Monday, April 26, 2010

Loop de Loop

I found out today I was looping with my class from 3rd to 4th. My immediate thought was to think about Daily Five and CAFE and how wonderful it will be to continue with the same kids next year. My RECIPE (pensive) book with come with me and we can pick up right where we left off.  I will be able to hold my kids accountable for what I know I taught and the goals the children showed me they achieved in third grade. Right??? 

Of course on the other side I am apprehensive about implementing Daily Five and CAFE into third grade. Does it work as well in fourth grade? Are there new strategies to add to the CAFE board? Will my kids be bored with Daily Five? I hope the excitement won't wear off. 

So to all my "followers" out there... I am asking for you to comment with your thoughts... 

Thursday, April 15, 2010

It's about the journey...

In my district each year we are asked to create an ILP (Individualized Learning Plan). This ILP is basically an outline of goals we are looking to meet, in order to make ourselves better teachers. In September, I started the school year, with Daily Five in my hands, like an eager child ready for their first day of school. I had my materials but then had to think, what are my goals to achieve with these materials? Although there were an endless amount of goals I could set forth for myself, my two main focuses were, "Engaging Students in Learning" and "Reflecting on my teaching". These two goals are at the heart of Daily Five. At the end of the school year, we are asked to reflect on our ILP and how it has help to improve student learning along with our own professional growth. Below is my ILP reflection. 

The students in my classroom had opportunities throughout the school year to initiate choice and create individual goals for themselves. With my guidance they were encouraged to create goals for themselves and choose the necessary strategies they would need to meet these goals.

With student choice, each student was motivated to achieve their goals and took ownership of their learning. Learning was purposeful for each student. This was evident through student-teacher conversations, classroom discussions and classroom activities. During Daily Five students choose between Read to Self, Read to Someone, Listening to Reading, Word Work, and Work on Writing. With this choice I saw an increase in students stamina for the choice they choose and also an understanding of why they were choosing that particular activity and/or reading strategy. This in turn then led to self-motivation. For example, students would pick “Work on Writing” if they knew they had to catch up on a writing assignment and wanted time to do so outside of our writing block. Students who picked “Read to Someone”, often picked this choice if they were working on Fluency. While other students choose “Listening to Reading” in order to work on and monitor their reading comprehension.

Through classroom discussions and conferences students were able to express their learning growth and even create their own reading goals. When thinking about student engagement and ownership of learning, a conversation I had with one particular student comes to mind. This student asked me for a reading conference because he wanted to discuss his reading goal and strategy. When we sat down for our conference I asked him why he wanted a conference. He said, “ I wanted to conference with you because my reading strategy is choosing a good fit book and I don’t think that is a good strategy for me right now.” When I asked him why he said, “ because we are reading our biography books right now and I won’t be able to practice choosing a good fit fiction book.” I then asked him if he had a reading strategy in mind and he said, “I think the one Joe has would be good for me, because it is cause and effect. Joe said he picked this strategy because Martin Luther King effected our world and so did Jackie Robinson.” This conversation showed me many things. His conference showed me this student was taking ownership of his learning, understood the reading strategies, and also was learning a lot from working with and discussing reading strategies with other students in the classroom.

Along with reading instructions, the students in my classroom also had choice in other subject areas, such as math. Due to the positive results I was seeing from Daily Five and CAFÉ, I also implemented Daily Math. During Daily Math students had the opportunity to choose from different daily activities, such as Math by Myself and math games. Each day students’ choose “Math by Myself” with the choice of completing the LAB book pages with my assistance or by themselves. It was extremely interesting to see how in tune the children were with their learning abilities. During Daily Math we had two rounds, allowing the kids one round to do “Math by Myself” and one round of games. The children choose games that they felt would benefit their learning, such as multiplication fact fluency or sums of ten.

