Funny Hair Day

Yesterday was Funny Hair Day.  As we continue to count down the days until the end of the year, we seem to have more and more fun.  Yesterday, lots of kids (and teachers) showcased their "funniest hair" ensembles.  Here is a picture of some ladies and their styles.



Priscila, Emely, and Alyssa don't let their funny hair styles keep them from working hard on their writing assignment.  Thanks for being great sports, girls!

Bubble Gum Bonanza!

My students have been really well behaved lately (actually, they are most days), so we're doing an Alphabet Countdown through the end of the year.  Basically, we started with A when there were 26 days left, and we go to the next letter in the alphabet each day.  Each day has a theme starting with the specific letter of the day.  Today we were on B, so we did a bubble gum blowing contest.  It was more fun and we had more laughs than I expected.  (It was a bit spooky at first because the kids were so quiet.  I guess that's what happens when your'e trying to blow bubbles with gum.....which gives me an idea......)

Anyway, here are some of the pictures that I was able to snap today.  Enjoy!

Ooops...POP!

So determined!

Thanks, 5K, for making this so much fun!

R.A.F.T. Writing Activity



Today, we tried something new (not the jicama that we had for snack either)!  We tried a variation of the R.A.F.T. writing strategy.  Traditionally, this is an activity done to get students to write an original piece of writing from a specific perspective, for a certain purpose, to a specific audience, and about a specific topic.  It is really great for practicing the word choice trait.  However, this is a spin (on pun intended) on the traditional version.

I turned it into a game.  Each letter in RAFT  (Role, Audience, Format, and Topic) has its own spinner with 8 different options on each.  This allows for lots of different variations in writing.  You could also use less spinners if you know that students must write about a specific topic of in a specific format.  There are options for students to choose their own elements too. 

After students spin the spinners, they use the brainstorming organizer to write down any ideas they have about how to combine the elements to create a piece of writing.  It was really neat to have the kids work together.  They came up with some creative ideas.

Today, the kids spun to find their elements, completed their organizers, and started their drafts.  They're off to a wonderful start.  I'm excited to see (and share) their final pieces. 



Everardo and Nayeli give the spinner a go and start their assignment.

 

Odalys and Emely take turns deciding their R.A.F.T. fate.  Great job working together, Ladies!

 

Alyssa, Kat, and Rey are busy organizing their thoughts. 

 

Melissa, Senia, and Camila make a great R.A.F.T. team!

This is a great way to introduce this strategy before having students choose all elements on their own. I use it as a writing center after students learn how to do it.  Click here to get your own set of materials.

Literature Circles in Action

My students are amazing...simply amazing!  I am so impressed with the work they have been doing in literature circles. 

Literature Circles can be really difficult to manage, organize, and keep straight.  It seems that once all of that is done, it's even more difficult keeping students engaged with interesting conversation and activity.  With much hard work and effort on their part, my students have really been running their own literature circles successfully.  I rarely have to sit with groups for more than a few minutes at a time because they are able to generate interesting conversation among each other.  They understand their roles and take them seriously, but most importantly they end up learning from each other based on the conversations they have.  Here's what I just happened to listen in on today.  (Because of the file size, I had to break it up into 3 videos.)  In the third video, you can see the value of literature circles as one group member figures something out with the help of the others.  I was so proud!  If you're interested in how my students were able to get to this point, read on.  Enjoy and way to go kiddos!

Students doing their literature circle jobs and having a conversation about the book Island of the Blue Dolphins. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

This didn't just happen overnight.  As you can see, the students have a lot of materials in front of them.  First, I spent two weeks during shared reading using the same book to model six different roles that the students would be expected to do in their groups. 

 While completing their reading assignment, they complete a literature circle journal that requires them to analyze vocabulary words, summarize, ask questions, make predictions, infer, visualize, and think about an idea they'd like to share with their group.  This along with the role cards are what they they use to guide their discussion. 

 

  

After they've had about 10-15 minutes to discuss, they have the option to complete items from the literature circle activity set or play a literature circle game- both require more discussion and higher level thinking. 

 

They stay on task for 45 minutes.  It's amazing to have seen them come this far, and the best part is that they are enjoying their books and really working well together, and that's what it's about.

If you want to know more about these materials, just click on any of them.

Freebies...Yay!!!!

