Reading and Writing: Choose a Workspace

We've been telling oral stories in writing since the sixth day of school.  It's taken a bit of time, but students are starting to understand the flow of a story and what needs to be included.  This is really important to practice before giving pencil and paper and asking for a written story.  Kids can get overwhelmed by the idea of writing a story if they're unsure what "story" means.  When I introduced the writing folders and writing paper today, so many students (who couldn't tell me a true story on the first day of school) drew detailed pictures about where they'd gone or what they'd done and attempted to write!

 Students are telling their Turn&Talk partners a true story about something that happened to them.

Partners are listening for answers to all of the Who? What? When? Where? questions and prompting for more information if necessary.

This is the first year I've allowed this, but I gave students the freedom to choose their writing spot anywhere in the room.  The exact wording was actually "you will find your own writing workspace."  We discussed that a workspace is only a good one if it will help us get work done with little to no distractions.

I was really impressed with the quality choices students made for workspaces.

Just look at how spread out they are! And they chose those spots all by themselves!

Reading spots were assigned, mostly because sitting back to back is new to kids and they needed enough space for both partners.  We've built up to 10 minutes of quiet, independent reading and 10 minutes of partner shared reading.

Yes, reading right now constitutes looking at the pictures and telling the story or sharing what they've learned, but that is reading. They are gaining meaning from what's been put in the book.

LittleOWL Book Club

Well, I'll have to be honest about why the posts aren't coming as frequently as the past two years...

We aren't changing what's happening in the classroom as frequently! 

Let me give you an example.  In Virginia, as we moved through each week, there was a new focus in Language Arts and Math. While we weren't necessarily doing a "letter of the week," since we taught all the letters all the time, there was certainly a focus given to each letter so students who didn't know them all had the chance to learn them.

Speaking with my sister-in-law recently, she shared a story about a well performing private school teacher whose strategy was to always teach to the highest ability child in the classroom, requiring struggling students to catch up.  It's kind of like ESOL children put in a classroom of English speaking students (or vice versa) -- when immersed with the language, they have no choice but to pick up the language.

In retrospect looking at teaching K in Virginia, I feel like the academic rigor was missing in Language Arts and far too present in Math (kids in Kindergarten rarely understand money concepts).  

In Language Arts, we taught to the children who were struggling.  By the end of the year, we expected children to have concept of word.  (Which is GREAT! Obviously kids DO need basic concepts of print to succeed.) However, kindergarten children were not leaving reading on a level D.  More than half of them weren't leaving reading on a level A!  Here, children are expected to leave on a Level D or higher.

The problem is that the reading skills and strategies taught during reading workshop were missing.  Sure, they are above the heads of some struggling students.  But those students who don't have the alphabet yet aren't limited to just letters and letter sounds. (Yes, they get exposure to that in small group tailored instruction!) But the entire class isn't doing an activity to teach what only 2 kids need to learn. Sure, the activities were fun! I know the kids enjoyed making the jellyfish and gluing things that began with the letter J. But how is that challenging the kids who already know the letter J and the /j/ sound? 

I feel like I'm contradicting myself in the past. I can hear me a year ago saying "But it's developmentally appropriate to cut and glue and have fun in Kindergarten!"  And it is.

I remember being Pen Pals with Cameron's class last year and looking at the way his class signed their names. Many of them wrote in all uppercase or a mixture of upper and lower case.  When I looked at papers Cameron brought home, a lot of the coloring was out of the lines and unrealistic colors. At the same time.... he could read more sight words than anyone in my class and read legitimate books. My mom shrugged and said "the focus is just different."

I can teach all of it: the name, the coloring, the sight words, the reading strategies.

But the focus needs to be on what's going to get the kids farther in their academic career.

And while I initially thought this was first grade stuff, the kindergarten kids learned these and now refer to them regularly!

So - that's mainly why I had lots of photo ops and entries before and a few less now.  We follow a very routine schedule of what's happening day to day in our room.  You can click on the link below to download an outline of the reading and writing pacing grids for the first two units.  It will help you understand what students in my class are learning and why photos of each may not make perfect sense.  My goal in future posts is to elaborate on the minilessons (i.e, how I chose Mo Willem's sketches of the pigeon compared to the final book to encourage students to make their stories look nicer during editing) and explain what children struggled/succeeded with.