In addition to engaging students in learning I also choose to reflect on my teaching. This past school year I reflected on my teaching in many different ways. This reflection included blogs, emails with another teacher who is in her first year of implementing Daily Five, Think Tank sessions with five teachers from various Long Island school districts, discussions on Proteacher.org and feedback from the students. Reflecting on my teaching has helped me tremendously. My reflections have been honest and allowed for me to grow as a classroom teacher. Throughout the school year I constantly re-evaluated my teaching practices and made sure that the teaching I did was individualized meaningful for each student. Daily Five, CAFÉ, and Daily Math have all helped me to individualize classroom instruction and master the management of small group work while implementing purposeful learning activities.  Reflecting on these activities and my teaching allowed me to realize no one is perfect and with those imperfections we grow. As I say to my students each day, “It is about the journey that we take to get the destination, not about the destination itself.” This year has truly been a wonderful journey, and if I’m considering becoming “distinguished” in my ILP goals of “Engaging students in learning” and “Reflecting on my teaching” as my destination, I think I’ve definitely arrived. It is quite the opposite. I have now carved the path for many other journeys to occur, and goals to be met. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sunday, February 28, 2010

Shavasana...

Shavasana, final resting pose. Although many yoga poses can be quite challenging, I often find Shavasana to be one of the most challenging. We live in a world where multi tasking is a must in order to get by on a daily basis, and now I am being asked to lie still. No thoughts, movements, nothing! This is not an easy task. Sometimes  I find myself thinking about not thinking, haha.  At the same time, I know that the Shavasana pose is one of the most important to the yoga practice. It is a time to let your practice settle in. So as often as possible, it is a pose I try not to overlook, even if it is at the end of my practice, and I am ready to move on. 

While it came time for my final resting pose yesterday , instead of not thinking, I found myself comparing Shavasana and share time during Daily Five (there I go again with the multitasking). Having time for sharing is an integral part of literacy instruction. Unfortunately, it is also a time that sometimes gets overlooked in my classroom. Time flies, the period ends and then we are running to a special, without having time for sharing. 

Share time has been on my mind for a while now, but the importance of it came to the forefront the other day when we were sharing our biography notes. Sitting in a circle the kids had the opportunity to share what they had learned about their particular person. I was amazed while listening to the students discoveries and hearing comments such as, "George Washington has the same birthday as my person" or "Your doing Harriet Tubman, Abraham Lincoln wanted to stop slavery." These types of discussions wouldn't happen without sharing and without sharing an integral part of our instruction is missing. 

Saturday, January 23, 2010

Did you get better at reading and writing today?


In the world of reading and writing there is all this buzz of teaching students in either small groups or 1:1 conferencing. Whole group instruction is no longer beneficial for student learning. So now in many classrooms we have strategy groups, guided reading groups, words their way groups, math groups, etc. groups. All this grouping of children is wonderful in a perfect world, with all the time in the world to prep for these small group instructions, but that perfect world doesn’t exist. Or does it, in a room that utilizing Daily 5.

There are two pieces of Daily Five that I feel are the most important. These are student choice and putting the ownership of learning on them. The ownership of learning is put on my children each and every day during Daily 5. My students now know that the only way to get better at reading and writing is to read and write. There is no wasting time anymore, because that would be wasted reading and writing time and we don’t want that. Boy do I feel bad for those few children who have not caught on to this “secret” yet, because I wouldn’t want to be them in my classroom. The other children take their reading and writing time SO seriously.

This past Thursday we had a sub in the classroom. I couldn’t decide whether or not to leave Daily Five plans. I ended up leaving them, telling my students that I left the Daily five plans because I knew how much this time of the day meant to them and I trusted them to convince me they can do Daily Five without me. Well, in speaking with the sub she said that there were only three boys who were not acting appropriately during Daily Five. When asked how she knew they weren’t acting appropriately for Daily Five, she said, “Oh the other kids were not happy and kept telling me that it isn’t fair, they are ruining Daily Five time for us.” Wow! I was so proud of the majority of the students in my classroom. Instead of encouraging these three children to be silly, they wanted no part of it. My only question when I returned to school was, “Who got better at reading and writing yesterday?”

