Five for Friday

This week seemed to fly by! I'm linking up with Doodle Bugs Teaching for another Five for Friday. 

 

Writing: Talking it out first

I had fun with this little writing assignment. First, I modeled. I pre-drew three pictures of things I did at the pumpkin patch. I talked about each picture, then I glued them in order. I posted the word, Sequencing,  on the board and repeated that word as much as I could. :) I told my students that I by gluing the pictures in order, I was showing them the order of those events at the pumpkin patch. Then I pointed to each picture and used transition words to sequence my story about the pumpkin patch. Just talking, no writing yet. 

You can find this writing page (and many others) here.

Then it was there turn. They talked with a  friend first about their trip to the pumpkin patch. Then they drew three pictures to tell about their trip. Next, they glued them in order to show the sequence of those events. Last, they each got a chance to "orally write" their story. Now, I'm going to tell you I am completely clueless about whole brain teaching and oral writing. I have watched videos and read posts from the amazing teachers like Farrah Shipley and Christina DeCarbo. But I haven't completely jumped into the world of Whole Brain Teaching. I REALLY want to though. I need to see more and read more. I do the very basics right now. WBT newbie right here. Just doing the minimum for now and I'll be slowly adding. I need to just sit in Farrah and Christina's classrooms for a few weeks and take it all in! For now, I'm taking this slow. For now, I'm just adopting the overall concept of getting them to speak how we want them to write. If I want them to write with sequenced events and transition words, then we need to start talking that way first. This is when I wish I was a classroom teacher. If I had them all day, it would be so much more effective. So I'm doing what I can. :) Here is a super super short video of my kids talking it out. (I purposely did not use  the term "orally writing" because it's not even close to what  the WBT experts are doing.) But it is oral and it is gearing up for writing. ;)

I love to practice fluency, comprehension and phonics together with these short vowel reading passages! I love to hear my little first graders read with confidence. I'm all about great literature of course. But sometimes kids need a passage that is repetitive and simple enough for them to be able to actually read. First, we highlighted all of the short i words. (Wait, backup a bit... we had been working on short i words that week so they have been seeing a lot of these words, too.)  Then we talked about the picture and title and made our predictions about the story. Students read the passage twice. The first time to work on decoding and using strategies to get through the story. The second read was to focusing on what the story was about. It's simple enough for them to get through and actually be able to think about the story. Believe it or not, this simple phonetic story does has a character and a problem. ;) We then go over the questions. I read the questions and they have to reread to show me the answer in the text. (This of course gets them to read the story yet again.) 

In this picture, I had the students use their highlighting strips to show the answer to the question before they wrote it. 

You can find this story here.

I love pumpkins. I love fall. I am dreaming of pumpkin spice lattes as I'm doing this activity. It just makes me happy to sound out words with a pumpkin theme. I put this paper in a sheet protected so I could change the vowel using a white board marker. Then we made words. First, I let them have fun and make their own words. Real or silly- they chose. Then I called out a word for them to make. I would say, make the word pod. Now change one letter to make the word rod. This is a great way for them to practice manipulating the sounds in words. Plus it is a quick snapshot assessment for me. If they are unable to do this, that shows me that they are lacking some phonemic awareness. 

You can find this pumpkin activity here.

I read these two books with one of my groups. I love readinga-z.com!! These are perfect for fall. First, we read the fiction story, Scaredy Crow. It's a cute little story. One of the crows thinks the scarecrow is alive and he's afraid of it. After reading, I asked students to describe both of the crows. We looked back in the book for evidence to support our statements about the crows. Wishing I would have taken pictures...

Then we spend two days with Smart Crows. This is an informational text about crows. It's actually super interesting. I had no idea crows were smart. My husband always called them rats of the sky. Not anymore my friends. Don't underestimate those crows. Anyway, this book was great for getting students to look for evidence! We discussed main idea with this book because it was super obvious. But then we found evidence in the book to support the main idea.  

Last, we compared the two books. In the fiction story, one of characters wasn't very smart. My students were telling me how this book wasn't realistic because the crow wasn't very smart in the story. (Never mind the fact that the crows could talk, too!) If you have a subscription to readings-z, you could definitely check these out! Great comprehension lessons here!

Here's a little freebie for you if you end up reading this book with your guided reading groups. :)

Click on the picture to download.

This little cutie turned 3.  Look at that face! 

Click on the image below to see what other bloggers were up to this week!

How was your week? I would love to hear your comments about anything related to this post! Do you do oral writing? I'll take your tips or links to more great ideas. :) 

6.

I know it's FIVE for Friday and not SIX for Friday, but since it's Saturday for all you EST people, then maybe I could cheat and do Six for Saturday? 

I am FINALLY finished. I hope to get this posted tomorrow. SO excited about it! Stay tuned. :)