Centers in a Snap!

It seems like I have been doing Daily 5 stations forever...but I haven't.  The truth is, it is relatively new to our school.  I just fell in love with the process and with the ability it gives me to work with small groups or individuals.  One of the biggest perks is that the kids get so much practice in several areas of reading and writing.  I can't see me ever doing anything else - and after 24 years of teaching - that says alot about how much I love it.

I know there are lots of people who are not doing stations.  Along with that, there were people who were doing stations LONG before I was (like my mom...50 years ago!)

If you are beginning to look at blogs and Pinterest...thinking of implementing stations for the new year, this may be perfect for you!  I have created a HUGE set of activities that are super fast to print and super fast to implement!  I have three groups of teachers from a neighboring school coming to watch my stations in action next month.  I had people new to stations in mind when I created this. It is something you can print and go with.  I have thought about how overwhelmed I was when I first started looking at Pinterest and different blogs a few years ago. I felt so "out of the loop."  I didn't know where to start. I didn't know what products would be best for my class. This is a big set of easily adaptable things that cover all areas of Language Arts from shared journals to reading passages/responses to games. Here are a few pictures of the set!  Check it out {HERE} at my TpT store OR {HERE} at Buy Sell Teach (my personal new favorite)!

23 different activities included!  

Getting Kids to Respond to Reading

When we read a selection in class we use our strategies, discuss, answer questions, and correct. You know the routine.  Since I'm in school right now, I'm doing similar things, but I noticed that we read and respond, rather than read and answer questions.  We respond to the reading and to each other.  It makes you actually "have a thought" about what you've read rather than just answer someone else's thoughts.  I've become more reflective about things when I read.  I like that! I've decided to try this with my kids this year.  I've created response sheets for non fiction and fiction that I plan to use. After they've responded to the selection,  I want them to respond to each other, so the pages are two-sided.  I was thinking "partner reponses."  First, I'm just going to teach them how to respond to the selection, then we'll work on responding to each other.  You can get them in either of my stores:  TPT or Buy Sell  Teach (my new favorite!)

Since it's just the first week of school, I haven't done this yet.  If you use something like this, please share your ideas and how it goes for you! If not, join me in trying this out this year!

Great Cards for Stations!!

I have created these academic vocabulary cards to use in a station or by the whole class (pass the words out and match to your definiton!)   There are 66 cards!

Check them out at TPT or Buy Sell Teach! 

My kids are having fun spreading these over the floor and working with a partner to match them up!  Enjoy!



  

Great Books

I have my favorite books for sure.  I think I'd be sad if a year went by and I didn't get to use all of them! I have created some book units to go with some of them.  Ruby the Copycat is one of my all-time favorites. It'a about a new student, Ruby, who tries to fit in by copying another student.  She finds out that it's not a very good way to make friends. There is so much to talk about as her relationship with Angela changes over a few days of copying her.  The theme teaches kids how to be themselves and that everyone has something that they do well.  In my unit, there are prereading questions to discuss, story elements, an assessment, and Hannel's type questioning strategies.  Ruby has been my all-time best seller!  Get it on TPT or my new store at Buy Sell Teach!

Pinkie Leaves Home

 Another favorite is called Pinkie Leaves Home. A little penguin named Pinkie loses all of his feathers in an oilslick.  He solves his problem in a very "cool" way!  It features several settings and all of them help to lead Pinkie through the plot.  You can find it in my TpT store.  If you need to tie in science (environment/wildlife) to a great story, this book is wonderful!

PLC's and Team Meetings

Our district has been training all of us on the use of PLC's (Professional Learning Communities) over these past two years.  Heard of them?  It really is an awesome way to work together.  I feel extremely fortunate.  As we go through the norms that guide our team meetings. we find that we already do so much of the PLC routine.  There are four of us on the third grade team this year.  We are friends who truly love to be together, so staying on topic is sometimes hard and we "rabbit-trail" because we love to hear what is going on in each other's lives, and besides, lunch is 20 minutes long and we don't get to talk long enough there.  But the thing is, I'm the lead teacher, and I've got to keep us on track.  It's really hard because I like to talk as much as the rest but I've got to make sure we accomplish what we need to do.  We've decided meeting once a week isn't enough to cover everything, so we're going to two meetings per week, mainly because we are planning more and more together.  That is pretty new for us. Maybe if we become more efficient at PLC's, we can accomplish more in shorter time.  In order to meet the norms we've established for our meetings, it's just taking longer right now. We stay together on the objectives (as much as possible), or "TEKS" as we call them in Texas, and most importantly, are all giving the same assessments to the kids.  If a student isn't doing well on a certain objective, we can talk about what we do to help kids succeed in our own classrooms.  We share, share, share activities and plans.  Everyone brings something to the table and it's been really awesome.  Were you waiting for me to say, "but..."?  No but.  It's really working.  We are focused, planning together, assessing in the same way, collecting data, sharing data.  I'm very excited to watch our test scores go up because I really believe this can't do anything but help.

I shared my forms for monitoring progress in a post about a week ago.  I use these to stay on top of which kids I've helped in small group and for how long.  I also let my kids see their progress graph page after each assessment, especially if they retake it.  It goes up every time, so they like coloring in a higher score after we've worked so hard to improve. Here's a link to the Progress Monitoring pages in case you missed it.  Data, if you use it, will change the way you teach.

Please share how your team works together collaboratively.  I'd love to hear how other PLC's work!

Cover Thyself

We are learning procedures for Guided Math and Daily 5 over these past weeks, and I've given a couple of assessments.  I'm already seeing how I have to start working with small groups, and there is no time to spare!  We just had a meeting with our principal on progress monitoring, and I was glad I had just created this page I plan to use.  I have also included another page for keeping track of which skills you are working on as well as time and date slots for  RTI documentation.  When I try to stay organized for RTI requirements,  I go right to these pages to see who needs work on which skill and which assessment they need to retake.  My kids are coloring in their own scores, setting goals for themselves.  We were fortunate enough to have a wonderful tutor last year who was so great at writing down things for me as we assessed and worked with kiddos, but I'm afraid I'm on my own this year, so I'm keeping these pages close at hand.  I use the Progress Monitoring page in an individual folder for each student (I put several of them in each folder for now and will add more later.)  Here's the link for my new (and I mean NEW, and needing more in it!)  TpT store.

Progress Monitoring and Documentation

And finally, another word from my mother. (I never knew how much she taught me as a young teacher until I started blogging; it's all coming back to me!)  My first year of teaching, she talked to me about documentation by telling me, "CYA."  No, that's not for texting "see ya."  It meant Cover Your ***.  Now, I don't talk that way, neither does my mom, but she was dead serious, so she made her point. Obviously, I never forgot it.  So friends, cover thyselves.  RTI documentation is serious stuff.