Reading Rockets

A few weeks ago the RLit who works out of school was photo copying some great wee reading rockets at each stage up to gold. So today I have spent some time creating these to suit my own and my classes needs. Each colour has what children need to be doing independently at that level - this is glued into their Learning Journals so that students and their parents can see what needs to be achieved.

Daffodil day

Today was Daffodil Day (one of the most important fundraising days to help raise money for cancer sufferers). Being Friday my class alway does an art project so today I decided to make Daffodils. Below is the step by step instructions to make them:

  

We started by painting the dirt

We then cut out our stem and leaves (we painted these earlier) and glued them on.

Students then cut the petals out and glued them on.

Finally students glued on a patty pan to make the flower corona.

To end the day we made acrostic poems:

Rainbow facts to 10

Today I thought I would try something different with my kids to see if they could begin to make connections with their basic facts to 10. This was actually an idea from one of my courses and found a cool sheet that students could use in their own books. Check out this blog that I got the resource from.

I am also using the Numicon blocks to help some students with other connections - I tied this into the rainbow facts to help them and make things more obvious.

Astronaut applications

We finished our applications during writing time. Here are some of the final products. If you want a copy of the document you can get it from my google docs.

Handwriting practice

At the moment my kids love using chalk so I thought why not use this in my Daily 5 time. Students have been practicing their high frequency words and writing them out on the court. I also though that it would be a good idea to use as part of handwriting. I used it today as a warm up and to teach children the correct letter formation.

Week 5 Term 3 2014

Another great week in Room 6, however it is hard to believe how fast our term is going!

On Tuesday I had a New Entrant have his first visit and it is amazing the different stages that students start school at - with some not being ready, some needing a few weeks to get use to routines and school life and some who are ready to go. I feel that it would be beneficial to New Entrant teachers if there was a preschool programme in place to help the transition to school not only easier on students but the teacher and their parents/caregivers.

On Wednesday I was out of the class for a maths course and my students went to cross country - my class did well with everyone having a go. We even got some places!!

For maths I have been doing addition/subtraction and my students are progressing well. My maths calendar is helping students to learn their numbers up to 100 and then they are using this in their group work. I attended a maths course on fractions and other strands so I look forward to trialing some of the ideas I got.

In writing I am continuing to work with mixed ability needs based groups. This is working really well and students are moving through each part quickly. I have been using free choice seating and this is putting the ownership over on to my students to make good choices. Their writing is still maintaining a high standard so I am pleased about that. We had Lisa in from Te Toi Tupu maths on Thursday afternoon and she went over a great wee activity to boost students oral language and help with sentence structure. I will let you know more once I have had a go with my class.

Reading is continuing well. I have a huge focus on high frequency words at the moment and will be testing some students at the end of week 7 to see if it has made a difference. Students have been using their poetry books to help increase their fluency. I just have to make sure that I throughly teach each nursery rhyme so they are confident by the time it comes to doing it by themselves. During the week my class was also approved a Reading Eggs subscription through until the end of the year which I am really pleased about because they love it and it is helping build on phonics concepts.

Inquiry has been focused on the planets and you can view the learning activities on my latest post. Next week we are looking at different forms of transport.

Planets - our week 5 inquiry

This week we have been studying about planets.
Monday we started by watching a video about planets after this video we talked about what we know about them. With a buddy students then came up with 2 questions they may like to find out about planets.
Tuesday we started exploring some of the planets. Children were interested to find out how planets were made and I found it hard to describe so I made up a solar system in a container (water and glitter) and explained that the glitter is like dust and dirt and it slowly attaches to each other making a planet.

I then gave students a booklet that has each planet and a sentence about them. We discussed the features and then students coloured them to match. One student was interested in finding out about craters so together we did some research that help him answer his questions.

Thursday we found out about who discovered the planets and who visits them. The boys were pretty excited about astronauts and we watched a short video about astronauts landing on the moon - I decided to venture down the astronaut path for a writing topic.

On Friday we had our planets craft day. Student were then given a cut paste activity where they were required to order the planets.

We also did our Astronaut Application - but haven't finished them (will do this on Monday as part of writing).

I thought this was a cute idea and a good way to incorporate literacy through our inquiry. If you would like this document you can download it from my google docs.

Then for the afternoon we made some planets using shaving foam and dye. They turned out really good. See below for step by step photos:

1. We added shaving foam and dye (before hand we had a discussion about shave foam and what/who uses it).

2. Next we mixed it together with a popsicle stick.

3. We pushed our piece of paper down into the mix and left it to dry.

4. We scraped the excess foam off with a ruler and then cut it out

5. We lined them up in order from the sun and pretended we were astronauts blasting off to space.

A close up of the final product.

Maths course - fractions and other strands

Today I attended my last maths course. Our focus for the day was mainly fractions. For the previous 2 courses we had a different lecturer, she was away today and we had a a lady filling in - I was a bit disappointed as she wasn't as organised and was teaching from another persons plan - still she had a huge wealth of knowledge and I appreciate what I did learn. Through discussions with other teachers I did learn a lot of great ideas about games and activities to use with my students.

I find that these course are really great for breaking down the knowledge that students need at each stage and what they will be learning. When I think to my class their are lot of teachable moments that I could incorporate fractions below are several that I will use:

- cutting our fruit in schools up 1/2 and 1/4

- splitting groups up into fractions of sets

- using our bodies to make fractions

Below are some photos of stages etc

Our course facilitator also informed us that they JAM assessment has been revised and is currently being printed for use in schools. It is also being made into a pack pre-made so it can be used straight away so I am looking forward to that coming out. 

