The Very Blue Thingamajig - Visualizing

Tuesday was our first back after our Easter break. I always forget after holidays how good other workers have it by being able to go to the bathroom whenever they want!

Anyway... on Tuesday we reviewed Picturing Penguin while reading The Very Blue Thingamajig by Narelle Oliver. This book is great for teaching about visualising because of the rich descriptive text about the physical characteristics of the very blue thingamajig (as well as being a great text to celebrate difference!).

Before reading, we reviewed Picturing Penguin and then I read the book without showing the pictures. Many students closed their eyes as I was reading to help them see a picture in their mind.

After reading, I displayed the final page that describes what he looks like on the interactive whiteboard. We read through it several times while examining the meanings of some of the vocabulary used to describe his physical characteristics (twisty twirly, ferocious, waxy, tangerine etc), including the mathematical language like odd, even, four lots of two etc.
Each student was then given a piece of paper and as we went through the description one last time, they drew what they pictured the very blue thingamajig looked like based on the description. Here is what they came up with:

Side note, one little girl had a very PINK thingamajig... because pink is cuter, why else?

We also did some work this week on identifying the nouns and adjectives and writing sentences. We'll continue working with it next week. I'm sure many of my Qld readers have also read this book this week... do you have any great ideas to share?




Next week, my school is starting to stream our Year 1s for reading. I've got 24 of the highest readers from across our 6 classes for an hour each day. Has anyone else tried this at their school and have some tips for making it as successful as possible? 

 

One of my favourite authors - Nick Bland

5 weeks of the school year are done and dusted and I'm already exhausted! My kids are starting to settle in and learn the routines which is great, but I can't wait until they are a little more independent!

Last week I introduced my kids to one of my absolute favourite aussie authors and illustrators - Nick Bland. Oh. My. Word. They are just as in love with him as I am! Here are some of the books we love:

The books featuring that adorable brown bear are firm favourites and are quickly tucked into book boxes as soon as I've read them and placed them on the shelves. This week we are going to use Donald Loves Drumming to work on retelling and making personal responses and connections to texts. 

The last book I will read by Nick Bland is The Magnificent Tree because it is illustrated by another one of my favourite aussie authors and illustrators - Stephen Michael King who I will introduce next. I love using his books to demonstrate 'voice' because his illustrations are so uniquely his and end up tying this in with our writing lessons.

We don't have time to do full-on author studies, but I do like to collect up books by authors and introduce them throughout the year. I then try to use them as mentor texts during reading and writing lessons. Throughout the year as new books are published by these authors the kids get super excited! They also love to borrow the books we've read from the school library. Yes, it can get a bit annoying when the 15th kid comes up and shows me a book by one of the authors EVERY library lesson, but hey, as least they are reading books by quality authors! 

Besides Nick and Stephen, I've also introduced David Shannon. I'm also looking at doing Jeannie Baker, Eric Carle, Mem Fox, Jackie French, Julia Donaldson, Margaret Wild, Colin Thompson, Kevin Henkes and Dr Seuss. 

Who else would you suggest??

CAFE Strategy Cards

I've had a couple of questions and emails about my CAFE Strategy cards. 

 

I made these up quickly one day when I got tired at looking at my messy handwritten ones! You can grab them for free from my TpT store.

I actually had a great first day back today! The kiddies loved how I rearranged our room and were excited to be back. I had 7 away though! It was great just to have the 18 kids!

Don't You Love It When This Happens?

4 of these book display holder things were empty.

This rotating rack, which holds a lot of non-fiction readers, is usually completely full.

This rack is almost empty.

 This one is completely empty!

 

Don't you just love the excitement the kiddies show when you bring in new books?! Even when I taught Year 6, whenever I brought in new books they were always taken (I had to keep a waiting list!). These kids are no different.

But.... I didn't even bring in new books :(  Once again, I just moved some books around, changed the books in the racks and in holders and you'd think Christmas had come. I love pulling out books that don't seem as popular and putting them on display or doing a book introduction by reading the blurb, or doing a picture walk, or reading the first page or two. There's a lot more interest in them for sure after that.

How do you maintain interest in your books when you haven't added new ones for a little while? Do you put all of your books out at the start of the year or progressively add more/take some out as the year goes on? I'd love to hear your thoughts!

Daily 5 Write About Reading

Thanks everyone for your feedback on my Multiplication Madness freebie! I'm glad so many people could use it.

This is the first post in my Daily 5 series - doesn't that sound all fancy! Basically, I'm just going to take some photos and write about what I put in my Daily 5 tubs that I wrote about here (so not that fancy at all!)

