What's New in Room 410

So, overall, I have really enjoyed my time in 5th grade. Over Christmas I spent some time re-thinking what I am doing in my class. I realized that what I missed most about teaching a younger grade is doing the Daily 5 for real. I LOVE reading with small groups of kids at the little reading table. It's my favorite.

I couldn't figure out how to make Daily 5 really really work with my 5th graders because my room is too small for all those bodies. We are all on top of each other, so moving all around to go to our activities and meet back on the rug was impossible. I think the problem was the part where you meet back up between rotations. So for the first semester, we did a Daily Reading workshop time, but never did the different rotations.

Well, now I've gone way back to the basics. No new ideas here. I'm basically doing centers 3 days a week. The centers include time with me and Read to Self everyday. Word work on the Smartboard, writing, STAAR practice, and read to someone get mixed in. I write the kids group names on the green card and I have a student rotate them after each round. I feel like I am finally getting some of the elements of Daily 5 back in my class, even though I can't do it by the book. It is nothing new, it's extremely simple, but it works! What REALLY works is getting to read with all my kids in a small group. It is the most valuable instruction time I have!

Also, like many of you, we are gearing up for STAAR! Trying to cover our last few TEKS. I have so enjoyed trying to apply some of these newly tested TEKS into our reading. Here is a couple we've been working on...

I know words like conflict, resolution, resolve, etc are really simple, but if you teach ELLs, they need to hear those words quite a bit so they understand them on the test. Some of mine had never hear these words. We've been using our sticky notes to write conflicts and resolutions we see in our own reading...This ties really well to summary. It's like the ole B.M.E., because a good summary is going to cover the conflict and resolution in a story.

And foreshadowing...I don't think I learned what that meant until like 8th grade, but my kids are doing well with it! We watched some movie clips with foreshadowing first, and then applied it to reading. We are reading "Sign of the Beaver" which has SO much foreshadowing. I snapped a pic when we first started this foreshadowing chart. Oh, and I sing "dun dun dun" ominously pretty much every time we discuss foreshadowing...

Anchor Chart Models

The school district I teach for has been very big on Daily 5 and Reading/Writing Workshop for about three years now. The younger grades usually go by the book with Daily 5. The intermediate grades do "Daily 3" (readers/writer's workshop and some variation of word work).

So, now our 5th graders know the drill of the Daily 5 launching lessons. I knew I still needed to teach those lessons to set expectations, but I wanted to change it up.

Pinterest inspired me to do something different this year..I was loving the anchor charts that included pictures of students modeling the behaviors. I took that idea and ran with it. (Thank you to whoever in the world thought of it first!)

I had the kids work in teams to create their own lists of correct and incorrect behaviors. Then, they had to model the behaviors and take pictures. The students were quite literally "models" of the behavior! They had a blast, and thought they were just hilarious...We chose the best pictures to post on the anchor chart, so it was sort of a competition...I thought the kids did a great job!





They even gave away some of their tricks. :) Like being sneaky and writing notes behind their book...

They also told me that they sometimes "fake read" when they lay down...I was happy to hear these little tidbits ha!



(Do you like how I used sticky notes to cover the prominent faces? Haha)

CAFE Menu

Last year, I decided to make my CAFE menu spell out FACE, and I referred to it as the FACE of a reader...



I decided to change it up a bit this year, my sweet sister-in-law gave me a little help with the design...Not the greatest picture, but you get the idea...



After I printed these out, I just put a glitter letter in the circle to make the acronym. I used one of my favorite Kevin and Amanda fonts. When I taught second, I always wanted everything to have super clear print for the kids to read, but now that I'm with older kids it isn't quite as big of a deal...Plus, my kids have seen the CAFE menu for a couple years now. I'm really pleased with how it turned out!

CAFE Template

Easy Class Library Labels

Today I made these simple labels for the baskets in my class library.

I started with clear address labels...



I downloaded cute fonts like this one for free at Kevin and Amanda. Then I printed the titles/genres onto the address labels.



I stuck them onto pieces of cute scrapbook paper.



After I cut them out, I attached them to strips of glittered cardstock. (This was half off at Hobby Lobby today, along with all the pads of scrapbooking paper!)



I love these, and I cannot wait to put these on my book baskets!

Daily 5 + Smartboard = Love

I have already posted about some of my favorite Smartboard programs, but for this post I wanted to focus on Smartboard programs for students to do independently during the Daily 5. Typically I partnered students up so that each pair had 2 Daily 5 Rotations per week to use programs. Sometimes I created my own programs, but often I found that what I needed was already out there in the Smart Exchange.

**At first I was worried about the other students being distracted by students on the board, but after a week or so, it was not a problem!

I have put the exact names and pictures of the program. You can look them all up on The Smart Exchange. Here are my favs:


For Primary Grades:

Homophones:


Long O Word Sort:


(There are many more programs in this format with all the vowels.)


Plural Nouns:


Rhyming Activities:


Vowel Sort:


For Intermediate Grades:

Grade 3 Main Idea: (Really makes the practice more engaging :))


Guide Words: (could be for primary grades, too)


Incredible Inferences:


Parts of Speech Sort:


Prefixes:



All of these could be used for various grades depending on the skill-level of the students you are working with! I love how Daily 5 allows for differentiating like this. Have you found any great programs to use during Daily 5?

How I Made the Daily Five Work for Me...

Summer is rapidly coming to an end, which means we are all thinking about our new year. I know that many of us are thinking of what new things we are going to attempt to put into place! I plan to write some of my new goals soon. I know many people may be deciding if they want to implement The Daily 5/CAFE.





I am not an expert at ALL, but I have used it for two years. Over time, I've learned ways that I can utilize it best in my classroom. So, I thought I would share a few tips from my experience.




How I made it work...

1. Before school began, I invested in these little book baskets. They have been perfect for students to store all the books they have chosen. I usually let them keep 4-5 books. I've heard of other teachers use gallons sized ziplocs for a cheaper option...



2. I follow the recommended schedule of introducing The Daily 5 and CAFE pretty closely. The books give you a pretty good outline of what to do starting from day one. It may seem pretty tedious, but it REALLY trains the kids to do all activities independently.

3. DO WHAT YOU CAN DO. I could only do 4 rotations per day, and it worked perfectly for me. I saved about 1.5 hours per day to do these rotations. The other 45-60 mins I had for Reading/ELA was time I spent using thematic books, the district's reading curriculum, etc.

4. I really believe you can use The Daily 5 with any reading program you already have going. I used activities from Texas Treasures as word work activities. I planned word work activities based on that week's spelling words or phonics patterns.

5. Daily 5 emphasizes giving students choices. This is an important principal, and children should be able to choose books they want to read for Read to Self and Read to Someone time. However, I did not always give my students choices on their word work or writing activities. This helped me get grades and utilize other activities I wanted my students to use.

6. Daily 5 is GREAT for incorporating technology. You can use ipads, ipods, computers or Smartboards for Word Work, Listening to Reading, Writing, and even Read to Self with E-readers. My kids LOVED using the Smartboard a couple times per week for their Word Work activities.

7. Small-group reading instruction is WONDERFUL! Hands-down, my favorite part of the day. There is nothing I love more than reading and discussing books with groups of kids. I used ALL kinds of books, many of which fit with our S.S. or Science themes. Plus, I saw massive improvements in my student's reading through this framework.

8. The kids LOVE it! I rarely had any behavior problems during Daily 5, because the kids were so engaged. (Until the last two weeks of school :))

I'm sorry this post was so long, but I am very passionate about the Daily 5. So thanks for sticking with this post if you've made it through. What do you think? How has The Daily 5 worked for you?