Freebies Freebies

It was a hell of a weekend. 

Mostly it was because I went crazy loco making new "Working with Words" and "Working on Writing" D5 activities for spring. I'm beginning to think the dollar store is my newest best friend/nemesis, just like Pinterest. What do they do, hang out on Tuesday nights and make sabotage plans? "I hear she's planning on catching up on laundry and washing the dog. I'll throw some big clear plastic eggs and clipboards into the center aisle and you make sure you have some really cool but involved and messy ideas front and center. Got it? Go Team!"

I've eyeing up those fun posters for word families that Carson Delosa sells, but I keep thinkin' they are too big. Besides, I don't have any budget money left. So I created a set of long vowel posters that fit nicely on a classroom bulletin board. I put post-it slips covering each word, so it can be turned into an activity for D5. A  kid picks a poster (word family), and then peels off each post-it on the poster, reading each word and writing it down as they go. It looks like this:

The whole she-bang looks something like this:

You can get them HERE, at my TPT store. And guess what? They are.......

I found this idea on Pinterest and loved it. I loved it so much that I had to manically make a set for my firsties for Daily 5. We are working on long vowel sounds, so the four letter sets I made are focused on that. It is specifically for "2 vowels go walking...".

Here is what it looks like in action. The kids pick a clipboard and go back to their working spot. They open the bag and take out the letters. On the recording sheet they write their name, the number of the bag, and the letters in the bag. Then they make, read and write as many words as they can. Each has a set word family that all of the letters can be used for.

 Did you notice the cutie clip board? Like we don't have enough to do without adding to the insanity.
The clipboards are stored like this in our Working with Words center (bookcase, place, whatever).

Go to my TPT store to download this for FREE! Yay for freebies! The kit includes the bag label,recording sheet and has 4 letter sets to make 4 Mystery Word bags. The decoupage pieces are thrown in, just in case you are feeling crafty!

D5 and guided reading fun

I thought I'd share a couple of ways we practice "Working with Words" in both our Daily 5 routine and during guided reading. I love Scrabble, so naturally I try to fit the tiles into our word work. Here is one of my students making words with them. We were working on the long o sound -oa.

Here is how I store the tiles. This divided container was part of the tool box I use for Guided Reading. I posted about it here.

Wonder how I came by so many tiles? Garage sales, baby.

 This is one of my favorite new ways to work with word families. I went to the hardware store and picked up some paint chips. Watch out, they don't like customers taking a huge stack. I've invested so much in Behr Paint that I don't feel too guilty. I got both the single color cards and the ones with multiple hues and shades of the same color. I punched a nice big round hole on the single color card, and wrote a word family ending on it with Sharpie. Then I added initial and ending sounds to the other card. The firsties slide the card with the punch over the other card, and in doing so, make words. Then they write the word they made in their "Working with Words" notebook. I love these because they are so pretty. Nice reason, huh? Pretty makes everything more fun! The cards are also very sturdy. They last a long time!

This is how I store the paint chips. This large coupon organizer was in the dollar aisle at Target a few years ago.

I'm always looking for new ways to make Working with Words fun and creative! Firstie buy-in is so much greater when it's fun and novel!

Epic Fail, Epic Success

Epic Fail:

Who knew? It wouldn't lay flat and it was impossible to read. Do not attempt this idea.

Reengineered, it now looks like this:

I'm not even going to bother printing it out. It will be shown on the smartboard. God help me if my smartboard fails. I had to manually rotate the activities, and save 24 files. They say from the ashes rises better ideas, so let's see if this one is a winner.

Epic Success:

This Firsties loved it, and after recess there was a line to put in a tattle. By the end of the day there were 16 in the box. 16 tattles that I didn't have to listen to! I did go through them, and there were no major offenses. So far, so good.

"What can I write about" table tennis balls. Several times kids grabbed one when they were working on "free choice writing". Cool!

The "I Spy" glasses from the Dollar Store worked fabulously! Pictured is a student wearing a pair as he edits his writing. Best 5 bucks I've spent in a long time.

Starting to freak a little...