You may have read before that I do Write About Reading instead of Work on Writing because I do writing and spelling separately from the Daily 5. When we do the Daily 5, I want my students to really focus on reading. I also wanted to have a set time when they worked on responding to texts we have read as a class and during guided reading. 

Each week, I have some type of response required from each of my 5 guided reading groups. Since I am doing running records this week (a school requirement that we do formal running records each term in order to set individualised reading goals), I am not taking guided reading groups so I have no photos. The responses vary depending on the text, the reading level, our class comprehension focus and the needs of the students in each group. For example, when we worked on retelling as a class focus, my lower groups did a simple BME by drawing pictures, others may do a story board with pictures and sentences and others may do a Story Map to identify the Characters, Setting, Problem and Solution along with the main events.

Most weeks I also have a reading response that I want the whole class to complete. We have been working very hard on our Stereotyping English unit. We've created Character Profiles and compared stereotypical characters to those found in texts such as The Paper Bag Princess and Emily and the Dragon.

So this week, after modelling and shared writing activities, I asked students to compare the dragon or Princess Elizabeth from The Paper Bag Princess to a stereotypical dragon or princess in a Venn diagram. Therefore in the tub this week, I have copies of the text, a Venn diagram sheet and clipboards so students can get comfy around the room (I find it funny that they'll even clip the sheet to the clipboard and go sit at their desk....)

 

They can also use the charts we've created on Prince Ronald from the same text to help them if needed. 

The Character Profile above is based on what we visualise when we think about "Princes".  Below is the same chart (Appearance, Qualities, Thoughts, Actions) for Prince Ronald from the book and the comparison Venn diagram.

 

I also had a question about something I mentioned in a previous post. I said we'd done a Hot Potato Tree Map.  A Hot Potato is just a variant of the Graffiti Wall. Basically I printed out a tree map for each group - one for Dragons, Princes, Princesses, Mum and Dads. The groups had about 2-3 minutes to write anything they could on the tree map. The tree map then rotates around the groups with each group reading through and adding more ideas until they get theirs back (I actually rotated the kids around, but both ways work).

I knew they'd be repeats and spelling mistakes so I collected them up after we went through them and wrote them on coloured paper to put up for future reference (handwriting is not my speciality!). 

I like to use Hot Potato strategy when I introduce a topic to find out what they already know or think (like above) or at the end of the unit to review a topic. You can do it for anything (not just Tree Maps).

Buggy About Reading and Writing

Ooohh, I wish I was studying insects this term! For the past 2 years we have, but with the national curriculum we aren't learning about these fascinating creatures until (maybe) Term 3 (at least I'll be ahead for then....)

In the past, we have focused on insects in Term 2 because we read the text Ants for the Year 2 Net reading and writing validation tasks. So, I've been slowly slogging away at this pack during Term 1 only to find that we aren't doing it now :( Needless to say, I haven't been that motivated to finish it, but it's finally done and I can't even list it on TpT because they're having technical problems! HA! Always the way.

So what' a girl to do? How about you just leave a comment saying that you follow my blog and I'll give away a copy to a random follower tomorrow? Here's what you could get:

EDIT: It's now listed on TpT and Teachers Notebook. Click on the pictures to check out the 24 Reading and Writing Tasks that are included! It's 20% off at the moment.

 

 

This pack is filled with about 80 pages of before, during and after reading activities, writing scaffolds and graphic organisers/organizers. Just leave a comment and when I get home from seeing The Hunger Games tomorrow morning I'll draw a winner. Time for bed I think, it's almost midnight here...

Introducing Read to Self

On the first day of school, I introduced Read to Self as one of the reading activities we would be doing every day this year - you should have heard the groan!! These little people do not see themselves as readers at all. I'll have to change that!

I introduced Read to Self by explaining that there are 3 ways to read a book. The chart I made in class was a little messy so after about the next week I'll replace it with the one below and put it up in our library area - at the moment the one I wrote is in on my little easel so we can refer to it often. You can grab it in Google Docs by clicking on the picture.

I then demonstrated the 3 ways to read a book - I know the sisters recommend doing it over 2 days, but I've always done it in one. This is the third time I've used Pat Hutchins "Rosie's Walk" to introduce the 3 ways of reading and it's always a hit, even if they have read the story before.

I first read the words in a very boring voice WITHOUT showing the pictures. I ask whether they enjoyed the story and, of course, they say NO, that's BORING! They notice that I skip every second page and think I'm not reading all the words but I explain that there are no words on those pages.

