Small Group Reading: Fluency

For the fluency activity, students re-read the basal selection from our Journey's text from the previous week.  Often we read the selection twice during the week we are focused on a story, so this is usually a third read for students.  For students who struggle with the grade-level text, we have access to the story online which can be read to the students.  I usually have 2-4 students who need this support.  Then students respond to a beyond the text type question from the book.  I meet with this group third, during the hour, and spend about 10 minutes with them discussing their responses to the question and any comprehension or vocabulary hang-ups they still have about the story. 

This next year, I'd like to add more with fluency.  I'm thinking of having students read a passage during a timed amount of time and to graph fluency.  They'd do this right when they come to my table, before we get to the discussion.  

What are some resources you use for fluency?  Do your students track rate and accuracy, or just practice with smoothness and expression with repeated readings? 

Monday Made It: Listening Station Pocket

I recently posted about my listening center here.  Here's how I made the pockets for my MP3 players. It was super simple and I have my 10 year old daughter who was helping me in my classroom to thank for the idea. 

I had this big shoe organizer in my classroom that I was using to hold calculators, but it was too heavy and we didn't use the calculators enough to warrant the space it was taking.  I wanted clear pockets for my MP3's so that I could tell they were all put away at a glance. 

I took the pocket organizer and cut off the top two rows, right under the stitching of the last row. 

I have carpet on the wall, so I used cubicle hooks to hang it right under my cupboards.  You could use command hooks or magnet hooks to hang it anywhere in your room.  

Then, I have four rows left that I can use else where.  You could just add grommets to the top (found in your local craft store and attached with a few hits of a hammer) for hanging so you can use the rest of the pockets.  

What are some other ways you might use these clear pockets in your classroom? 

Guided Math Conferences Chapter 1

This really is a summer of professional reading for me, and I'm loving it!  I'm excited to join Brenda for this study of Guided Math Conferences by Laney Sammons. Don't have a copy? Click on the link to get in on Amazon.  

I attempted some guided math last year with a little success and am looking forward to doing it a bit better this year.  My grade level team decided last year to ability group our students across the grade in math.  I spent most of the year with the students that needed the most support and adding guided math was very helpful.  

I did conferring with my students at least at the end of every unit.  Part of our assessment of students included an interview on the concepts.  It was incredibly helpful to see what students were thinking and understood as I watched them work through the problem or heard them orally respond.  I haven't done that since moving to fifth grade, and it would be so valuable to understand what they really understand.  

The first chapter of Guided Math Conferences is "Conferring with Young Mathematicians".  This chapter explains the differences between many types of conferring you might do.  What I described above was more of an interview.  Last year, I tried to do some small-group instruction and sometimes did a bit of conferences.  Conferences is the area I want to really improve on next year. This involves taking a look at the student's current work and taking them where there currently are in understanding to the next step.  To help me do this, I'm going to keep a list of student names in a checklist on a clipboard.  Each time I conference with a student, I'll write the date in the box next to their name.  When everyone has a date in the first column, I'll start marking the next column.  This will be a good start for me.  Once I get good at that, I'll add notes to my system, hopefully by November.  I think adding notes right away will overwhelm me, so I'm going to start out with forming the habit first.  

Be sure to check out the posts on this chapter from the hosts, Thinking of Teaching and Primary Inspired.  Clicking on their names will take you to their Chapter 1 posts.  Several bloggers have also linked up with them, like I have, so be sure to read those posts as well.  You're welcome to link up too or add your comments or questions in any of our comment sections.  

Do you confer with your students?  What type of conferring do you do or plan to do?

Notice and Note Post 10: Contrasts and Contradictions

Heather at 2 Brainy Apples did a great job of sharing the ideas from Notice and Note: Contrasts and Contradictions and Aha Moment.  I wanted to share with you my reading notebook entry that I planned for my students.  To help me do better with notebooks this next year, I'm planning entries and writing them down myself.  I realize that they may end up a bit different when I actually teach them, but they'll be planned and I'll have a good idea of what will be helpful for the students.  

