Reading and Writing anchors

We are loving our word wall this year. We use it everyday. The words help us in writing and reading and add to our vocabulary we use each day. 

The word wall toppers can be found by clicking here or on the images. 

Here are my Daily 5 cards that we use to show what each group are up to. 

They are a freebie in my store - scroll down and click on the cover image or preview. They are in different sizes for different purposes. 

As school has only just been back for six weeks - we are still consolidating our tasks and next week we will introduce choice.......

My new fav book

I have a new fav book as my go to resource for all things 'Daily 5'

I have had this book for a few months and have been busy comparing it to my old one and cross referencing and reflecting and sorting out my thoughts. 

When I ordered it I also got a digital version through Stenhouse for free. 

So - I have a copy on the go too.

The impact for me is less rigour about each task each day. We negotiate the tasks according to a focus or goal. This actually makes sense to me when we talk about best fit and working on differentiation. 

What it has made me think about, is the approach for great spellers and doing 'word work' for half an hour everyday. We negotiate and do about an hour a week. 

In our older grades we have had discussions around what this looks like in terms of 'listening to reading' and have incorporated our class novels, literature circles as well as Oxford Owl. 

There is a section on Math and while I see Daily 5 has rigour because of Cafe - I'm yet to be convinced about the Math part. But as you all know I am a bit biased about iSURF Maths and the proficiencies that sit with maths understanding. 

The beliefs and principles have changed to

Trust and Respect

Community

Accountability

Brain Research

Brain and Body Breaks

10 Steps to Independence

from 

trusting students

providing choice

nurturing community

creating a sense of urgency

building stamina

staying out of the way

I would love to know your thoughts on this new version. 

First Day Back

Today was our first day back for 2014. Summer break is gone!

As a staff we have decided to formalise many rituals and routines.

We had many great discussions and have team planned this week and some of next week. 

These two books form the basis of what we all do.

Even our specialists looked at the move from "Management" to "Principled Habits"

This will be our focus
Trusting Students
Providing Choice
Nurturing Community
Creating a Sense of Urgency
Building Stamina
Staying out of the Way

We have made agreement about what anchor charts we will do this week and each team will assist in making us all accountable.

Our ultimate goal is independent learners who can set goals. 

I can't wait to see the second edition that is out soon.

Daily 5 and Grade 5/6

Two of our Grade 5/6's have been working on introducing Daily 5 and Cafe. 

So my work on Thursday has been coaching the two teachers and the students to do this. 

Today was our fifth session and the teachers have been working on this between visits. 

Their anchor charts are evolving and will continue to do so. 

Today we talked about the impact of Cafe and how to assess and conference while the students are being independent. 

As a double grade they have got 'read to self' and 'read to someone'. They do this with a sense of urgency, community and trust. As teachers we need to work on 'staying out of the way'.

So have all four components working well. We only need to look at 'listening to reading'

We even walked through the Prep space I team teach in and looked at how preps are engaged in their tasks. 

It is an exciting time in our school. 

The anchor charts are available for free in my TPT store  - click here

Moments from my day

 I started my day with the Year 5 and 6's. 

I am working with two teachers and their grades to introduce Daily 5 and Cafe. 

I am enjoying this time and helping to set up these routines. 

We used the netbooks today to start a series of slides to set our own goals for two parts of Daily 5. 

They are doing an amazing job with 'Read to Self", 'Read to Someone','Work on Writing' and today we looked at 'Work on Words'. 

Next week we are introducing 'Listen to Reading'

We did an anchor chart together, we explored where we can get our words from, what tools we need and how we need to work. 

Then I went back to Prep world and we were preparing for our Teddy Bear Picnic. 

The weather was lousy today - rain, hail, sunshine, wind and more rain. 

So we had our picnic in our buddies room. 

Before we went for our picnic we designed a sun hat and made it for our bears. 

There were some unusual hats. 

I will post some pics of this over the weekend. 

Back into Daily 5

Here is a photo post all about our first week back and doing Daily 5 - we rocked this!

 

Digital Pensieve - loving the new updates

It has been almost a year since I mentioned the Digital Pensieve. 

I used it a little last year and found it great to use and easy to use but this year I love it even more.

I have just my own grade on it, even though I share a double grade. I love the new features it has. 

I am able to keep track of Reading, Writing, Word Work, Science, Social Studies (here we call it Humanities) and there is an 'other' tab. 

These two screen grabs show my grade in green by name and then in groups in grey.

When I am conferring - it looks like this. The coloured tabs across the top are the different subject areas. 

These show the detail I have entered for each child or group. 

Then there are links to the Cafe Menus

As we share kids for reading and maths - on Friday when I get my notes from the other three teachers it only takes me about 20 minutes to enter them in. When parents ask questions, I can answer straight away. When I write reports - it is easy as my goals are already done and the strategies are already done. 

This post is not sanctioned by the 'two sisters' nor do I receive any compensation for writing it.  I just love using it.

Another freebie

I had put together these posters for a grade I was doing a modelled lesson for in the last few weeks of last term.

 

I had photos of them in a previous blog post and then I got an email asking if I could make them available for others to use.

 

So here is another freebie for you.

Remember  that you should never be paying for anything related to Daily 5 or Café. The two sisters who own the rights to the programs are happy if we share work for free - but under no circumstances should anyone be making money off this material.

 

Click here to go to the file....

 

or click the picture of the cover on the side

Daily 5 Posters – Paula’s Place

Contains 9 pages

This pack is a freebie! Remember all Daily 5 and Café products should be free.

It contains posters for Daily for Read to Self, Read to Someone, Work on Writing, Work On words and Listen to Reading.

The posters that we are compiling together as anchor charts are not completed yet. We are only into our second lesson.

Copy in color and enlarge to A3

For the next seven days watch out for my Random Acts of Kindness coming your way....

Grade 5/6 kids and Daily 5

 

You know sometimes you get to do something different with a different group of kids and in a different space and I am reminded of how much I enjoy my job.

 

Today, I got to work with 50 Year 5/6's and talk about one of my favourite topics - Daily 5 and Café.

I hear this often - how can Daily 5 be a part of senior primary?

 

First - read the books! Both books.

For those of you who read my blog you know that Daily 5 cannot be done without  Café - this is where the rigour is.

 

First you introduce the components of Daily 5 - get the systems and structures in place. Then Café

 

Today I went over

- Read to Self

- Read to Someone

and started

- Work on Writing

 

This meant that we reviewed 'read to self' because they were already doing 'silent reading' with stamina. We were able to record what their job is and what our job is.

 

For teachers - we need to let them read and not intervene - hard work, as many of us are control freaks!

 

We then looked at 'Read to Someone' through the lens of Daily 5. I discussed EEKK, taking it in  turns, asking questions, being a coach and giving space to work out words. We then practised.

 

As we moved through these tasks we also recorded on the anchor charts our expectations for students and teachers.



 

These kids have an amazing sense of stamina. learning community, sense of urgency and best fit.

 

We then moved onto recording what we would like to write about. This exercise was to help record what they wanted to write about and what they wanted to know more about.

 

This list will be revisited next Thursday - so come back and check out next Thursday's blog.

 



On my way out of the 5/6 centre I had a conversation with Stacey (another Grade 5/6 teacher) and her favourite part is the 'best fit' lesson. I love her display of shoes (I am a shoe girl). Stacey does Daily 5 and incorporates Literature Circles as well as using the CCPensieve to take notes and records.