Five for Friday {First Week Back}

Hi Friends! How are ya? Did you have a great first week back at school? My kiddos and I had a busy week of review and catch up! We were all a hot.sick.mess during the weeks leading up to Christmas…..so we had to use our first week back to review.review.review and CATCH UP! And by golly, I think we’ve done it!

I’m linking up with Kacey at Doodle Bugs Teaching to share our faves from this past week.

We skip counted through the week in math! Notice the typo on the 5’s chart? Ugh! Not sure what we were thinking…thank goodness for my eagle-eyed team mate! It’s all fixed scribbled over to say in instead of is now. When you teach syllabication in the morning, and skip counting in the afternoon…..BEWARE….you may end up with big words on your math anchor chart! =)

Simply [rote] skip counting is of days past. Now, our standards call for skip counting sets of objects….the day we worked on counting by 5’s we each traced our hands and lined them up across the carpet to count sets of 5 little fingers! Kiddos loved how long the line was and were utterly amazed when they discovered how many fingers there are in our classroom! After we counted them, 3 students worked together to label each of the hands in order beginning with 5 before I hung them up to use as a reference.

This week, Smart Art began on Thursday. What we were going to do, would take some time….so it just couldn’t wait all the way until Friday.

I absolutely LOVE using the book The Apple Pie Tree by Zoe Hall to teach how the changing seasons effect plants. After reading it and discussing what happened to the apple pie tree during each season, we worked to illustrate what we had learned. As much as I love sharing an awesome book, I love tying in art even more…

On Thursday we worked to cut, glue, and draw details to illustrate winter and spring. On Friday, we flipped our little foldable over to illustrate summer and autumn.

The wonkiness of kids’ work adds character. No patterns were provided. I like seeing their personalities shine through their work. Each kiddo started with a blank sheet of paper and a model projected on the whiteboard as a guide to get started. Though we were all illustrating the seasons, each and every tree, leaf, and apple are unique because they were given creative control of the work they’d produce. Lots of happy smiles were seen among the mess of clips and snips of paper all over the room!

Wanna peek inside? After giving summer and autumn a little time to dry, we opened them up to prep for next week. One of our performance assessments is to observe and record the weather over the course of a week. Last week….seasons. Next week….weather. We’ll use our little foldable to record the weather and relative temperature each morning. On Thursday, during our normal science lesson, we’ll read Gail Gibbons’ Weather Words and illustrate the vocabulary. Lastly, students will illustrate their favorite type of weather!

Creating a display type foldable added a little novelty to our work. Foldables shouldn’t have to always be flat! I love using them, BUT I don’t want my kiddos to get bored with them by continuously using the same kind all the time. They watched me prep this one for them and absolutely couldn’t wait to get their hands on it!

Will your little meteorologists be making observations about the weather soon? Click HERE to grab the mini-pages we’ll be using. Check out some of the books and resources we’ll be using below!




Happy weather watching!

Sunday Reflections & Lesson Plans

Hi, Friends! How are ya? It’s Sunday evening…as I enjoy my guilty pleasure (reality TV), it’s really nice to have an extra day to prep for the upcoming  week. Actually, with MORE time on my hands I’ve gotten my lesson plans done earlier! Go figure! LOL!

In between completing mid-year assessments, we took some time to wiggle and learn in fun, creative ways. Having to slow down a bit for assessments has also brought about a few changes in instruction that I’ll share a little later…..here’s what we were up to last week.

“COOL, Mrs. Dwyer…I really like this book!”

 

To make the best use of our time, we incorporate science and social studies into our writer’s workshop block. On Monday, Wednesday and Friday we concentrate on sight words, grammar, and writing. On Tuesdays, our focus is social studies. On Thursdays, our focus is science. As often as possible, we also make cross curricular connections during our literacy block. We read The Apple Pie Tree by Zoe Hall to explore how the change in seasons affect plants. After reading it and discussing it, we got our bag lady on…

 

 

For this activity, the sentences were completed through guided writing. After students finished their writing and illustrations, they then got to complete it by adding the apple tree torn art to the front cover. They really enjoyed this activity and put a great deal of thought into it, after we had a heart to heart about the importance of completing our work neatly.

“This is my favorite book we’ve made so far!”

 

They thought the Apple Pie Tree booklet was pretty cool, but favored our landforms flipbook a little more.