I have to admit that I one of the things I love the most in life is a great deal.  Finding useful and FREE teacher materials is one of the things that I love to find the most.  I'm sure I'm not the only one out there, so in light of that, I have linked several of my free items in the column to the right.  There are math FREEBIES and reading FREEBIES.  If you find something you like, please let me know.  I appreciate kind and honest feedback.

Cheers to all the great FREEBIES out there.  Enjoy!

Elissa

Fractured Fairy Tales

Fractured Fairy Tales are so much fun to write with students.  We had a really good time with it this year.  I did something different this go-round by introducing two graphic organizers for brainstorming before writing and also writing a class story first.  This really helped students write their own stories. 

If you're not quite sure what a fractured fairy tale is, it's another version of a traditional fairy tale that is retold by a different character or narrator.  Some published examples include The True Story of The Three Little Pigs by Scieszka and Seriously, Cinderella is so Annoying! by Trisha Speed Shaskan .

So, here are some examples that were created in my classroom.  I am so proud of the work they did.  This is not an easy writing assignment.  Way to go 5K!!!!!!

If you're looking for the materials that I used with my class, you can find them here.





The Three Little Pigs told from the Wolf's Perspective



The Three Little Pigs told from the perspective of the Wolf



Fluency Activities that are FUN

Fluency can be so difficult to teach.  It seems that teachers today are overwhelmed with the ever-popular WPM (words per minute) data.  However, WPM are only a small slice of the fluency pie.  Reading with fluency is so much more than just counting the number of words our students can read per minute.  They even start to believe that "good reading" means to read as many words as they can in a minute.  Why wouldn't they with all of the WPM assessments that we give them with a short passage and a minute timer?  Yes, there is some merit to WPM, but it's not the "end all, be all" to improving students fluency.

There are so many more pieces of the fluency pie: expression, phrasing, accuracy, reading punctuation, and more.  In my opinion, when students learn to incorporate all of these elements into their reading, their fluency AND comprehension improve at amazing rates.  After all, isn't the ultimate goal for students to be able to comprehend and respond to their reading? 

The BIG question is- "How do I teach fluency and make it engaging and fun for students?"  It's really a million dollar question.  Below I have included a few activities that I have found to be successful with my students (some my own ideas, and some that I have gotten from some wonderful colleagues).  Please feel free to comment to this post and add more.  I am always looking for more ways to incorporate fluency into the content areas as well as the literacy block. 

For Expression: 

• Find a reader's theater script that will work for you.  Read through line by line in a very monotone voice.  Then, ask students to read it aloud to make it sound more natural.  Ask students to listen to specific words that they read with a higher, lower, louder, or quieter pitch.  They should highlight those words to remind them to read them that way as they reread the text.  This is a great activity for discussion about intonation because some students will read things different ways, and that's OK.  I never make all students highlight everything the same. 
• Find lyrics to some of your students favorite songs, and have them do the same activity as above with the lyrics.  It may help to have students listen to the song to see how the artist changes his or her expression.

For Phrasing:

• Use song lyrics again, but this time students make slash marks to separate each phrase.  Practice putting slash marks in different places to see what sounds natural.  Again, it would be helpful for students to listen to lyrics and to write slash marks as they listen.
• Here's an activity that you probably already know about.  Just in case not, I'm including it.  Use Microsoft PowerPoint to have students read a collection of High-Frequency Phrases that are repeated often (and in other variations) in reading.  There are tons already created and accessible for free online.  (A big thanks to all of those teachers who have shared these wonderful resources.)  Some are preset with timing options that change pages on their own.  Some are set for the teacher to control the speed of the changing slides.  Some links are below.

        Phrases that allow you to control clicking speed  

        Tons of Phrases with Preset Timings


For Reading Punctuation:

• Copy any reader's theater or other piece of text that you want to use and "white out" all of the punctuation.  In place of punctuation write in an underscore symbol (_) where the punctuation should be.  Make copies for each student, and go through together and have discussions about what type of punctuation should go in that space.  Practice reading the text with different options to see what sounds correct.  This will get students to pay more attention to what different punctuation marks mean and how to read them.
• You or your kiddos write silly phrases on paper (or white boards).  Change punctuation (and even the way words look-  bold, all caps, etc.) several times with the same phrases and have students practice reading the punctuation.  It's hard to do, but it gets them thinking.
• Use the high-frequency phrases (mentioned above) and add punctuation to the phrases.  Students can no practice phrasing and reading punctuation together!

I hope you found some useful ideas.  I'd love to hear about your endeavors.

Elissa