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD READING AND WRITING PACING GRIDS

Nothing is better than when you see and hear a kid applying what they've just been taught.

Anyway, to get the kids really excited about an hour-long block of time when they need to sit down and read quietly and discuss with a partner (if you think this is impossible in K, you're wrong!) I told them about how adults have special clubs for reading.  I told them about how fun book clubs can be! (Yes, I am a reading nerd, and genuinely believe book clubs are fun.)  I compared their partnerships to mini book clubs and our class to a large book club.  They seemed mildly interested in the idea.

On my drive home, I thought about all the times when I was a kid and saw my mom laminate something. I desperately wanted my own laminated nametag.  When I went to the NEWSEUM in 6th grade, I bought a fake reporter badge from the gift shop. Knowing that my fascination with laminated badges extended throughout my childhood, I thought a fun way to get the kids excited about their "book club" (and promote exclusivity, hahaha) would be to make each child his/her very own book club badge! 

Behold, LittleOWL Book Club was born:

Oh yeah, and it was Pajama Day. Tell me those kids don't look excited about reading. ;)

Reading Workshop & Stations: A Combination for Success!

Well, I'm not really sure how people have full days at work and then go home to children.... because leaving work and coming home to a needy puppy is exhausting! He wants to play all the time! And then when it's bedtime, he runs around and sleeps... next to his bed. Weirdo.

Despite not having many papers going home in daily binders, we have been doing lots of work in class! It's mostly hands-on or in journals. We have a journal or folder for pretty much everything these days... a morning journal, a writing folder, a reading response journal, a sorting journal.... and these kiddos are keeping up with it really well! The desk fairy may have to come around soon and leave some prizes for all the organized students in our room.

Students got their partners for reading/writing workshop last week. Partners are meant to help kids achieve their best and point out something they may not have seen otherwise. Unless there are problems with partnerships, most of the partners we currently have will remain the same for several months.

Now we can divide our reading time between the mini-lesson, independent reading (back to back), partner reading (elbow-elbow, knee-knee) and writing in our reading response journals. I am really impressed by how much students are picking up the reading strategies in readers' workshop. They are genuinely eager to try and notice whatever we've talked about: character's feelings, patterns across pages, small details in pictures, finding words we know, etc, etc. 

Reading response journals currently consist of students writing the title of the book and drawing a picture of one of the following: the characters, the problem in the story, the solution/ending, or their favorite part.  Of course, since we're practicing stretching out words and labeling in writing, I expect students will add some words in their response notebooks as well.

TRUE, not all of the students are at this point yet.

However, all students are able to discuss their favorite part and do their best to draw the picture. It's all about getting into the routine and having that discussion with partners about the stories, trying to recall the important parts together.  Soon, similar work will be sent home with children.

And, HOORAY! Last week a schedule change was approved for kindergarten classes, so we now have a phonemic awareness/word work block and a specified time when literacy stations are permitted. It just goes to show, it never hurts to ask!  However, stations will be done when students finish their previously assigned work, and we only have time for one per day. Which means not all students will go to a station every day!

While some students are at stations, other students are working on their sort for the day (which we do first whole-group and then students complete, check and glue in their journals).  Sorts so far have been basic concepts, rhyming and letters of varied fonts.  

Here are the stations we've opened so far (in the order we've introduced them and made "I Can" lists, showing what we are able to do at each station).

1. Big Books: Students can apply the same reading strategies taught during reading workshop.  Students can read the pictures, read the words or go on a letter hunt with their partner.

2. SMARTboard: Right now, students will get familiar with the use of the SMARTboard using the Starfall website.  Once students get the hang of how to use it and have a little more letter and letter sound knowledge, we'll transition into various phonemic awareness sorts: rhyming, beginning sounds, word families, etc.

3. Leap Pads: Leap pads are great at helping young readers gain concept of print. As students click each word in a book, the leap pad will (a) read the word aloud, (b) sound the word out or (c) spell the word, depending on what the student has selected it to do.  This works on letter recognition, letter-sound knowledge, concept of word and directionality... and gets a read-aloud in!  Most of the leap pad books I have also rhyme as an added bonus. ;)  When David saw them, he was like "What are these things? They look like they're ancient." Hmph. After he played with one he admitted "These are actually pretty cool." The kids agree.