We then read the pictures. This is always so much fun! We notice that the fox wasn't in the words at all and that we had missed a major part of the story by only focusing on the words! We make predictions about what is going to happen to the fox on every second page. We notice that there are marks on the page that show the direction of the rake flinging up for example and that we can follow the gaze of the fox to see that he is watching Rosie very intently and near the end he looks very weary! We notice that Rosie seems oblivious to the fox, but there is always a little cutie that says maybe she is walking that way on purpose because she looks so smug!

They always beg to read the book again, so we always end up retelling the story as well! We use the pictures and what we know about the words to retell the story. I get volunteers to retell or offer suggestions for some pages after I have done the first few.

Another good book I read to continue demonstrating the 3 Ways to Read a Book is David Goes to School by David Shannon. 

After this, even my most reluctant readers want to start reading from their book boxes (which I've already set up with books since we haven't learned how to choose books yet). But before we can, we make an I-Chart (I'll have a picture tomorrow, but they always look the same!). We modelled the correct and incorrect ways to Read to Self which is always a hoot!

We, finally, start reading! We only lasted about a minute and a half the first day. We practised 3 times and that was the best! The first two times most kids talked as they went and got their book boxes, the second time they started sharing their books with others and talking about them (not a bad thing I know!). And the third time someone got up to get another book they saw on display. 

After each time, we checked in and reflected on how we went using our thumbs up or thumbs side ways (so-so, room for improvement). I also explained that once we have practised Read to Self more and built our stamina, we will then start Read to Someone and that is when we can share our books with each other but NOT during Read to Self. They are really looking forward to that!

Each day we are practising 3 times each day and they are getting better. We are aiming for 20 minutes. 

I'm off school today for Australia Day, so Happy Australia Day to my follow Aussies!

Flip the Sound Accuracy CAFE strategy + FREEBIE

I felt really bad about 'wasting' a whole week camping so I decided to do up a pack on the Flip the Sound strategy. I found this was a strategy that many of my students this year had to work on.

So, seeing as though I did not want to brave the shops on a weekend this close to Christmas, I made up this pack! It's too late for them since I start with a new bunch next year, but my students next year will benefit!

I thought having the sounds on display would help them with remember the sounds so I made up a display wall header and cards. These are some of the cards showing two sounds these letters can make:

I also made 2 charts/posters to have at the guided reading table. This is the second one. The other covers the vowels and y.

I also made up a flip book for students to record words that have the spelling/sound.

Here's one I put together for the instruction page:

 

I have the writing down the bottom so students can flick through easily to find the page they need and so it doesn't get cut off when they staple the book together.

It also includes 2 blank templates.

It covers 12 letters/letter combinations (short and long a, e, i, o, u, the sounds of y, c, g, ch, oo, ea, and ow. 

If you're interested, you can grab it on TpT and Teachers Notebook on sale for the next couple of days. TpT also has a preview.

 Now, the freebie. I found this song on ProTeacher. 

Please note that I DID NOT write this song. The song was posted on Proteacher at this link by sn02py. Thanks for sharing it - I'm not creative enough to come up with one!

Graphics courtesy of  JW Illustrations, KPM Doodles, Goodness and Fun, Alice Smith at DigiScrapKits and Scrappin Doodles.

Fonts: CK Handprint

Reading Goals

5 days to go until the end of the year! I absolutely can't wait! Sure I'll miss my kids, but boy am I exhausted! Sorry for the lack of posting in recent weeks but I've been coming home and collapsing!

Here is something I've been doing the last term with my class. At my school, we are required to set individual reading goals for each of our students every five weeks. Thank you CAFE and conferencing for making this easy to do! (The time consuming part is having the beginning data and ending data in order to show growth, or lack thereof, every five weeks to show the powers that be before amending the goals/setting new ones). This is how I've displayed my goals for each student (another requirement).

It's on a window so you can see the blu-tac sticking the construction paper to the window! I don't have that much wall space - two sides of my room are completely covered in windows and one more has one of those concertina doors across the whole length of it so it can't be used for anything :( It's actually a shame to cover them up because when you look out my windows you see our local forest less than 20m away! It's a great view!

So anyway, each of my kiddos have a leaf with their reading goal on it (e.g. summarising texts without retelling, using a particular decoding strategy, finding the main idea etc).

I then end up grouping kids together that have similiar goals and meeting with them (even though they might be at different reading levels) during the time I usually do guided reading. I LOVE it! I end up planning a series of lessons that focus on the goal  and meeting with just the kids that have that goal. I set aside two days a week to meet with Goal Groups rather than levelled groups. I've found this really beneficial and the kids have come a long way.


