Guided Reading

During our hour literacy block, I meet with small groups of students for Guided Reading.
During this time we work on many reading activities that help the kids learn the skills they need to read and comprehend more difficult texts independently. 
Following are some photos that show some of the activities we do during Guided Reading.

We preview books before reading by taking a "picture walk." We make predictions about what the book is about, and look for words that may be tricky to read.

 Before reading, we also practice reading words that may be "word stoppers" during our reading.

Our "tools of the trade" = great books and our bookmarks, that include the "Beanie Baby Strategies that we use to solve unknown words.

We read with a partner or take turns with our group.

We read to ourselves.

We read... and read... and read!!










 

We use "whisper phones" to listen to our own reading, which helps us read more fluently.

 

 We write about our reading.

 

We play with the words that we find in our reading.

We practice reading "high frequency words" which helps us read fluently.

 We love reading!!

Snow Fun with Learning Buddies!

Last Friday we had a lot of fun playing in the snow with our 4th grade Learning Buddies from Mrs. Dadmun's class.

We challenged those that were interested, to work with their buddy to make the biggest snowball on the playground.  There was some awesome collaboration and teamwork! And, lots of smiles!

I wasn't able to take pictures of everyone, but these few capture a fun filled Friday afternoon.

Melting!

Our last post included a video of the class taking a movement break to get some energy out. 

Today, before writing, we needed to quiet our bodies down, so we used GoNoodle.com to "melt" our bodies.

The kids start out by "freezing" their bodies in a statue pose.

While freezing, the students are guided through scrunching up their faces, and tensing the different parts of their bodies.

Slowly, the students "melt" to the ground as they calmly breathe and relax their bodies.

We were all more relaxed and ready for writing after this 3 minute activity.

I always remind them (and hope!) that they can use these activities any time they feel like they need help settling their bodies and minds.

Movement Breaks!

Happy New Year!

The kids returned to school this week seeming well rested and ready to learn. 

After working hard, our class often needs a movement break. I remind the kids that these breaks help get their bodies and brains ready to learn.  Sometimes this means doing some controlled breathing and calm moves to settle our bodies down, and other times times we dance and move to get some excess energy out. 

We often use a website called GoNoodle which has guided movements and fun songs which the kids really enjoy.  This afternoon, they had a lot of fun dancing to a "Kids Bop" song.  Enjoy watching!

Number Talks!

On Friday we had a special guest, Ms. Pike, come in and do a "Number Talk" with our class.
We have started incorporating Number Talks into our routine 2-3 times per week.
Currently, Ms. Pike has been teaching a class of teachers, including me,  how to use Number Talks. We we were all excited to have her spend some time with us.

What is a Number Talk?
A Number Talk is a short, ongoing daily routine that provides students with meaningful ongoing practice with computation. This quick routine helps students develop computational fluency because the expectation is that they will use number relationships and the structures of numbers to add and subtract.

Number Talks do not replace current curriculum or take up the majority of the time spent on mathematics. They take only 10-15 minutes.

Ms Pike displays an image, using 2 "ten-frames." Students take the time to determine how many dots there are in all. They indicate that they have an answer by giving a "thumbs up."

 

Before asking for strategies, Ms. Pike asks for the answer and records it.

Children share their strategies and Ms. Pike records their thinking on the board.

Coding in First Grade

Last Friday our 4th grade Learning Buddies from Mrs. Dadmun's class taught us how to use a coding program.  The children learned how to "write code" to move a turtle across the screen to a pond. 
 
Today, our technology teacher, Mr. Fleury continued teaching code to the children by working on an iPad app called "Lightbot." This app can be used on iPads or you can use it on a computer at http://lightbot.com/ .  

The kids are really enjoying learning this new technological skill!