4. Stamping: Since we've been working on hearing rhymes, the stamping station is currently focused on finding rhyming pairs.  Students can stamp a picture, the words "rhymes with," then a different picture that sounds the same at the end. Kids just LOVE stamps. 

5. Library: Typically my library has 4 baskets of leveled books and about 10 baskets of favorite character books (i.e., Clifford, Fly Guy, Elephant and Piggie, etc.). This year, I have put out (gasp!) about 75% of my personal book collection. (Those of you know how obsessed I am with my books will know how shocking this is.) The thing is, I couldn't bring myself to keep buying childrens' books and only making use of them during read-alouds. Now our classroom library has books from level AA-S in addition to all those character and author tubs from before. This class has shown more care and excitement about books than any class I've had yet!

We still have several more stations to open up, including but not limited to: listening, pocket chart, abc magnets, science and writing.  I really need to get the pocket chart up and running with a student name/picture matching activity. I didn't realize how many kids still don't know their peers' names until recess, when kids say "he pushed me" or "that girl just threw some rocks" and the response to my asking "who?" is always a blank stare and a pointed finger.

We've been doing a lot of counting and writing numbers in math. Typically I will call out a number and students will count that many objects and/or write the numeral on a whiteboard. The past two days we've been playing games with dice and counting. Yesterday students rolled a single die and moved their counter the corresponding amount of times. Today students rolled two dice and were able to move their counter one space if the space had the corresponding numeral for the number rolled. (For instance, if I rolled a "3," then I had to see a number "3" on the next space or I wouldn't be able to move to it.) This works on counting and numeral recognition. Of course, this also works on the ever-challenging task of getting students acclimated to sharing and working together! I've been hearing an awful lot of "she's cheating" and "he isn't playing right!"

While students were playing these games with partners, Mrs. Dean and I were able to pull small groups of students to work on numeral formation and counting with one-to-one correspondence.

Counting with bingo dot markers is always a student favorite. Kids ask to use these ALL YEAR. You should order some to have at home. Seriously. HERE'S a set of really cool glitter ones on Amazon. ;)

I told myself I would do a traveling journal this year with our class mascot, Owly, after seeing Cameron's class do this last year.  I got the ball rolling on that last week! Students get to take the stuffed owl home for five days, write about what they did with him or where they took him, and glue a photo of them with Owly in the journal before returning it to class. At the end of the year, we'll have an entire book to look back on!

I can't wait to see and read about where Owly's adventures take him!

We've hit the ground running

It's pretty much a fact that teachers get nervous on the first day of school, just like kids. Or maybe it's a combination of anxiousness and excitement. This year was really different for me, though.  I think a lot of it had to do with the fact that the first day of school was in July.  I'm used to school starting on a cool day at the beginning of September! I told David the night before school started, "I feel like I'm about to go lead summer camp."  As a result, it was only calm excitement this year! And a lot of accidentally writing "September" on date lines instead of "August." 

My biggest hurdle at the beginning of this year was not knowing any of the parents. Everyone at Spotswood knew I was big on parent communication and was strongly (still am strongly) invested in their child's life. I built myself up with a positive reputation in the community, and parents were excited to see their child assigned to my classroom. (Or so they told me...!) This year was different. Postcards went out letting parents know their child's teacher was Mrs. Richardson, and I know any of the parents familiar with Shirley Hills probably thought, Mrs. who?? 

I tried to let parents know at Meet'n'Greet a little about myself and my teaching beliefs, but you really only have 3 minutes with everyone before you start your spiel over again! It's not much time.

I guess I'm still getting used to the Georgia curriculum, too. I know we're a Common Core state, but despite Virginia lending a helping hand in coming up with the Common Core standards, the state opted to use their own..so things that I'm used to teaching in kindergarten (money, time, skip counting by 5s, etc.) aren't part of the kindergarten curriculum any longer!

Most first weeks of school go something like this: Repeat and model the rules/procedures. Repeat and model the rules/procedures. Repeat and model the rules/procedures. Pause to wonder if you're going crazy because no one's following directions. Repeat and model the rules/procedures.