Poetry to increase fluency

This week in Room 6 I have introduced a new aspect to our daily poetry. Students in my class all have a poetry book which is full of simple nursery rhymes and poems. I have given them a tracking sheet each where they are required to read each poem five times within the week - their buddy that they read to then has to sign off that they have listened to them. Today was our first day of it, so far so good! In the article I read a teacher implemented this into her class to increase students fluency level.

Week 4 Term 3 2014

Another busy week in Room 6.

Monday was business as usual. I had a big portion of boys away so that changed the dynamics a bit.

Tuesday I had my appraisal meeting with my principal where we discussed my current goals and personal inquiry.

Wednesday my mentor teacher came in and observed me taking a math's lesson. It went pretty well and we discussed how math's calendar etc is going. Math's calendar is something I find a bit harder in a composite class.

My mentor teacher went on an inquiry course the previous week and we spent some time talking about options and paths that I could take for my inquiry. This is something I have been thinking about any way as I feel my inquiry topics go for to long. I am going to change them to short 1 week - 2 weeks in length. Next week we are starting an inquiry into the planets.

For the rest of Wednesday I had PRT release and it was so great crossing some of the items off my to-do list.

Making applesauce

On Friday my class made homemade applesauce in class. I found the idea on another blog and thought what a great idea to talk about following instructions and making sure our writing is in the correct sequence. We got to practice a variety of skills in such a fun and engaging activity. The students loved to help cook the applesauce and we worked on writing, reading, and math skills in the process. 

My students walked in to see the anchor chart and crock pot. Immediately they were curious. We started the morning going around sharing what ingredients we thought we were going to need and how we thought we would make applesauce.
We also had a brief mini lesson on different types of text. I brought out a cookbook and asked them if they knew what it was. 

We discussed how chefs need to follow a recipe when they cook something.
Ingredients:
10 large cooking apples: peeled, sliced and diced (I was lucky and had Ben on the job of prepping the apples last night.)
2 cup of water
1 cup of white sugar
As a class we then read the recipe and measured out and added the ingredients to the crockpot. 

Once we added everything we left it to rest.Throughout the day I let my students stir the ingredients (supervised and from my observation not many students know how to use a wooden spoon to mix) we used adjectives to describe the way the room smelled when we came back in after lunch, the way the applesauce looked, and we talked about what was happening in the crockpot. I used an interval timer so they knew when it was their turn to stir it.

We also wrote a sequence of events of our applesauce. I let my kids lead the conversation and then they wrote it themselves.

Then around 2.30pm we enjoyed tasting our apple sauce. It would have been delicious with ice-cream but I didn't think that far ahead - some children still had three servings!

You can follow this link to a copy of my applesauce document I just printed one for each child and displayed it on their writing wall.

Rakau sticks

This week in Room 6 we have been doing some maori stick games. I played my students a beat and they had to repeat it back to me. They then had a go at making up their own and playing it to a partner. Quite a good way to build up rhythm and work on listening skills.

Week 3, Term 3 2014

On Monday for our inquiry we were looking at the life cycle of a bird - we focused on the pūkeko. I had seen this great wee activity on Pintrest where children create their pūkeko out of paper. I did lots of modelling around this before I let them go off to create on their own. 

They are still cute, but not what I had in mind.

Once they had finished their life cycle it was very hard to follow... so on Monday night I went away and changed my plan - we redid them on Tuesday with a template and the children used crayons and paper to match - was a much better lesson! 

My inquiry seems to be drawing out a lot of questions that caught me off guard especially when we spoke about baby birds and humans - I really had to think about what path to take it down when answering these sorts of questions. "Where do baby humans come from?" "Why do only eggs that live with a boy bird have babies inside?" 

For writing I am continuing needs based group work where I pull children out where necessary. This is working really well and my students are getting taught exactly what they need. On Thursdays we have a free choice writing day. I decided to change things up a bit after reading an article on a classroom who had removed all desks and had little nocks for kids to work in. I did this a lot with my class last year as I thought they were better prepared. However my class really surprised me and the quality of writing didn't slip at all. For the whole time they were completely silent (usually there is a small amount of chit-chat going on). During this time I also wrote my own story to help with modelling the importance of it.
Below are some of the opinions from my students.
"I liked it because I got to lie on the cushion and write my story. It was comfy." - Travis (Year 2)
"I didn't like it because the sun was in my face. Next time I will pull the curtain." - Glaceous (Year 1)
"It was nice and cosy." - Logan (Year 1)
"Because it was nice and quite" - Cayden (New Entrant)
"I like sitting where I wanted to because it was quieter than when we sit at our desks because their wasn't people close to me." Kalyx (Year 2)

On Wednesday I met with my mentor teacher and we discussed the Record of Oral Language after I had tested a couple of kids. We spoke of some ways to help develop their Oral Language in different ways.

My reading is going good and I have my Principal in taking 3-4 groups per day. I tested 6 children and am so happy that 4 of them are ready to move up a reading level. I can definitely see the buddy reading that they have been doing has helped their fluency. Now just to continue a big push on high frequency words and comprehension strategies.

My goal for week 4:

• Record a lesson in each of reading, writing and maths to reflect on and help inform my teaching.