Two page spread of C&C notebook entry.

I started with an overview entry so students will have the main idea of each of the signposts in their notebooks.  I included a section briefly explaining what the signpost is, then the question that should be asked.  I also included a sentence connecting the signpost to comprehension strategies. 

Left side of notebook.

The second section of this notebook entry is the responses for the lesson outlined in this chapter based on the short story Thank YOu M'am by Langston Hughes.  I didn't want to waste half a page, so I just sectioned it off with a colored squiggle line.  The lesson basically stops 4 times to ask the question " Why is the character doing that?"  In my notebook, I wrote the responses I had at each stop.  Students will include their own responses as we move through the lesson.  

Right side of notebook with a peek at the text. 

Part of the lesson includes having students mark in the text.  I debated on whether to include the text in their notebook, but finally decided to include it.  I wanted the text there for reference since this was an anchor lesson.  When students go back to remind themselves of Contrasts and Contradictions, they'll have the text as well to see how the signpost worked here.  So, I just folded the short story in half and glued it in along the top edge of the back page.  

Right side of notebook under the text glue in. 

Since this signpost focuses on character, I decided my next mini-lesson would be on characters.  I'm debating whether to teach this lesson before the signpost, we'll see in August,  The character cut-out and page idea is from the Reading Notebook by Nicole Shelby.  I also have her Language Notebook set that I'll be using in writing lessons throughout the year.  

I'll continue with my notebook entry for Aha Moment in the next post and link it here when it is live. How will you be teaching your students about Contrasts and Contradictions? 

Small Group Reading: Listening

The next activity I'm sharing with you in my mini-series about small group reading time is listening.

My school has invested in a a few sets of listening book sets that contain an audio cd of the book and 8 copies of the text.  We listen to novels and I assign a section each week, usually dividing the book into 8 sections so we are finished at the same time as genre activities.  

With mp3 players, each student is in charge of his/her own listening and can go back when needed and start and stop as needed.  Here's how I've organized my listening activity station for this next year. 

I wanted a way to be able to quickly see that all MP3 players were returned and kept in an organized and safe way.  I'll have a full post of how I made the pockets work for me on a Monday Made it post next Monday.  The basket on the counter will hold the books for students to grab.  The sign on the wall is an enlarged version of the reference card that came with the players.   I numbered each player so it gets back to it's organized spot. 

At our school registration this year, we'll be asking that students bring in their own pair of ear buds or headphones.  These will be kept in a ziploc bag, marked with the student's name, in their reading boxes.  This way, students are responsible for their own listening headphone device and we don't share ear germs. 

You can read about how I organized my listening center in my first grade classroom here.  

I've used a few different types of MP3 players over the years.  They have to be cheap, user friendly, chargeable (no batteries), and somewhat durable.  Knowing that cheap and chargeable are my two top priorities, durability can be somewhat questionable and I understand that when I purchase.  This is the first year my school has provided the players for me.  I'm super happy about that because my previous set was starting to have a few get broken. (I've had my first set for about 4 years.) Here's the style of players that my new set is. Note that they do need an additional SD card added to them, they don't have on board memory.

This will take you to an Amazon listing of a 4 pack, which is what we ordered. 

I love mp3 players for listening.  Cd players with multiple headphones were a pain for me.  The group had to wait for everyone to arrive before starting and there always seemed to be an argument about something.  Sometimes, you might find a recording or video of a book online that you want students to have access to to listen.  If you don't have a tablet or computer for a small group of students in your classroom, you might consider using this splitter. You just plug it into your audio output in one computer and then connect headphones in each of the ports.  Then several students could follow along to an audio on your computer.  If you click on the picture, you'll be taken to view this product on Amazon. 

