Good fit books

We have been talking a lot about good fit books in class. These posters have been really helpful in getting the ideas across. I used to do the shoe lesson in daily five, but I really think this bike analogy makes a lot of sense to the kids and can be up on the wall all year. The kids helped me fill in the words and I added this face as we talked about each one. This was an idea I had seen shared a bunch on Pinterest!

Check for Understanding

I have been really enjoying doing Reader's Workshop while still utilizing components of Daily Five this year.  This year I am looking forward to using this Spanish Check for Understanding bookmark I created based on an English one I had discovered on Pinterest (see that teacher's original blog post here).  It uses the ASL sign for the letter "Q" as a prompt to think about "Quien" y "Que" when retelling and checking for understanding.

Reader's Workshop!

For the past two weeks we have been working on the three parts of Reader's Workshop.  These posters have really been helpful to get the idea across.  At this point we are just establishing rules and norms and getting to know our classroom library, but am looking forward to diving more deeply into reading strategies soon!

New math workshop rotations!

I am excited to try a new way of rotating my kids through math this year!  I always used a 3-way rotation method, but usually had it on the Smartboard.  I also would have my math lesson on the Smartboard, so I was always moving back and forth between slides and it got confusing.  This pocket chart can stay on the wall at all times and I just have to write the different tasks the kids will be doing on the whiteboard!  Some math workshops I have found online had four rotations (and included a math facts practice one), but I just know that with everything else my district has us do I would never get through four! 

My plan is to give a pretest at the start of each unit.  Then make three groups of kids (low, medium, high).  The low group will be the "Grupo Azul." They will start by playing the math game with someone else to warm up and practice.  I have also found that it is better for me not to have the low group first, since I usually tweak and improve upon my lesson with each successive rotation and so the low group doesn't benefit from these adjustments if they go first.  The high group will be the "Grupo Amarillo" since they are usually capable of completing the math work alone without too much teacher guidance. 

Here is the link to the math workshop cards. The pocket chart is from the Dollar Tree and the little whiteboard is from Office Max.

An organized classroom library!

Well, it took forever....but my classroom library will finally be more organized for this school year!

I brought all my books home and then took over the living room for a couple of days to organize them.  I prefer this to being cooped up in my classroom forever!  I got these great baskets at my local Dollar Tree. As I worked I inputted everything into an Excel document so I finally have an inventory of my books.  This will be really helpful when choosing read-alouds or books for writing/reading strategy lessons.

Additionally, I leveled the books using two websites.  Scholastic has the Book wizard website and lexile.com has their database as well.  If I wasn't sure how a lexile level translated to a Fountas & Pinnell, I used this chart.

Finally, I created labels for my different baskets.  They turned out really cute!  They may or may not match another Spanish immersion teacher's classroom, they are very specific to what books I have built up over the years (and sometimes you're limited in what you can get in Spanish!)

A couple things I realized from doing this:

1) I have way more fiction than non-fiction.  This is bad.  I was just reading about the "Nonfiction Gap" on Scholastic's website--a classroom library should be 40%-60% nonfiction, whereas mine is definitely fiction based
2)  My non-fiction books are also a little on the high side level-wise.  Many of them are level M, which is end of 2nd grade.  Not to mention I teach immersion, so the kids read at a little lower level than they would in English.
Therefore...my mission this year is to acquire Spanish language non-fiction books around level J...like this great set from Time for Kids perhaps!  Maybe my school will have some funds, or I can convince my new group of parents this year!

Reader's Workshop!

In the past I have been a die-hard Daily 5 user, I even had given workshops on D5 for colleagues at my district and others.  Recently, though, I found that I was having a hard time making sure I was getting all my reading instruction in and ensuring that students were really reading enough every day.  I know the Sisters say that students should choose Read to Self every single day, but when it came down to enforcing that I found it really tricky since the students would then have limited time to get to the other centers.

Enter.....Reader's Workshop!

This summer I read Kathy Collin's Growing Readers and absolutely loved it.  In the beginning of the book she goes through different reading instruction scenarios that are common in different schools.  When she described the reading instruction happening during literacy centers model I laughed at how this resembled what I did.  Kids making words with magnetic letters, writing in notebooks, teacher conferencing....everybody looking busy and engaged, but is it really meaningful for students and are they really growing as readers?

With the implementation of the Common Core I also was wondering how I would really be challenging my readers every day and holding them accountable for the more rigorous standards.  I think the Reader's Workshop model will allow me to do this more effectively since all of the students will be working on reading during this block of time.  Good bye, Daily Five!

A fresh, updated job chart!

I am excited to update my job chart this year.  Over the years I have found that it is so helpful for all the kids to have a job to do at the end of the day during "job time".  Some kids have jobs that happen throughout the day as well (answering the phone, carrying the lunch boxes to the cafeteria, etc.), so these kids have two jobs listed on their job pocket.  They do their "day job" throughout the day and "job time" job at the end of the day with everyone else. 


I am attempting to link my new job chart labels to this post.  Click here to access the labels.  This year my plan is to create these pockets for each of my jobs so that I can laminate the pockets more easily than the library pockets I have used in the past.  I then will laminate photos of kids I take on the first day of school and affix each of them to a popsicle stick.  The popsicle sticks then go into the different pockets which designate the students' jobs for the week.  I rotate the sticks each Monday.

I have seen some teachers say they prefer to have kids not switch their jobs as often and assign kids their jobs based on their aptitudes.  I can see how this would be valuable (how many times have I said to myself, "Yeah! It's "so and so's" turn to sweep again this week!") But at the end of the day I think the kids would complain about fairness so I'm just going to continue my job routine as I always have in the past, rotating every Monday.  I'm still excited about updating my labels!  The old ones were starting to look pretty rough.  I also went with minimalist job descriptors this time.  I used to have a job called "Organizar todos los pupitres en filas rectas...." yeah, that's wordy.  Now I am just going with a few words plus a picture.