Sunday Funday and Reading Reflection

Happy Sunday!  There has seriously been so much on mind as to what I've been wanting to write about this week. First of all, what an interesting past few weeks at school!  This has been our first full week back into the swing of things since Christmas break without ANY delays or closings... but yet, we still have had some schedule changes due to our high school's exam week.  That meant early releases for three days of this past week.  Sometimes I feel like our off schedule weeks bring more chaos than our normal schedule does!!  My kiddos have been such troopers this past week with practice testing and it's given me a chance to get caught up on grading, organizing, and reflecting on my teaching. I'm also linking up with Where the Wild Things Are to show our daily schedule and specifically describe my new LA block :)  (BTW, Amelia wears a princess crown during small group rotations and I do too! I'm a total princess at heart and the kids even call me Queen Francis!  Hehe!)

This year I've created a unique way to set up my Language Arts block that was  inspired by the popular book read by many, Daily Five and Cafe.  Last year was my first year teaching so I mostly just went with the flow and taught Reading the way others in the school suggested I did.  I was so thankful for all of the resources and support provided during the first year but I knew I wanted to "spice" things up for the next year.  So this past summer, I spent HOURS (after getting married of course!) to stalk some blogs, read some books, and brainstorm a BUNCH of ideas to help my kiddos succeed.

Our fourth graders are ability grouped for reading and math classes.  I teach below grade level readers and above grade level mathematicians.  I'm fortunate to have two TLC teachers and our special ed teacher as available resources for our reading block.  Last year, I would teach whole group instruction for 40ish minutes with mostly AR reading time and then the kids would branch into small groups for 45 minutes to work on reading skills, fluency, and Daily Language Review (DLR) writing skills.  While this small group instruction was great, I wasn't able to be with all of my kids on a daily basis in a small group setting so I was missing out on what their individual reading needs were.

This year I still teach whole group reading but even managed to jazz that up.  We know learn one different Virginia Studies (our state's history curriculum) vocabulary word a day.  We fold a piece of paper in fourths on Monday (one fourth for each day) and we illustrate the word, write examples/not examples, and the definition.  Then, we put a "cheer" to the word using my favorite, Whole Brain Teaching!  If you don't know what WBT is, just google it.  It is truly wonderful and my kids LOVE it! I'm a super energetic and outgoing person so WBT fits my personality and teaching ways perfectly! Anyway, back on topic... we learn one word a day, review each day's word throughout the week, and have a quiz on Friday.  We also add these words to our "word catcher collection" wall.  You can check out these headers in my TPT store and snag this freebie ;)   After our vocab lesson, we all gather to read a chapter book.  My kiddos really struggle with chapter book comprehension so we have been reading short chapter books as a class which has been great for their confidence and they love gathering on our carpet with all of their book nooks- pillows and blankets to snuggle up and read.  It truly warms my heart to hear them talk excitedly about reading books!  I'll write another post about how I use chapter books in my room another day.  One of my boys even said one day... "Queen Francis, it's like you're the mom and reading us a goodnight story while Joel is out getting the bacon!"  Love these kids!

If the kids still have time after vocab and our read aloud, they have some AR time before we start rotations- the best time of our reading block :) I have my 15 readers split up into three different small groups based on their spelling inventory/Ganske scores.  Each rotation is 20 minutes so the kids are always engaged and moving at a pretty fast pace... something my kiddos certainly benefit from!  There are two group tables in my room, and one across the hall. The first of the three rotations is with one of our TLC teachers. She works on phonics with the kids by using word study and does daily sorts and activities based on their word study lists.  I use the All Sorts of Sorts books but also have used my Words their Way book from my BC days ;) If they finish early, they hop on the iPads and use Lexia for differentiated phonics instruction.  They also do word study for homework.  The love this Tic Tac Toe Homework that we use.

Their second rotation is with our other TLC teacher. (I work with some teachers!) The kids write one paragraph a week with her using this awesome resource, Paragraph of the Week, from Stephanie at Teaching in Room 6.  This has helped my reluctant writers SO much!  Our fourth graders are expected to write five paragraph papers by the end of the year for our local SOL writing test, so getting them to write just ONE strong paragraph has been a challenge, but they are finally getting it!  WOOHOO!  In addition to their paragraph writing, they also work on DLR writing skills or skills from one of our writing skill work books.  We also have whole group writing for twenty minutes after our rotations.

The third rotation is my favorite because it's mine :) Last year I took our reading skills and did one a week... but we (the special ed teacher who is like my other half and myself)  thought that this was too rushed and things easily got messed up if we had a schedule change.  This year, we decided to do one skill for every two weeks and wow-  has that helped! I'm able to do so much more during two weeks to really expand on the skills and make sure my kiddos are getting it!  I usually introduce our skill during whole group time through a BrainpopJR clip or a smart board presentation.  Then we use the CARS and STARS Collection for our practice passages and assessments.  Last year I relied pretty heavily on these passages for time sakes which wasn't much fun.  Now, we do one passage every other day and flip-flop them with small readers from Scott Foresman Reading.  (We don't use the basals for anything, just the small books, and some are AR!) So for each skill, I introduce it, we practice the skill in passages (looking for key words and practicing our strategies), and in real books, and then.... I make sure we always do something interactive and application based.  For example, for making inferences, we played inference charades.  For main idea, we made main idea tables and used supporting details to make the table legs.  This even branched into writing that week- it's great when things just work out like that! :)

Overall, my kids have responded really well to this new layout.  I think that it helps that they are constantly moving and receiving a solid 20 minutes of instruction for each reading rotation.  I know that they are all getting the same instruction from all three of us and we all get be part of each child's reading development.  I love that I'm able to hear each child read aloud every day- this really helps me figure out what each child needs more of.  I know that they learning how to apply each reading skill to reading passages AND real books.  It's amazing when a kid reads a book and then comes to me and says "Mrs. Francis, I made a prediction and I was right!" Or, "Mrs. Francis, I didn't know what this word was so I used my context clues and figured it out."  When my kids make those realizations and are able to apply their lessons to their real world, it makes everything worth while!  My kids are all making improvements and reading more challenging books and demolishing their AR goals. I am SO proud of them and LOVE how we are finding ways to meet their needs.

Well... that's the end of the book for today!  Goodness, I wrote a lot!  My wonderful hubby made me breakfast this morning and now we are both spending the afternoon blogging and listening to some Jesus music on our new Apple  TV (thanks dad!) while our wedding photos play in slideshow.  Aww... He is also studying for the LSATS for next month so wish him luck with with all of his studying!  Enjoy the rest of your Sunday, my friends!