 

 

 

I have an active class full of some of the cutest, firstie boys you’d ever want to meet! Exploring landforms was right up their alley. Most of them chose to go mountain climbing to explore the features of their favorite landform. I WISH I had enough time to share the hilariousness we experience in Room 159. A boy heavy classroom is a very interesting, active place to be!

 

 

We spiced up our daily word work by using paint samples to rhyme and mark glued sounds. Writing with sharpies was definitely appreciated because they don’t get to touch THOSE too often!

 

 

By Friday, it may have been a sunny 70ish outside, but it was chilly in our classroom because a blizzard of blends blew through! Decoding blends is one of those skills that we'll spiral review constantly. With the introduction of blends, digraphs, compound words, suffixes….our words are getting bigger and correct spellings are becoming more important. Word play has to be fun!

 

 

Brrrrrrrrr…..in honor of all things Frozen, we listened to the soundtrack from the movie as we worked to complete our snow storm of blends too!

Looking ahead to next week…


Daily phonemic awareness activities have been added.



Small group lessons have been differentiated according to instructional needs.

 
Testing continues with mid-year reading records and adjustments to flexible groups are being made.



….with LOTS of fun to be had!  Stop by A Classroom Full of Smiles to check out her new weekly linky and the giveaway she’s hosting. You may recognize one of the contributors! Have a great week, friends!

Five for Friday~Smart Art

Hi, peeps! How are ya? It’s an UN-TX-like 20 something degrees in our neck of the woods today! Brrrrrr…….What’s the temperature like where you are? Please send warm thoughts our way! It actually FEELS like winter and I’m not quite sure what to make of it, but I know I don’t like it! Ha! Bring on the sunshine! While we wish for warmer weather, I thought I’d catch up with the awesome Kacey over at DoodleBugs Teaching for a Five for Friday {..ahem, late Saturday} post!



Our Daily 5 routines usually run Monday – Thursday. Fridays are run a little differently. We give numerical grades on our students report cards, which require assessments. We collect grades in a number of different ways. This quick post will outline what a typical Friday in our room looks like.

Just after our morning recess, students gather at the carpet and begin selecting partners to ‘Read to Someone’. They find a place in the room with a copy of our story of the week to read and discuss. After they have completed their individual discussions throughout the room, we meet together and discuss the comprehension strategy we practiced throughout the week. Our main story, generally, comes from our reading series. Sometimes we pull stories for Reading A-Z. Other pieces of authentic literature are pulled in throughout the week and used to make connections to it or replace it, if the selection in our book isn’t a good one for the skill we’re focusing on.

Once this discussion is complete, we complete a comprehension and related phonics assessment.

Afterwards,……it’s time for Smart Art! We work together to extend what we’ve learned. This is also the time that requires students to have completed their ‘Must Do’ stations activity for the week. No ‘Must Do’, No Smart Art…..you can read about our ‘Must Do/Can Do’s’ HERE.



This week, students were separated into mixed ability groups to read and identify examples of cause and effect for a specific season of the year. Each group was led by a student. I explained the requirements of the group work to the 4 leaders. The 4 leaders explained it to each of their groups.



After the groups met and completed their discussions, we moved to our desks to prepare our smart art. Each student labeled the front of their foldable. We discussed cause and effect as one event that causes another to happen. Why it happened and what happened.


….then the leader of each group selected two friends to present for their group. 1 friend gave the cause, the other presented the effect and I recorded it on the board. Students then returned to their groups to write the example agreed upon by their group. They also created a symbol to represent their respective season.



Still learning…(always learning)….but in a way that’s interactive, fun and creative. We don’t use our desks a whole lot either. You’ll notice, we work on the floor quite a bit. Why be cooped up in a chair all day, when you can stretch out and get comfy? And because, we generally do this after completing assessments, we’ve already been sitting for long enough.



Here’s what our finished smart art for the week looked like! Like? Winter. Spring. Summer. Fall. I love them ALL! Do you think my kids have picked up on the fact that I like doodle frames? Ha!

Could I use this for a grade too? Yep! Sure could did!  =)



After grabbing the FREEBIE to mark must do’s in her stations, my sister from another mother asked for a cupcake to mark her remaining  tubs as ‘desserts’. I thought you might be able to use them too, so here ya go! If you like 'em, click 'em…they’re all yours!

What creative ways do you use to assess student understanding? Do tell…..=)