The reason I was absent was for a Words their Way training. Words their Way is the newest program our district has adopted. Words their Way is wonderful concept when implemented correctly. During this training we were given opportunities to express our concerns and ask questions. Many of the questions were regarding management of the class and the groups. Also, assessment and how do you know if the child is getting the sort. With Daily Five, management is not a problem, and I don’t think it ever will be. My children have an hour and a half reading block that I can honestly say they are using effectively. Within this time slot they work on Word Work for 20 minutes. I don’t have any crazy centers, task-boards, or written assignments that have to be completed. If my students don’t understand a sort, they ask me for a conference. It’s as simple as that. Or is it just Daily Five?

Another question was, “How do we fit it all in?” My question is, what is the “it all” we are referring to? Am I doing something wrong that I’m not stressed on fitting everything in? With Daily Five reading, writing, and word work aren’t all separate “its”, but rather one block of literacy time, where my students experience the joy of reading and writing. I am no longer trying to fit “everything” in, I am however teaching my children, and instilling a love for literacy. My CAFÉ strategies are also the same strategies I transfer to Daily Math. Just like in reading, in math we also use our prior knowledge and context clues, along with many other strategies that can be interchangeable.

What I have noticed about every new “program” that has been introduced or adopted, is that it wasn’t much different than the last. A new name, a new face, and maybe one or two new buzz words. I’ll pick up a few tips here and there, but truthfully I think our students are the best “programs”. Aren’t they the ones who we should be listening to?

I say Daily Five and CAFE are my saviors because they are the best classroom management tools I have implemented in my classroom. Both are effective ways to manage my classroom day and information being taught. I know Daily Five is here to stay in my classroom. 

Friday, December 18, 2009

The moans finally came...

Being a Daily 5 devotee I am always reading online about other teachers experiences. Many times I have come across those stories that I am so jealous and envious of. These are the stories of children asking for more Daily 5 time or making comments about how sad they are when the Daily 5 session comes to an end. Well, I haven't had this experience and was starting to wonder, do my kids really love Daily 5? Am I doing something wrong here?  Don't we all need a little reassurance here and there??? Or is it just me??? 

Well today it finally happened! Due to scheduling changes we weren't going to have time for all 3 rounds of Daily 5. In reality only one round was going to take place. So I told the class this and I hear, "Oh no!". I ask the young boy what was wrong and he said, "I love daily 5 and I don't want to not have it today!" I was so happy to hear this!!!!!!!!! I knew this was the case for many, if not all my kids, but hearing this out loud was music to my ears! 

Another great story is when I had a parent teacher conference and the child attended. When the conference was coming to a close, the young boy said, "Wait dad, before we leave can I show you Daily 5?" He then preceded to go over to the CAFE board, explain the strategies, and do the modeling for Read to Self. It was so adorable! 

With the school coming to its half way mark, as I said in my last post it is time to reflect. This year has been nothing short of amazing. I am loving everyday of teaching (this doesn't mean there aren't days I want to crawl back into bed) and so impressed with my students. Both Daily Math and Daily 5 have made a tremendous difference in my teaching. I can truly say with certainty that I am meeting each child's individual needs.  I am conferencing more than I ever have in the past and the children are being encouraged to make good educational choices for themselves. I am anticipating a successful second half of the school year and know I will continue to enjoy watching my students grow as students. 



Friday, December 11, 2009

Those were the days...

During this time of the year, the stress always manages to build up. No matter how hard we try to take things one step at a time, there is just SO much to do. Just as we have thoughts of our to-do lists all day long, we are competing with our children’s thoughts of Santa Clause, Harry Hanukah and all of the presents that will soon be opened. How do we compete with this and win?

Daily Five and CAFÉ are great ways to keep things moving in the classroom and engage our students in learning. In CAFÉ 48 we’ve been spending time reminding our students about the correct Daily Five behaviors and how to stay on track, while there mind may be somewhere else… inner voice anyone? (Hmmm…. presents… new videos games, etc. and my teacher really wants me to sit hear and write a story!). I think I just thought of a great mini-lesson for next week!

I have to be honest, just like the student’s, I have gotten in to my own routine and allowed both Daily Five and CAFÉ to become somewhat robotic. I know I need to motivate myself and enhance my mini-lessons in order to keep the children engaged. But how…?????

