explorer articles for our Social Studies unit-but that was part of the data that was lost :(. Fortunately, I didn't get very far, and I have hard copies, so I can easily replicate the missing articles.

Smiles and Sunshine,
Kaitlyn

Thursday Throwdown: Poetry!

Happy Thursday!

Time for Thursday Throwdown with Erin!

If you've read my blog for any length of time, you know that I LOVE teaching poetry to kids!

It's something that most kids enjoy, and they can get so creative and not worry all the pesky things like complex sentences with dependent and independent clauses.

Plus, even your struggling  and LD students can succeed at this!

We've done Cinquians

Haikus

Sensory Poems

and Abstract Noun Poems

Nothing gets my kids writing juices flowing by saying we're going to learn a new type of poetry!

Smiles and Sunshine,
Kaitlyn

Workshop Wednesday: Figurative Language

Happy Wednesday!

I'm having our first snow day of the school year-and writing this, I'm watching 8-14 inches of snow fall outside! (Good call school district! They called it last night-which I love! No alarm! :)

Time for some fun with Jivey!

This week's topic is figurative language. I LOVE figurative language and teaching it to the kids. I think it makes their writing so much more interesting-and the kids really get in to it.

This year, I taught it a little easier than usual-thanks to Mentor Sentences! But I love it, because now, in every since piece of writing, I can saw to throw some figurative language in there! (Even our how-to's...I saw a lot of whooosh! and snip, snip, snip!)

Even more important, figurative language is fun for the kids-they love playing with it!

This year, I started off by making an anchor chart-to keep all types in one place, so if they need a reminder, they know where to look.

I know, I forgot Alliteration-I don't know what I was thinking!

That day, we focused heavily on similes and metaphors-they got a piece of paper to write a simile on one side and a metaphor on the other-and illustrate it! They were too funny! Then we focused on doing Nicole Shelby's Language Notebook entry for similes and metaphors.

We do a lot of poetry in my room-so we are always adding in some figurative language to out poetry.

We'll also do some practicing with Joy in the Journey's figurative language task cards. She has similes and metaphors, personification, hyperbole, idioms...they so cute and amazing!

 I spread them all around the room, and have the kids rotate through-they love any chance to sprawl on the floor!

I also found a wonderful game on SMART Exchange-figurative language football! 

You divide them up into teams, they choose a football- and if the they can answer the question then they move however many yards on the question. My kids had a blast with it last year-we played it quite a few times (although they knew the answers by the end-they still had a lot of fun!)

As you can tell, we spend a lot of time on it, and use it as much as possible! Good thing they enjoy it so much!

Stuck under Snow,
Kaitlyn

Abstract Noun Poetry

I first saw this over at All Things Upper Elementary and thought it would be a wonderful idea-and a fairly quick time filler if I needed one!

Well, on Monday I needed one! We were going to exchange our Snowflake How-To's and see how well they wrote their directions...

...but I had 4 kids out and 1 sent home for a total of 5 missing! Plus, I would have 3 leave for Gifted and Talented halfway through.

So our How-To's have been postponed until next week :)

We have about an hour forty-five for Writing once a week (we don't choose to switch reading groups on that day-making it easier to do some longer lessons-otherwise it is squeezed into our half-hour whole group-along with everything else!).

I split the time in half-having the kids work on finishing their How-To's (some were so close!) or freewriting (which turned into comic writing!), and then the rest of the time was poetry!

First, we talked about abstract nouns-things you can't touch-mostly feelings.

Then, we got a little deeper with our feelings (with some significant help from me! ;)

After we came up with the list, I told them that they had to pick a word to write a poem on- and it did have to be one that was on the board!

I modeled how to do with with one of my favorite words-and one that I think describes me fairly well! (They did help a little-I like to ask their opinions!).

Then they got to work!

A few had questions about if they and a friend picked the same word-and I told them it would be fine because they would come up with different poems because they saw that word differently. (We had a lot of  'luck'!).

I also made it a requirement that they had to use at least one type of figurative language in their poem-just to make it more interesting!

They turned out great! I was impressed with some of them-I loved reading what they thought of the word they picked.

This is one of my LD kids-who struggles with writing! (and reading). It says: Luck Smells like a wild clover after a rainfall. Tastes like gold out of a fresh stream. Sounds like sweet music in the olden times. Feels like a colorful rainbow going through the sky. Lives in a King of true heart. How awesome is that!!

So, an excellent lesson/review as well as being creative-go for it!

Smiles and Sunshine,
Kaitlyn

Workshop Wednesday: Historical Fiction

Happy Wednesday!

Time to link up with Jivey! :)

This week we are talking about using Historical Fiction in our Reading block!

Well, I have a TON of American History, World History, Biographies and Historical Fiction books in my library-free for the kids to pick from! (This group really likes biographies-they've been going through them like crazy!) (Plus, I love history as well-I just can't resist! ;)

Our wonderful, awesome, amazing literacy series (can you sense the sarcasm?) alternates every other unit (2 themes per unit) with a Social Studies one (the other one is Science-those are way more cool and interesting!).

We have:
American Journeys (all about immigration and the American Dream)

 and Across the USA (about the different regions and how the land affects them)

as well as The Early Americas (the Native Americans and the Explorers) and Buyers and Sellers (economics, yay!).

However, I like to throw in a Scholastic News now and again, as well as an article about a topic we're studying (see yesterday's post for information!)

Right now, we are working on an Explorer project-where each student picked an explorer and is researching them. They'll have to create a powerpoint to go along with it-I think they like that part the most!

Smiles and Sunshine,
Kaitlyn

Understand This!

Recently we have been practicing monitoring our understanding while we read. (See here for my post last year-and a freebie!)

Sometime tricky because some of my friends think they know everything, and don't have anything to understand. (We're working on that!)

Of course, the first thing we did was to have a discussion on what monitoring our understanding means...and how it can help us!

Which led to the creation of an anchor chart...

The first day, we practiced in partners using picture books (mostly pulled from my Mentor Text bin).

The results were.....so-so .

I really wanted to find something that the kids maybe knew a little something about, but would have to stop and think about what was going on.

I figured that they would do better with NonFiction, but wanted something kind of short, so I went on the hunt for some NonFiction articles.

I remember Erin having a good post about it-so I went on the hunt for that. I also loved the NatGeo Explorer Magazine (Pathfinder) when I had it in my last district, and wanted to see if I could get something off that.

I had success with both!

I modeled the skill and strategy with an article from Achieve 3000, making sure that all the kids had a copy so they could follow along. (see I'm Lovin Lit here for more information on this wonderful site).

I picked an article which I had no idea what it was on or about...I wanted to show the kids a 'true' experience...

I stopped and modeled, using some of the kids questions as a guide, and we discussed the answers together. I also showed them how they could use more than one skill to help them understand what is going on.

Then, I gave the kids the penguin article from NatGeo, and had them read in partners (but work independently).

The results were much better this time!

I was really impressed with some of their thinking-and how they came up with it!

Of course, these are the better examples-not all of them were this good...but they all scored a partially proficient or higher! (out of 1-4, most of them got a 2 or higher...these were a 3)

We'll definitely be practicing more strategies with NonFiction Articles-I love how they can be grade appropriate- but a 'shorter' read and still complex enough to practice our skills!

Smiles and Sunshine (lots of warm sunshine, please!)
Kaitlyn