Words Their Way & Spelling Test

I decided to start re-reading Words Their Way to kick off my summer reading list. As I read this I'm hoping to find a way to incorporate the word patterns we are working on (from WTW), with spelling test. Last year, I used a new spelling program our state has adopted - Zaner-Bloser Spelling Connections. I actually really liked this spelling program. The list were broken down by spelling patterns and were differentiated. This is the only way I'll do spelling tests. I don't see the point is spelling test that are just a group of words that may have a common theme (farm, seasons, science, etc), but not have a common spelling pattern. I'll be honest, I focus on spelling because I think that if students learn spelling patterns, it  will help them with their decoding!

 How I did spelling last year: Every Monday morning, I would give my students a 15 word spelling pre-test. This would determine which list they would be on basic 1, basic 2, or challenge. The program called the levels below level, on level, and above level, however, my team teacher and I decided that it we liked the other titles better. The lists overlap, so some words were shared with another list. The students list weren't static; they could move up or down levels depending on their pretests. As much work as it sounds like it was, it was actually pretty simple. The kids would have weekly homework. After attending a great GT training, I decided to make choice boards (tic-tac-toe) for their weekly homework. The kids loved it! They liked having a choice of which activities they wanted to complete. During centers, the kids would also have activities in word work. They had to complete word sorts and I also had their words on spelling city. On Friday, I would give everyone a test for ALL spelling words from each list. They would just note which list they belonged to by circling that number. They were only accountable for the words from their list, the others were used as bonus words (up to +5pt) but this also let me see who really learned the spelling pattern for that week. 

I'm not sure how I'll be able to incorporate my spelling program with WTW. I really, really like that my spelling program (ZB) was differentiated! I saw first hand how this helped my students. However, I would like to somehow keep my kids on the same spelling pattern (otherwise it seems like it would get out of control!). Our reading adoption, Texas Treasures, also has a spelling component that was created by none other than one of the authors from WTW (however I haven't been able to verity that!). I'm thinking that I may stick with my current spelling program from ZB, but use WTW during guided reading. I also want to somehow incorporate vocabulary as well! How am I going to merge all of these?!?! How do you manage your spelling/vocabulary? 

Summer Reading

I love summer! I love to read! And I love to read during summer! Every time I turn around, I find a new book to add to my reading list! Here are my top 5 (really 6) professional books that I plan to finish reading this summer! Would anyone care to join me?

#5 Barry Lane  But How Do You Teach Writing  I'm excited about this one! My principal is sending me to the Barry Lane & Gretchen Bernabei training at the end of the month. I used both of these authors' books during my graduate and undergrad courses. Would love to find others to bounce and share ideas with this one.

#4 Book Whisperer by Donalyn Miller. I missed the book study last summer, but I've heard nothing but amazing things about this book! I've been told this will be a quick read! I will probably start my reading with this one first.

#3 Choice Words by Peter Johnston. We are doing a book study with this book as a school. Our focus next year will be vocabulary & questioning. This is another quick read and very short book! I'll probably read this closer to start of school so it will be fresh in my mind for our discussions.

#2 Words Their Way: Word Study for Phonics, Vocabulary, and Spelling Instruction. This is an oldie but a goodie ;) I've ready it and used it in several of my undergrad classes. I really want this to be my focus for spelling/phonic instruction next year. I will do a quick read, just to refresh!

#1 Daily 5 & CAFE  - I plan to be part of the blogging book study over on We Read, We Blog, We Teach in July. I have read parts of Daily 5, but have never "dissected" it. I also plan to use CAFE and adapt it to my classroom.





Here are my BONUS books! All of the others are pretty quick reads and won't take me long. So I actually have 7!!! I can do it ;)

Guided Math Instruction  I will be behind, but I plan to chime in when I can with the book study over on Primary Inspired. With all of this language arts....I needed some math in there too!

               

How the Brain Learns - This will also be another book study I do with some of the teachers on my campus. I'm very intrigued with the topic!       

It's going to be a BUSY summer! I'm not going to sweat it if I don't finish all of these books. I will just continue reading them into the year. So - what are you reading this summer?

I'm back & a few of my favorites...

WOW! I'm finally back! This year has been a complete whirlwind for me! I had hoped to be able to juggle teaching, grad school, family ~ and be able to sneak a few posts in here and there. Unfortunately, this wasn't the case! My last semester was CRAZINESS! I took 12 hours (way too many hours!) - But (after what seems like forever)....I graduated with my Masters in Educational Technology! Wooo hooo!!

We have officially been out of school a little over a week now. I'm trying to decompress from this crazy year. As I do, I can't help but reflect back over the year. Although it was crazy {3rd time I've used this word so far - can you tell it was a really crazy year!}, I had some really great moments with my class. I thought for my next few posts I would share some of my favorite lessons from this year!


