Day 45- Countdown...2!

One more day! One more day!

I want to take a minute to brag on my reading small groups- they are all doing great! We are adding new vocabulary and having in-depth discussions every day! Let me give you an example.

In my first group we are working on letter and sound recognition and building our sight-word fluency. I am using some sight-word lessons from the 1+1+1=1 website. Their printables are fun and the sight words are common enough that we can find them in any of our leveled readers. We read our leveled books, look for sight words then play a 'make the sentence' game. (I write simple sentences from the book on sentence strips, cut the words out, scramble them, then the kids have to put them back together)

Tomorrow I'm going to give them THIS worksheet for an extension activity. The students will cut and paste the sentences back together then illustrate the sentence. The story is about 'Spots', if you didn't notice. :)

My second group has graduated from the short 'a' word families to the short 'i' families! -it, -in, -ick, -ip
Our story at the beginning of the week was on summer activities. We are now on a book about fall leaves and the seasons. We collect vocabulary  from the books and play the 'NOT' game.
(all the vocabulary words in a pile. A card that says 'not' in the pile. Go around the table and students read the words. If they get the word right, they can keep the card. If a student gets the 'not' card, he or she gives back all their cards.) I put 2 min on the timer so the game doesn't last forever.

My third group is reading a book on the water cycle. Our vocabulary cards include words like evaporation, condensation, precipitation, water vapor, water cycle, and weather. We learned the Water Cycle song, and had an important conversation about what not to wear in different seasons.

Me- Look at the pictures on this page. What do you see?
Student- A coat and some shorts.
Me- Which would you wear in the winter?
Student- The coat. (I asked why) Because it is cold in the winter and you need a coat to be warm.
Me- Good! When would you wear the shorts?
Student- In the summer 'cause it's hot.
Me- That's true, you do wear shorts in the summer. However, you would NEVER wear those shorts. 
(students look at me in wonder)
Student- Why?
Me- Because they are ugly. Please promise me to never wear ugly shorts.
Students- Promise!

My students are getting the best education ever! :)

 My phonemic awareness center. I found these Clip-and-Learn wheels on the 1+1+1=1 website. Students are identifying beginning sounds. Once they clip everything they put the words into sentences and they can illustrate.

 Vocabulary Texters and Read-Build-Write cards.

We worked on a new poem in whole group today. Ms. Leahy found us a poem on Ladybugs. My favorite part about the poem- it counts up instead of down! Most of the poems I've found count from 5 down to 1. This poem counts up! Yea!

Of course we found the numbers and tomorrow we'll find our sight words. After reading this, we looked back at 5 Green and Speckled Frogs and created a Venn Diagram to compare and contrast.

One of my students stated that the poems were like turn-around facts in math. They just turned the numbers around!

Speaking of math- we took our Unit 5 test today. For the most part, everyone did well. I made a deal with the kids: If we did the test and the reteach section today, we would have a math game day tomorrow. It is unanimous! So, we worked hard today, and they will get to play tomorrow. (highly educational math games, of course)

Here is the graph from yesterday that I promised. We graphed the colors of the students' shirts since the lesson was on collecting data.

Yeah, I pretty much wasted a whole sheet of chart paper, but the kids had a good time and learned something, so that's what matters!


*I sent home the Parent/ Teacher conference sign-up sheets today. Please mark your top 3 choices and I'll let you know what time is the best! Report cards will be given at the conferences!

Sorry about the last of Daily Brain. The end of the day was a little off since we had to split another class. (we had teachers going to a training) But I promise, we learned lots!