This Week in Daily Five

I started doing Daily Five the first week of school, but it's sort of finding its groove these last....couple of weeks. No, really. It wasn't until December that I started to feel like I had my feet. It's not even that it's complicated (I'll leave it to greater minds to explain the details) but the act of figuring out how it works for me with this group of students has not been trivial. In full disclosure, I really only do it from 9:35 to 11:15, which gives me just enough time for three mini lessons and three rounds of Daily 5 3. We only do Read to Self, Read to Someone, and Word Work, though I keep committing (then backing out of) Writing. We already do a Writer's Workshop block, outside of that literacy time, so it's not like they aren't writing. It's a logistical issue for me...since there are only three rotations, 4 options means that I will have to work harder keeping track of what they've done over several days, to make sure there's balance. Friends...I'm not up to it. Just saying.

I took the plunge after Thanksgiving and had them make choices. Up until then, it was we all read to ourselves, we all read to somebody else, we all do word work. I was super worried about giving them more independence. I thought for sure some of them would not be able to read to somebody else quietly enough to also have people reading to themselves at the same time. Same for word work. And look, I'm not prone to hysteria, nor am I terribly obsessive about control. Let's just say... I had reason to believe that they would not handle this well. I also had evidence that I would not handle this well.

I was so wrong, on both counts. There is such a lovely 'buzz' of productive work during this literacy block. I love that I get to listen to every child read, individually, every week. It helps me collect ideas for lessons and small group work too. (Though the small group work is definitely my Achilles in this situation....I'm telling myself that I'm getting plenty of traction with individual conferences, but I am still hoping I'll figure this out! Tell me...how do people plan all this? and prep for all this? how many hours are in your day, I ask you??)

My friend, colleague, and former principal shared this photo from his new school, and it made me happy!

I have no control over what happens at their homes each night, but they are getting those minutes during the day, and now I want to show this to my students just to tighten up our "sense of urgency". Lately I've been feeling like they're getting a little loose with "getting started right away" and "working the whole time". I always have that feeling, actually, but when I take a step back and really look at what they are doing...I'm all smiles, I promise!

 

Read to self

 Read to somebody

(these two are like peas and carrots...love it!)

  Word Work

 I've been modeling a "Talk to the Text" comprehension strategy for the last two weeks, and they are loving it! They write on post-it notes, leaving tracks of their thinking, as they read. It can be a question, a connection, a summary, a prediction...They really love it!  

ps...these head phones serve no purpose, really. They are broken headphones that I cut the cords off of. They have no real noise blocking qualities. The kids, however, are convinced they do haha and just putting them on seems to help them focus during Read to Self.

I love finding these little "tracks of their thinking" in the books, and this is one of my favorites, found in "Pigeon Wants a Puppy". (It says, "This pegeon has lost it" haha!!)

{LOVE}

Spinning with The Pigeon

TL/DR: There's a pretty cute and easy free game at the bottom.

Is the weather horrible where you are? If it is, I apologize. It's almost assuredly because I have yard duty this week. When I am on yard duty, it is guaranteed that it will be terrible weather. Not complaining though....just saying. If yard duty is my least favorite thing about elementary school, that's not such a bad thing. There are so many more magical moments that more than make up for it. Sorta. ;)

One thing I love to do with The Littles is to bring things they love out from our books into the world with us. As you've heard me complain explain before, I'm doing Daily 5 with my class this year. I don't have an extensive class library to fuel the wide range of reading levels, so I've been getting beginner chapter books from the public library. I've found that if I want them to read Henry and Mudge, I have to read it to them first. Same way I got them interested in Frog and Toad. Once I read it to them, the titles fly off the shelf. One such series is the "sister" series to Henry and Mudge, called Annie and Snowball. These are stories about Henry's cousin (and neighbor) and her pet bunny.

We noticed that on every page, the bunny was sort of cleverly hanging out somewhere in the picture. And right around that same time, one of my students gave me a palm-of-my-hand sized stuffed white bunny. So I started hiding the bunny around the room, and when they'd discover it, I'd move it when they went to recess or left for home for the day. Then they'd discover it again, over and over. Oh my! So much joy in that moment! I just laugh and laugh when they point and jump and exclaim over where they've found that silly little bunny!

Here's the little bunny on top of the loudspeaker in our classroom. 

Today, they found her perched on top of the overhead screen.

Okay, back to math! haha! This is actually a mathy story, because for our math games, which I'm in the middle of rotating out, I made a fun little spinner game (for recording: spin, tally, graph.... add/compare options) and they can't get enough of these activities. They just think they are so fun! So for this one, the four options on the spinner are each from a book we've read together. The bear from Ira Sleeps Over, the purse from Lily's Purple Plastic Purse, that crazy bike from the original Splat the Cat, and finally a hot dog from The Pigeon Wants a Hot Dog. They loved these books, and they loved seeing these old friends incorporated into a math game. 