Well first, as I said I’ve gone back to the beginning. We’ve started modeling our behaviors and remembering back to when Daily Five was the best time of our day. The days in September when my students would sit down on the carpet, before me having to tell them to do so and their eagerness to learn was contagious. The days when all I could talk about was Daily Five, CAFÉ, and the amazing results I was seeing in my classrooms.

Ah, those were the days… and I need them back!!!!!!!

In the upcoming weeks leading up to the holiday break, I will reflect on the past few months. Here are a few of my reflection questions. Join me and reflect on your own experience….

What worked and what didn’t?
What have the kids learned and what still needs to be learned?
How can I keep the excitement going?
Should I change the “A” for Accuracy to Awareness of genres? (A suggestion from a PT user).
Where do literature circles fit into daily five?
Keeping choice while also meeting the demands of independent work.
Re-visiting and creating mini-lessons for good-fit books.
Creating new reading goals


Happy holidays!!!!

Thursday, November 5, 2009

Buzz…Buzz…Buzz…

I am a walking advertisement for Daily Five and CAFÉ. Whenever I speak with other teachers the conversation always lends itself to talking about Daily Five and/or CAFÉ. Sadly for the others it is usually because they mention that they don’t have enough time in there day to fit everything in. Well, anyone who is doing Daily Five knows that comment is an invitation for advertisement. Not only do I fit everything in, my teaching is also purposeful and tapping into the needs of every student in my classroom.

In the last two weeks we have had four visitors in Café 48 who came in to observe the Daily Five. Each visitor left extremely impressed and all I could say was read the book and you too will be able to experience the success we are having in our classroom. That’s it! No hidden secrets. It is attainable for any and all teachers and classrooms.

Now that my gloating is done I’ll get into the nitty gritty of my past two weeks...

As I mentioned in my last blog my focus for the past 2 weeks was “context clues” and “getting to know your characters”. For context clues we learned two strategies, 1) read the words before and after the new word, 2) use your prior knowledge to help with the meaning of the word. A great book for context clues is The Boy Who Loved Words. This book is perfect for talking about interesting words. In addition to this book I also made copies of 3 short articles regarding the USA. We are currently learning about the USA and it was a perfect way to combine reading and Social Studies. Each child was given 3 short articles with new vocabulary words underlined. After reading the articles together (1 in each mini-lesson round), I then made a 2-column context clue chart. The first column was labeled New Word and the second column was titled Context Clue. The students loved pretending to be detectives!

Along with Context Clues we have been “getting to know Edward Tulane”. This is by far the most PERFECT book for teaching character traits and character development. During Edward Tulane’s Miraculous Journey he is owned by many different owners, each of whom give him a different name and circumstances lead him to develop new emotions in each chapter. The possibilities for lessons to teach with this book are endless. So far we have learned about character traits, character development, interesting words, and next week we will be discussing cause and effect. We will analyze the different experiences that he has and the effects they have on him. While reading the book we created a flow chart. Each time Edward Tulane became a new character or gained a new emotion we charted it. When we finish the book we will use this chart to help us analyze the experiences Edward Tulane had and how they affected him.

I seriously don’t want this book to end and either do my kids! Today when we were talking about the book my student teacher said she was so excited to read the next chapter to find out what happens next. One kid chimed in and said, “I don’t want to read the next chapter because that means we will be closer to the end and I don’t want the book to ever end!” I am racking my brain trying to think of the next read aloud. It is SO hard! A challenge lies ahead of me trying to find a comparable book to Edward Tulane and The Secret Garden. Any suggestions?????

Next weeks goals are to chart one or two strategies on the CAFÉ board. I was doing so well with this in the beginning and then lately I’ve noticed that I have not kept up with adding new strategies. I think the reason for this is that we are spending more time on one strategy. This being said I still think it is important to add a new strategy once a week in order to keep things fresh.

Daily Math is moving along. We still have only introduced Math with Someone (Games) and Math with the Teacher. The past two days we managed to get through three rounds. The kids are doing well but I need to slow down a bit and take the time to model the correct and incorrect behaviors. We need to work on whisper voices (very hard when kids are playing games! The excitement gets the best of them :-))

Have a great weekend!

Words of Advice:

Read the book Edward Tulane (you must have seen this one coming!). It is truly an unbelievable read aloud!!!