Thursday, July 22

Our last day of summer school :(

Our recess was cancelled, so we decided to have a bubble blowing contest! That was a first for my co-teacher! We had a child who has braces, so she was the judge.

Here is our Razzle Dazzle word collector on our last day. We would gather around a table. The students have there own personal ones. The personal word collectors are 11x17 with a grid.

Blend Sounds July 21st

When we do our CAFE menu strategies I write it on the board. So everything is spelled corectly. Then we decide what "drawing" would make sense. I do use some beanie baby ideas, but we just draw them ourselves. It makes more of an impact when they do it themselves.

Tuesday July20

This was were all of our ideas for writing were.

Monday July 19th

Using text features was our topic for today.

Friday July 16th

We learned to retell the story. We also listened to to Katalina Matalina to draw our own Katalina Matalina.

Thursday July 15th

Today we talked about using punctuation. There are still some children that aren't using punctuation while they are writing.

Wednesday July 14th

Today we talked about using dictionary, a thesaurus, and the glossary. I pulled some classroom dictionaries, I also gathered some of our books that had a glossary. Then I pulled out a thesaurus. They weren't excited until I told them what it was used for. Their eyes got HUGE!!!!

Tuesday July 13th

Today was "Chunk the Skunk" it was my partners turn to teach, and I don't think she had them put it on their menu or on the wall! She found a wonderful site with great lessons. She taught them how to chunk- to the first vowel. They enjoyed it very much!

Monday July 12

Here is our CAFE menu. This is still a work in progress. I give them a sheet with a plain grid on it. We talk about where the strategy will go so they must think about that BEFORE we write it down.

Seuss Shopping at Target

Okay this is most of what I bought at Target today. I bought some multiple items for my teacher sister. :) Here goes: the pink thing in the back is a frog folder, then there are 4 Seuss bags, Sam I am , Cat in the Hat One Fish, and Horton. Then there is a pen microphone- used for our newscasts and pointer. A frog blanket. Under the frog blanket, is my new frog lunch box!!!! Next to that are 3 bins- Seuss colored and a purple mini crate. Erasers, pencil grips, 3 sets of stickers (I will use some to scrapbook, others for framing at my house) 6 books each of sea creatures, scorpions, and polar animals. There are binder dividers, and a purple organizer. In front there is a frog notebook, school themed pencils, Seuss erasers, some framed Seuss magnets, some tinier magnets, some little notebooks, some flashcards, and some water bottles!

End of the Day

We end our day with Cube It. We all sit in a circle. Each child rolls a die, one at a time, and then we read what it says to do together. We have little scraps of paper and several pencils in a container labeled Cube It we just use them then. We are currently using this with 5th and 6th graders. For list words that tell about it, we have them write a phrase using as many words as they are old. We pick a topic that we learned about that day. We learned about bears one day, so that was our topic. The following day we talked about Razzle Dazzle words. That is what I call our Expand your vocabulary words.

Our schedule

8:00 Arrival/ homework check-in / Book shop

8:15 Daily’s

CAFE Strategy

8:20 Rotation 1: Read to Self

8:40 Reading Response Journal- following the rubric

8:50 CAFE Strategy

9:00 Rotation 2: Word Work (A day):

Work on Writing (B day)

9:20 Building Words lesson

9:45 5 minute timed writing

10:00 Recess

10:15 Snack/ read aloud

10:30 Math Reaching for the Stars

10:40 Mini lesson

10:50 Practice

11:10 Razzle dazzle Words

11:30 Cube It

11:45 Dismissal

Writing

During one of our writing mini lessons, we talked about ideas. I handed out a sheet to all of the students that had different topics on it for them to brainstorm ideas before I hear, "I don't have anything to write about" during our 5 minute timed writing exercise.

Writing- Conventions

Our mini lesson covered Conventions.

Varied Sentences

During another writing mini lesson, we talked about length of sentences.