You can download from my google drive here:

* Spin and Record with Literature Connections
* Y por los chicos y las chicas

Logistics: These are color prints. For the math box, I print 3 copies of the spinner itself (which go into sheet protectors), throw in a few generic clear spinners that they overlay on the spinner page, and include a matching number of recording sheets, also in sheet protectors. In the tub are also 3 expo markers and a swatch of felt they can use to erase their work on the plastic protector of the recording sheet. I don't have unlimited ink budgets, so this is a good compromise. I also reserve the right to print the color pages in black and white, but they seem fine so far with just erasing their work at the end of their work period.

Reading Pointers

My ultra-cheap whisper phones left me with enough money to make some cute "pointers" for reading the room/word wall work.

The painted wooden pieces were around $0.29 each at a craft store. While at the craft store, I picked up two 5 packs of wooden dowels for $1 a bag. So for $5 and in less than 20 minutes, I made all 10 of these fab pointers.

I struggled with how to cover the plain wooden dowels. Well, haha, "struggled", let's not be dramatic. But I did puzzle over it for a day or two. I was busy so I kept passing this little pile on the sewing table and wondering....do I modge-podge tissue paper onto the sticks? Cut and modge-podge scrap book paper (which is not a hobby of mine, and would require a second craft store run)? Eventually common sense (and an aversion to glue mess) prevailed and I wrapped each stick in colorful duct tape I already had on hand. Then I hot glued the pre-painted wooden shapes to the tips (I stopped the duct tape an inch or two from the top of each stick).

Boom! I also made three extra long ones in exactly the same way. The extra long dowels were $1 each, so for $4 I made three extra long reading pointers too. The extra long ones will work for pointing to the word wall (it's tall, baby) and the number line above the white board and the alphabet at the top of the back wall, too.

Go to town, kiddos!

Going For It

I've decided to do the Daily Five method and CAFE menu. I had bought the books last summer but didn't get around to reading them. I read them both this summer (largely because the word "vacation" confuses me) and you know...I am suddenly all in. It seems like there are pieces of various things I've been using (reading workshop, guided reading, etc.) but I'm moving down to second grade next year (from third) and having the full power of their road map under me feels like the right thing to do. Hold my hand?

In preparing for "read to self" I made a class set (for me, that's 32...ahem) of whisper reading phones. These were a breeze to make and exceptionally cheap too.

It looks like the ones you can purchase (don't click that unless you have $5 per phone) are more like 3/4" around for the tube. I used pvc plumbing pipe (a 10 ft length I purchased at a home improvement center for around $1.75) in 1/2" size. It comes in 3/4" size, but the thing is, is that I had a bag of 25 of the elbow joints in 1/2" size ($5 for a bag of 25) and that was reason enough for me. I mocked one up and I had my In House Quality Control Department (my own second grade son) test it out for me. It looked and felt fine for him, so there we go!

I might be the only teacher on the planet who epic fails every time I try to play the "Um...pretty please I am a teacher, can I get this cut/have a small discount/ask if there are any discards" card. So when I asked, "Hi, I'm a teacher and I need this 10 ft pole cut into 3.5" pieces for a class project...is there any way to do that with an electronic saw?" ...I wasn't that surprised that I got a teenager with dreadlocks shrugging his shoulder and saying, "Nah, cuz that doesn't go through the saw." Fine. I'll saw it with a hack saw on the miter bench in the molding aisle. Thankfully my long-suffering husband had come with me and we took turns sawing and nursing our aching shoulders. All in all, for 15 minutes of sawing, it turned out fine.

So, cut the 10 ft. pvc piping into 3.5" lengths. Buy two pvc elbow joints in matching width (for me 1/2" elbows) for each phone. Put an elbow on each end of the pipe and muscle it down as far as it will go. I added a round of colorful duct tape for no other reasons than a) I had some and b) it covered the printing some of the pipe pieces were sporting.

Total cost for 35 phones (gotta make some extras, you know how it is): $1.75 for pipe, $10 for 50 elbows, plus one bag of elbows and duct tape I already had on hand. Don't forget $0.59 for the bag of frozen peas I used to soothe my saw-injured shoulder. That makes 35 phones for 12 bucks.

If you have a lot less kids than me (mazel tov!), there is also an option of buying the elbows at around $0.29 each. So if you need to make like, 27 phones, you could buy two bags and 4 extra elbows so that you don't have a bunch of extra elbows.

Right now I'm deciding between numbering these for my Littles versus having some wipes to just give them a run down when you want to use one. I don't really have the OMG GERMS! bone but...I could use advice if you're feeling that way inclined. Seems to me if they are numbered and privately held, they should just go in their book boxes so they aren't all piled up in one big germ-fest. If you've had any experience with this type of thing, I would love to hear about it, thanks!