I was so gung-ho on my D5 facelift yesterday. Then I had a teaching dream last night (why, oh why, do I have to dream about school all during vacation? Even at Disney when I'm on teaching-prohibition??), and it seriously rattled me. You know how you sometimes can't shake the way a dream makes you feel? Like, you're pissed at your husband all day if you have a dream that he leaves you. I so can't shake the feeling the teaching-dream gave me. In my dream, I had accidentally left my classroom window open over Christmas break, and was trying to explain to my principal how it had happened. Then I told him all about my new D5 idea (I'm random, even in dreams apparently), and he looked right at me and said "Do you really think it's a good idea to introduce something new when things are going ok? I'm really worried about the instruction time you'll lose". So now I'm worried about the loss of instruction time, too! Am I being selfish by wanting to spice things up? Are my kids going to be able to handle the change, even if I take it slow and easy?

Sheesh. I'm panicking. I feel the sudden urge to run to school and work manically until Tuesday morning. I want to cry.

Daily 5 gets a face lift

Our family just returned from spending Christmas at Disney. Have you ever been? To say it's magical is an understatement. My sister, brother-in-law, husband and I surprised our 4 girls by giving them t-shirts that said "I'm going Disney World for Christmas". They unwrapped them minutes before we whisked them off to the airport. It was exactly what I needed after a rough fall; I smiled every minute of every day for 6 days. I feel so unbelievably refreshed. Laughter is indeed the best medicine.

While I promised my family (and more importantly, myself) that I wouldn't think about teaching while we were at Disney, I came home inspired. I decided that it was time to make learning magical and fun again.

If you've read my previous posts this fall, you'll know that we've been in learning lock-down. A big part of what finally got us on the learning track was the "no stimulation"  plan I put my firsties on. What had always worked with my other classes simply did not work with this one. On the flight home I began to think seriously about how I could keep the teaching ball rolling, but make my students thrown down their cereal spoons and rush off to school every morning.

The one area that I had reduced down to a simple stock was our Daily 5 routine. We had gone from free choice of a lovely variety to whole-group activities. As I began thinking about how I could change it up, I broke up readers workshop into the 4 main areas we, as a class, focus on: reading, working with words, writing, and listening to reading (you'll notice on the wheel that Read to Self is missing. For now, we do this all together at the end of the day). These 4 areas support the learning areas of fluency, accuracy, writing, and some comprehension. Comprehension is still an activity that we do as whole group/guided release. Each area has many activities that we do; as I just said, up until now we have done nearly all of them together at one time. I decided to add some new activities; they will have to be taught and practiced one at a time until I can release them to be done independently. I will lose some instruction time doing this, but it's important to spice things up for the long stretch between Christmas and spring break.

I have 22 students, and the best way I could divide up the 4 D5 areas was to create 24 activities. I used a wheel configuration, because the activities need to rotate, and I needed it to be as easy to do mechanically as possible. I knew that moving clips or clothespins would be too time-consuming for me, and would have me scrambling when what we really need are smooth transitions. The double-faced wheel has a gromit in the middle that holds that names and activities together, and allows quick and easy changing.

Here is the table I used to organize my thoughts about the order of the activities. (You can download my templates at https://sites.google.com/site/mrsmsstuff/matrix) You can alter as you need to, since it's a word doc. The wheel is a bit more difficult to share, since I created it in Adobe Illustrator. I created a blank PDF so that it can be printed, assembled and personalized with drawing and handwriting. You will need to print 8 of the wheel templates; it is broken into a aingle quarter, and you will need a full circle for the names, and a full circle for the activities (simply cut the outer ring off for the inner circle).

As far as adding a little excitement goes, the time has come to finally implement those darn iTouches as well. I have them all set up identically, with videos of the songs and lyrics that we sing in class (to work on fluency). The one exception has the game "Don't Let the Pigeon Run This App", which will be a real treat for the kids once every full rotation.

Now it's just to print, trim, and laminate. Then I'll be ready to relaunch a new and improved D5 guaranteed to spice up our mid-winter.