Not this year! This year I started the year with sixteen (yes, sixteen!) well-mannered, hard-working, carefully listening students. Plus, I had Mrs. Dean in the classroom with me! Another teacher!! Having a small class and a para reinforcing what the kids are learning is amazing. (I'm not delusional; I know the class size will grow... but for now I'm enjoying it.) 

We went over the rules and procedures for the first couple of days (and I do have to give reminders here and there), but we've been able to move into the swing of things pretty quickly. I'm pretty impressed by the "yes, ma'am" and "ma'am?" responses I've gotten from children. After seven days of school, I haven't come home and immediately crashed like years past. (And I haven't sleep-walked into the living room and shouted at David to "just sit down and stop talking!" like I did in my first year of school. Side note... I never said that out loud in the classroom either. But I can't lie, that's typically what's going through my mind!)

So... with all this extra time not asking for cooperation, what have we been doing??

Working with our names!

With blocks....

Magnetic Letters...

And scissors and glue!

Earning our pencils, scissors and glue with proper use!

Yes, we introduce materials one at a time. I model, the students share what they noticed (the good and the bad) and then we practice the good things we saw. I felt bad because I broke a pencil, bit it and tossed it across the room as a 'bad example.' When I went to hand out the sharpened pencils, I accidentally handed that pencil to a student. (I had sharpened it, but completely forgot about the biting. That's not something I normally do!) The poor kid said "No, I don't want that pencil, that's the broken one." I replied, "It's okay, I sharpened it!" He was like .... "It's not okay! You bit it!" :( :( :( True story. Terrible. I instantly gave him a new one and apologized profusely. Luckily, I don't think we'll have an issue with pencil biters this year.

Just a dot, not a lot!

Just a line, that'll be fine!

Exploring math manipulatives, counting & writing numerals!

Clearly we have to get some play time in with those manipulatives before we start sorting, adding, patterning, etc. with them. 

Writing Workshop

We have been writing since day one! Even students who cannot form letters are able to draw pictures and orally tell their stories. Writing workshop will progress to multiple-page stories, but right now children are doing what they can. That means it will vary from scribbles, basic sketches and detailed pictures with labeling to full sentences! (Parents, this writing doesn't come home! You will see it when you come in for conferences and at the end of the year.) Right now we're just getting used to having a specific writing time and thinking the way writers think.

Reading Workshop

We are all readers! From environmental text to pictures to words, all children have some reading capability. Our workshop currently consists of a mini-lesson and free exploration of engaging books in shared tubs on tables. Students attempt to use strategies taught in the mini-lesson as best as they can! (i.e., a lesson on searching for patterns in phrasing on pages may equate to patterns in characters found on each page.) We will transition to personal book boxes with leveled text as we progress through the workshop.  I've never done reading workshop before. I've always set up my reading groups with Debbie Diller's Literacy Stations and it's worked wonderfully, but I am excited about the passion I've already seen these children show for reading.  I expected the kiddos would maintain interest in the books for roughly 5 minutes at the beginning of the year (as they've shown in years past), but these students read books quietly for a full 30 minutes on the second day of school! When I asked a student what his favorite part of school was so far, he said "uhhh... I like writing... and reading a lot." (This is literally unheard of. I usually get "Recess. Or maybe lunch.")  I am going to figure out a way to incorporate both reading workshop and literacy stations in my day, because I think a combination will be best for student progress and active engagement. 

Mrs. Dean agreed, a good mix of fiction and non-fiction books

kept the children involved.

Speaking of recess being a former favorite..... recess in this state is umpleasant to say the least. I am a fan of playing with the kids at recess. I walk around the perimeter of the playground to keep an eye on everyone, and if a kid challenges me to a race or a round of tag, of course I'm going to accept! I was surprised to see a 15 minute recess on the kindergarten schedule, but with hot, humid gnat-infested weather like this:

I can't imagine a longer one. My favorite recess story so far is when a group of children ran up to me and said "MRS. RICHARDSON, COME HERE! WE FOUND A ROBOT!"

For the record, it was just a cement block under the gravel. In fairness, it had an indentation that could have been a robot eye. Or plug. Or something. The five-year-old enthusiasm and creativity astounds me.

I'm pretty excited to see all the growth these students show over the course of the year. I can already tell it's going to be an amazing one!