Isn't this such a cute fire truck? This week we have been talking about fire safety so we made a fire truck craftivity. We used pipe cleaners to make the ladder and we talked about the shapes that we used to make the trucks. After we built our trucks, I let the students get creative and add details to their pictures. We have been talking about details in our writings and drawings all year, and how details help someone better understand the story we are trying to tell. If you click the picture above, you can get the patterns to make this fire truck with your own class.
I have been reading a lot about what other people do during their reading block this week so I thought I would share a little bit about my own schedule.
7:50-8:10 Students arrive and work on morning work
8:10-8:55 Whole Group Reading Instruction
At 8:10 I play the Good Morning song from Greg and Steve. When students hear this song, they start cleaning things up and they put their work (finished or not) in my finished work basket and sit on the carpet. Everyone is singing while we clean up and prepare to start reading.
Once everyone is on the carpet, I project a page on the SmartBoard that has a mix of about 10-15 letters with some that repeat. We go through those letters. As I point to the letters and click my little castanets, the students name the letter after the click. Then we start over on the same chart of letters with the students telling me the sounds.
Our next chart that I put up, is a list of sight words. There may be a few repeats of the same word. When I point to and make the click sound, students tell me the word. I provide a small pause for think time between each word. The list usually has 10-15 words with some repeat words. My word and letter list changes every morning so we get repeated practice and review.
After we review the letters and the words, I segment a word like /p/ /o/ /t/ and the students must give me the word. They would say "pot." I do about 10 words this way every morning. Then I give the students 10 words to segment together for me. They must give me a sound for every finger I raise on my hand.
After all that practice and review which takes about 10 minutes, we begin to talk about our vocabulary for the day and we talk about pictures related to our vocabulary. We use Reading Street if you're curious. I call on a student or two to put a Post-It with the vocabulary word on the picture which is on a flip chart. We sing our weekly song that has the vocabulary words with some kind of motion when they hear the days two words (thumbs up, hand on head). Then we read and discuss our story. Sometimes we have an activity to go with the story too.
8:55-9:40 We do guided reading and our reading groups. I have 4 groups. One group works with me, one group works with the classroom aide, and two groups have independent activities. We do two rotations a day so I see the entire class every two days.
9:40-10:20 We have interventions. Students who need additional reading help get pulled by a reading specialists. The rest of the class is with me and we do whole group activities to reinforce what we have learned. The activities change frequently and I try to get in a short cooperative learning activity like quiz-quiz-trade or a partner syllable or word sort. This is also the time that we may do pocket chart activities or a word building activity.
10:20-10:50 We do Saxon Phonics. It doesn't always take the whole time so we may get in another learning activity too.
That is a basic outline of how my morning goes. We have lunch at 10:55!
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