I"m still deciding whether to have my students respond to their listening station this year.  I do meet with the group for about 10 minutes toward the end of the reading block to discuss the section they listened to.  Last year, students answered a few questions, and I think that helped them be better listeners and focus, knowing they needed to answer questions.  My teammate, however, doesn't require students to respond.  She uses listening as the student's enjoyable reading time.  What are your thoughts?  Should students respond to their listening or should it be a more relaxable reading experience? How do you set up your listening activity station?

Crazy About Basketball - Book Review

I'm so excited to start bringing you book reviews!  I LOVE books, especially children and young adult books.  I don't read many adult fiction books.  Most of the "adult" books I read are education professional development books.  I'm super excited about this first book Crazy About Basketball!  It's a poetry book all about basketball.  It's the perfect poetry book to grab some of those readers in your class that are sports fans.  This may sound a little gender bias, I don't mean it to be, but I was surprised that the author is a woman.  That might surprise your students as well and capture some of the girls in your class that enjoy sports.

The book contains 36 poems all about basketball.  My favorite is titled "From the Ball's Point of View" and is very funny.  The poems also tell about the history of basketball, the love of the game, comparisons to other sports, techniques of the game, audience, preparation, and play.

I'm definitely adding this book to my poetry shelf for students and I'll be using some of the poems during my poetry reading and writing unit.  It's a super poetry resource.

And....I discovered the author has several more poetry and picture books!! Click on the covers to be taken to the book's amazon page.

Do you have a favorite sports poem or compilation of poems?

Note: I was provided an e-book copy of the book in this review by the publisher in exchange for my review.  The opinions expressed in this post are my own.  Links in this post refer to my amazon affiliate and I receive a small compensation for purchases made through these links.  Your purchase helps me keep Dilly Dabbles blog going and supports my classroom. 

Teach Like a Pirate: What's in it For Me?

This section of Teach Like a Pirate is all about answer the age old student question... "What's in it for me?" Dave Burgess offers 5 hook types to help answer this question for your students.  Here are the five hooks and how I have either used them in my classroom or see myself using them as I plan for next year. 

1 - The student hobby hook: Get students interested by using hobbies and interests that appeal to them and connect with the material being taught. I'd like to get to know my students better in the first couple of weeks of school.  I was crushed last year when it took me until January to know that a student had lost his father the previous spring.  That would have been super important information to know in September! I realize that some students and families aren't going to be super forthcoming about things like this, but I'm thinking that a combination of an interest/get to know you inventory and an individual interview with each student at the beginning of the year will give me a great start.  We do reading benchmark assessments at the beginning of the year and I'm thinking this would be a great opportunity to add a little personal interview conversation with each student.  My assessments will take longer to get through, but I will know my students better.

2 - Real world application hook: Show students directly how knowing this content will be helpful to them in their life. This is a tougher one for me.  Not everything I have to teach students will be helpful to them in their life.  I try to connect it as much as I can, but sometimes I have to look to means of engagement in other hooks.

3 - The life-changing lesson hook: Touch students in a way that changes their lives.  It might change their feelings, perspective or reflection on themselves. This works really well for me in our literature and history lessons, especially when we discuss times of discrimination.  The stories of slavery and genocide and escape and hiding that riddle U.S. history really touch students and give them new perspectives and cause to reflect.

4 - The student-directed hook: Get student buy-in and interest by allowing student choice. I try to give students choice within "have-to's". It might be required that students complete a science project, but what they choose to do is completely up to them.  I give choice constrained choice in reading when students choose their literature circle books from several options.  The leadership team at my school read the book Drive this last year.  Much of the ideas in that book focus on motivation through choice.  I think the thing to remember about choice is that it doesn't mean free for all and choice can be had within parameters.

5 - The opportunistic hook: Use current events, trends, fads, movies or music to grab student attention and connect to relativeness. I LOVED the idea with this hook to post pictures of current events with a corresponding QR code.  When scanned, the code would lead students to more information about the event and/or topic.  Technology combined with what interests students is sure to engage.  I love this idea and plan to use it not only for current events, but the historical events we are learning about as well.  Students will be hooked by the picture, code and information they learn.