I'm looking at changing it for next year... perhaps a Pot of Goals! and each of the goals are written on a gold coin... not feeling it. Does anyone have any other ideas??

Also, are you looking for some great Christmas activities? Amy at The Land of Second Grade is having a giveaway of two of her Christmas products. Be sure to head on over! It's being drawn Sunday.

Sight Word Phrases - Christmas Theme

I've just uploaded a new item to TpT and Teachers Notebook. It's called Pack the Sleigh. It is a game for students to practice and consolidate sight words using Fry's sight word phrases level 1, groups 1-4. 

There are 4 sets of cards, with 25 cards in each set. You only need one set per game, so just swap over the cards and you have a new game or print out a game board and a different set of cards for different groups of kids! You can use the cards in their sets or mix and match according to the needs of your students. Easy to differentiate! I like keeping the same board, and just change the cards, so that it looks like everyone is playing the same game, even if they are at a different level.

This game is played the same way as my Crow Crisis game for r-controlled vowels and my FREE Planet Hop board game for the oi/oy sound. I like using the same format so I'm not wasting time teaching my kiddos how to play new games all the time. I can also use the same board, and just swap the cards out, to play games for other concepts in math, for example.

In this game, students are trying to be the first player to get from Santa's Workshop to the Sleigh - the first to get there (pack the sleigh) wins! But don't stop to pat the reindeer, or you'll have to go back! Land on the 'Carried extra gifts' space and you get to move ahead!

I've also included 'Lost a gift! Return your cards to the pile' cards so you can play BANG! with the phrase cards!

Later this week, I'll also have games for Level 2 and Level 3 sight word phrases. If your interested, you can grab it from TpT or Teachers Notebook.

Short and Long Vowel Frog/Circus Dominoes

I have a couple of students who are are needing practise with short/long vowels and blends and digraphs so I've made up these dominoes games. 

You play these games like dominoes - you match one side of the card to the opposite side of another card. For these games, students match words that have the same phonogram/word family - so they are rhyming words. 

First up short vowel CVC  and VCC words (circus theme): 

 

Froggy short vowels with blends and digraphs: 

 

Finally, Beach Froggy long vowel dominoes: 

These games are great because students practise a whole heap of word families as well as review blends, digraphs, short and long vowels! My kiddos love dominoes games so I am always making more! Once they know how to play I can introduce new sets of cards with minimal explanation so I'm not wasting time explaining activities! 

I will also use these cards for spelling practice - students can play the game with a partner and then take turns to read each other a card while the other records the word on mini-whiteboards. A great word work activity for the Daily 5!

You can grab them at my TpT store or Teachers Notebook shop in the one pack.

Text Clues + What we Know = An Inference poster

This is just a quick post to upload a poster I've just made for school tomorrow. Click on first pic to download.

 

 

I'll put the up first poster, then the addition sign, the second poster, equals sign and then the inference sign. Hope you can use it. 

Be sure to check out TpT's sale - heaps of sellers have 20% sales in addition to TpT's 10% - including me. Check out my store. I've grabbed myself heaps of bargains!

By request - Reading Focus Wall

I had a lovely comment the other day about my CAFE board signs and a request to make up similar signs for a reading focus wall.

Well, here they are! 8 focus wall signs to fit a pocket chart (3x6 inches or 7.6cm x 15.2). The signs read: 

• Spelling words
• Challenge words
• High frequency words
• Robust vocabulary
• Genre
• Comprehension
• Objectives
• Writing strategies
• Question of the Day

Download them here. 

Daily 5 - Read to Someone

13/07/12 - I've now changed this pack to be called Buddy Reading so that it is not specific to the Daily 5 program. 

I'm very excited because I've just added a new item to TpT . I've collated all my Buddy Reading/Read to Someone (part of The Daily 5) files which I've made over this year. All of this is included: 

It has 3 prompt cards or bookmarks for partners while doing Buddy Reading: 
 
1. Coaching bookmark for when a partner is stuck on a word

2. Check mark (double-sided) in color and black and white with a check on one side and prompts on the other to Check for Understanding

3. Two types of fluency checkers when readers reread passages and their partner rates them with smilely faces as to how they have improved (it can also be used for self-assessment)

The pack also has:

• 32 Discussion Prompt task cards + 4 blank ones to make your own (or just email me and I'll add them).
• Buddy Reading Discussion Starters
• Buddy Reading Discussion Prompts to help readers give more information (as a poster and 2 to-a-page.
• Buddy Reading Poster
• Buddy Reading E.E.K.K. poster
• How to Buddy Read poster
• Buddy Reading Stamina Graph

 You can check it out here.