Daily Five 6 Weeks In.

We have now almost completed six weeks in our new school year and Daily Five is up and running.  We have Read to Self, Writing, Working with Words and Listening all operating.  I haven't reintroduced Read to Someone and may not this term.

I have managed to organise my conferring a little better this year. Signalling who I am going to see listed on the whiteboard has been helpful.  I am note keeping using Evernote.  I have given up using the table form I set up at the beginning of the year as it moves around too much.  So I just keep a plain page - dating each conference and adding notes. Each student has a notebook and I have a Reading Conference page for each.  It is working well, I find it suits me better to jot down a few words as I work using pencil and paper and then I  spend 5 minutes at the end of a session putting them into Evernote.  I keep watching out for the Penseive app from the Two Sisters!

I have also introduced the students to writing a letter response to me about their reading.  I have assigned them a day on which to hand these up.  As yet they are in their initial stages and still need encouragement to share their thinking. I am finding it a challenge to make the time to reply to each.  I think it will take us awhile to develop this aspect.  I was just thinking I need to model it again and wondering where I will steal the time to do so.  Then I remembered a book review I read yesterday on Zita the Space Girl that I think might suffice for now.

CAFE has been introduced and we are exploring expanding vocabulary.  I am finding that students are needing some strong encouragement in this area.  Having noted the Vocab board in the Two Sisters newsletter a few weeks ago I have set up a similar board.  We worked on a word taken from the book I am reading aloud.  We had some fun today using it in our oral vocabulary.  I have just read an article in the March Reading Teacher on vocabulary which has been helpful.  I have heaps more that I can read so I must explore this area more.  I want the students to grow their interest in words while they are working independently.

A video of our session today.  As we walked down to the local library we only managed one session today. The visit to the library once a fortnight gives us access to some wonderful books and we thoroughly enjoy going there.  I was able to take out Zita the Spacegirl to add to my reading pile.

You will notice we have a long narrow room with spaces that work well. Love it.

It's Monday - What are You Reading?

Monday comes around fast.  It has been an extremely busy week, so I only found time to complete one book.  As usual I am joining in the blog hop over at Mentor Texts.

Hop on over and join in at the Mentor Text Blog.

The book I read was called Our Only May Amelia by Jennifer Holm.  It took me a little while to get into it and orientate myself.  Eventually I sorted out her many brothers and began to follow more easily.  

It gave a wonderful historical perspective of a young girl growing up in Nth Western America in the early twentieth century.  By mid-way through the book I was hooked and wanted to finish the remainder of it in one sitting.

I am looking forward to reading the sequel.

This week I am reading Breadcrumbs by Anne Ursu.  Just started.  I hope I like it, however I was never a fan of the Snow Queen so I am a little anxious about that.

Plans for 2012

As I do every summer over the holidays I think about the coming year and what I want to aim towards.  As I found last year, as well as setting those goals, I need to be open to what just suddenly inspires me and follow that track as well, it can take me down surprising paths.

However for now I am thinking just about from February to April - our first term. Term two will be a sabbatical term, and who knows where I will want to track after that.  I find that writing and publishing my goals helps, it makes me more accountable.  I have said it, and now I want to live it out.

At this time of the year this picture shows  how my brain feels,  getting something written helps to put some shape on things, and the picture more complete!

School goals


1. Read children's books, during school term at least one a week - leading to at least 52 in the year.

2. Encourage some of my students to join Goodreads where they can discuss books among themselves and keep track of their reading.

3. Teach students how to write once a week a reading response in the form of a letter that will provide ongoing discussion between them and me about what they are noticing in their reading. (see" Guiding Readers and Writers", Fountas and Pinnell.) My goal is to respond to each, one from each student each week. This will be rotated - 5 students per night.

4. Sharpen up my skills with conferring with reading conferences first and then writing conferences. At present I am reading "Conferring: The Keystone of  Reader's Workshop" by Patrick Allen.  I have used his form to make my conference form.

5. Use Evernote for recording notes from reading conferences.  I am not sure at this stage whether I will revert to paper and pen, which for me is a lot faster, however I like the organisation that will result with Evernote.  I have already drawn up a page for it.  I was very pleased as once I had a master done I was easily able to put a copy in each student's notebook.

Screenshot from my ipad.

6. Give my more able Maths students more control over their own learning.  So I am going to trial using a Maths Daily Five type schedule with them but modified to suit us.  Hopefully they will be able to work at what they set as their goals and I will conference them individually once a week, and meet with them in smaller groups as needed.

 I am going to give five options that they will engage in:

1) Maths problem solving and writing an explanation of how they solved it.

2) Maths with a partner - I will have some options for them, I think our Figure it Out series will be a good  beginning.

3) Maths work by self - I will have a variety of text books that they can choose to use to practise whatever they believe they need within Number and Algebra for Term One.

4) Maths using technology - I will have some digital pathways from Digistore set up for them as a start. NZ Maths have it all well set out. I will set up a wiki where the students can easily access these learning objects. This slot could also involve making Showme type videos as tutorials for others.

  

5) Maths game with one or two others.

I have another group of students who will need a lot of hands on from me, and that is where I hope to spend the majority of my time.