This year, our principal had us decorate our door for Black History month with highlights/facts of a famous African American. I will be completely honest, I wasn't thrilled about this idea! Any other time I would have been on cloud nine to work on a project like this, but as I've said it was such a busy time (and we were given very short notice about the project). We were working on a poetry unit at the time. Our class ended up drawing the name of the author/poet/activist, Alice Walker. She wrote The Color Purple, among many other pieces. She also wrote a children's book (that fit perfect with our poetry unit), There is a Flower at the Tip of My Nose Smelling Me. Seriously, couldn't have been a more perfect book, the imagery and personification in this book is amazing! I decided to have the kids write poems inspired by this book. They truly blew me away with their words!

As we continued our poetry unit, we discussed the characteristics of poems and how poems are read. I decided to record the students reading their poems so they could really hear how they sounded. I have used sound cloud for other recordings, such as podcasts, so I decided to give it a try. They have an iphone/ipad app which was perfect. We used my iPhone to record each other reading our poems. Recording the poems, sparked an idea on how to share the poems. I didn't want to just share our poems, but I wanted to share what we had learned about Alice Walker. I wanted our door to be interactive! I have used QR codes, but had never created them. After a little research, I found they are extremely easy to create. You basically paste the link you want the QR code to be directed to and it creates the QR image. Super simple! My kids were blown away with how we could scan the code and it would take us to our recordings. We sent out an email to the campus with links to QR reader apps, so they would be prepared. The school really took to our ideas. It was so awesome to see other kids getting excited about our work through technology. Our little project also inspired others. A few teachers used QR codes as well to make their door interactive.




Some of our recordings:
Alice Walker's life
Alice Walker author
Alice Walker famous
Alice Walker's poem











I think this was one of my favorite lessons because it just "happened". I didn't plan it out, it just sort of came together like a puzzle. I honestly think that my best lessons happen this way ;)









This solidifies my belief that technology doesn't need to replace our teaching, it needs to supplement it. It also proved once again that using technology through example is much more powerful than a professional development on technology applications. Teachers must be vested
in the idea, and I feel that when they are forced to
attend a training, they aren't as accepting to bring it into their classroom. I hope that more of my projects will inspire teachers to bring more technology into their classroom.


I promise I'm back (for good) and I look forward to blogging again!

Daily 5 (or rather Daily 7) goodies to share....

I seriously can't believe it has been almost 2 months since my last post! This school year is C~R~A~Z~Y!!!! Or maybe it's just me that is crazy! Along with teaching...I'm taking 9 hours of grad school (which is kicking my butt!!), I will be teaching 2 technology classes a week to students after school, and I will begin tutoring 1 day a week after school....not to mention my poor family who is suffering without me most nights! So this is why I haven't posted in awhile (and I'm up at 3:30 in the morning) But I wanted to share good news about my daily 5 centers!

My daily 5 centers are working! Yea!!! Last year I could not get them to run smoothly for the life of me and ended up taking away the choice for students. This year it is running so smoothly...that it's kind of scary! I have to admit though - I don't have Daily 5, I have Daily 7. I love the original Daily 5, but my students needed a little bit more than those skills. (Yes I know the upper grades are only supposed to do 3 - but some of my kids come in so low that we really need all 5!) So let me explain how it all works! Along with the originals, I also have skill builders (cause/effect, sequence, main idea, summary, etc) and technology! My skill builders center is differentiated and has activities for students who are on level, below level and above level. Most of the activities that I have are from the Florida Reading Center (love it!!). I store all of the activities in that nifty cart I found over the summer! There is one weekly activity that everyone must complete, then they can choose a drawer that is labeled with their level (1 star, 2 stars, 3 stars). It is working out quite nicely and it really is giving students that extra practice they need. For technology, I have several things going on here. I use our textbook adoptions (Treasures) website to assign the skills that we are using that week in centers. Once the students complete this skill they have many different options including spellingcity, learning.com, tumblebooks, and more. I eventually want to get to where the students use programs such as inspiration to create graphic organizers for the skills we are learning - we're getting there it just takes baby steps. All of my centers have a must do/can do poster. At the beginning of the week, I just write down what activity must be done, along with directions, and the activities they can do if they finish that task.

The reason I think centers is so successful this year is because I only allow 3 people at each center, except buddy reading (only 2) and technology (4). Since the students are so separated, I don't have as many off task and they are able to be very productive!! I have 3 small pocket charts (ones from Targets 1$ spot). Each pocket is a new rotation. Inside each pocket is a card with the centers name. The students each have 3 name cards. In the morning I post which groups I will be meeting with during each rotation. Throughout the morning/day, I call on students who are being productive to go choose their centers for the day. They just put their name next to the center they want , if they will be working with me they don't choose a center for that rotation. I couldn't let go of not holding the students accountable for the work that needed to be accomplished during centers. So I created a checklist. I based the checklist off the group I see the most. So the checklist would be attainable for even them, meaning the other groups should definitely be able to complete the requirements. I also assigned points to each activity so the students would have to make good choices when picking centers so that they could get everything they needed done. At the bottom i have the total points earned for that week, but I added a field for subtracting points and bonus points. I didn't want my students to finish the checklist in 2-3 days and be off task for the rest of the time!

So far it is working out nicely! I will try and post pics soon....but don't wait around for them ;) I hope your year is off to a great start! On another note...thank you to everyone who has given my blog an award!! You are too kind! I will go and post the awards soon!! Thank you again!