7.  Track and meet the commitments made for global connections.  I have already made myself a page where I can see easily what projects we are involved in, who is running them, what we need to do when and a link to the web site.  Now I am not holding it all in my head.  I need to visit the plan at least twice a week to keep on track.

8. Improve the quality of commenting on blogs in my classroom.  See my previous post. 

9. Settle into a new classroom space. Adapt it as we need, explore the possibilities of it.  Just moving to it has been a big job. Still not settled in there yet.  However I am organising it more thoroughly than I ever have before.  Organisation of things etc is not my strength - it doesn't come naturally.

What are your goals at the moment?  Do you set goals or are you more of a let's see what happens person?  Personally I think there is merit in both ways.

My LiveBinder for #Daily5.

Yesterday I spent most of the day making my first Livebinder.  I was inspired to do this when I saw Theresa's LiveBinders on her blog.  As I was on holiday I wanted to explore how they might work.  As I was reading and deciding to implement The Daily Five in my classroom I thought it would be a good supplement to my literacy programme.  I can leave it on my classroom blog as a choice for students to explore during the Daily Five.

I tried to find material that would suit my class. They are 10 to 12 year olds. I do have a wide range of ability, from one student who is under the resource teacher of literacy to students who score at the top end of the range.  At this point I didn't try to differentiate.  I remember a few years back when I was teaching another student who was working with the resource teacher of literacy.  I had him listening to various CD's and other listening and reading material provided to NZ schools for free.  After awhile the others wanted to listen in too, and set themselves up!

My next goal is to establish a class wiki.  I have signed up for one, but it may be awhile before I get to it with so much that I want to accomplish in redesigning the layout of my classroom!

#Daily Five

2011. It's here.

So today is January the 1st. It's traditional to make resolutions! Well I don't do them well, however I have some intentions for the year related to teaching.

I intend:
To develop my teaching of writing further. I intend to document it in some way, perhaps by recording it on this blog. I want to explore using writer's workshop, but I won't actually call it that, nor will I adopt all its aspects immediately. Go slowly will be the motto. I have found some excellent writing websites.

The Two Writing Teachers. They also have a site here. They can also be found on Facebook. I must add them to my page.

The Northern Nevada Writing Project is another rich resource that I will use. Through it I also learned aboutThe Writing Fix is a website linked to the Nevada project, so I will give it its own link.

Corbett Harrison and Dena Harrison. Both of these are literary educators and have work on the above two other blogs that I will add in to explore.

Deb Renner has a site called Writing Every Day Works. She has co authored a book with P. Cunningham about Beyond Retelling that I would like to read.

I will also reread some of the books I have already read on writing and at present I have done a quick skim through of Day by Day. Refining Writing Workshop Through 180 Days of Reflective Practice. By the Two Writing Teachers. This book wasn't quite what I thought it would be. However its full of reflective discussion and I will use it through the year. However it is just that, a guide for reflecting on one's own teaching of writing, it's not a book I could use to teach lessons. However there are plenty of books and websites out there that do just that!

So that's just the writing side of things! I also want to build on the reading programme I ran last year. I want to introduce the whole class to reciprocal reading. The way one group worked with Jill Eggleton's Connectors was an indication to me that this can work! So at present I am reading Reciprocal Teaching at Work. This is by Lori Oczkus. I am finding it very helpful and interesting. Again I won't use it totally the way its presented. I will use what will work for me out of it. However its packed with great tips and ideas. I hope through beginning in Term 1 with reciprocal reading, that this will really help comprehension strategies be developed. Especially by those students whose comprehension puts them at risk. In term 2 then I hope to springboard from this into working with other strategies. (Reciprocal reading develops mainly 4 strategies).

I want to make some simple videos on reading to put on my class blog, mainly for parents at this stage, to let them know what we are doing. Maybe if that goes according to plan I may make some writing videos. Firstly I have to master a new camera! How to use it and how to use Vegas studio software. Up until now I have only used windows movie maker. However my new Canon 550d camera doesn't relate to that! So that is going to be a steep learning curve first!

SRA

This term I have begun using a SRA reading laboratory where the children take cards at their level and answer the comprehension and vocabulary questions, then use an answer card to mark it.

It is rather American in concept, however as teachers we remember them with nostalgia when we were students at school, and so we were keen to have one. We are into our second week of using the lab, and I think it is quite popular. Of course it is not a complete reading programme and I recognise that. We will use it as a supplementary addtion to the class programme. I am looking forward to hearing what the students think of it in another few weeks.

Reciprocal Reading

This term we were able to buy some of the Connector series by Jill Eggleton, published by Scholastic. They are an excellent resource and I believe they are good value in the classroom. While I have long understood and known the ways reciprocal reading can enhance a reading programme in the classroom, it is only with this series of books have I felt confident enough to try it out.

The two groups of six that I have been working with on it are doing very well. I spent a few sessions introducing it to them and then let them organise it themselves with the guidance of the books. Jill has thought this out so well, and it works. I am not exhausting as yet all her suggestions but I do intend to work with more of her ideas next term.

The books themselves are very engaging. The students thoroughly enjoy reading and discussing them. Any interested reader can read more about them and watch her video which explains it so well.http://www.scholastic.com.au/schools/education/connectors/reciprocal.asp