The Daily 5 Chapter 6

I'm a little late on this one.  I had intended to take my book with me on vacation and link up while I was there and when I got to the cabin and went to get my book to read on the back deck I was sad to see that I forgot the book. So here goes....better late than never. Right?

Thanks to Crystal at Kreative in Kinder and Little Miss. Kindergarten.

 

1. Experimenting with words for learning and practicing a spelling pattern (brainstorm a list of ways you can do this)

I plan to start with letter recognition gradually introducing ways that we can work on our sight words in the same ways. I will start with letter matching games where kids can practice matching uppercase with lowercase letters.  I will use:

magnetic letters

white boards

Play Dough with stamps or where they can roll the dough to make letters

letter tiles

stamps

file folder games

and anything else I come across with on Pinterest ;)

2. Memorize high frequency words (How often do you introduce new words? Do your students have their own lists of words that they can work on? How will you keep track of words that they already know?

Being a Pre-K teacher I have not started HFW till around the 4th quarter.  However, this year another Pre-K teacher and I have decided to start earlier.  I will start with their names on the word wall and all number, color and shape words at first.  I have seen some great ideas where teachers have put words into groups and used sticker books where kids get stickers when they learn words and celebrate as a class when everyone in the class learns a list.  I would like to use these ideas in my room.

3. Generalize spelling patterns (brainstorm a list of ways you can do this).

At the beginning of the year I will be working on basic sight words.  Later in the year I will work on word families and use those spelling patterns. I will not get into phonemes and blends.

4. Adding to our knowledge and curiosity of unique and interesting words. (What is the best way to do this?)

As far as nonsense words go, I have not experimented with these at all and wouldn't even know where to begin.  Since I am just starting with sight words I think I want to focus on that this year and perfect that before trying something else.

Other things to think about:

· What materials do I already have?

I already have the materials that I listed above in question one.  I also have boxes/baskets to store them in and a shelf that I plan to keep everything on.

What materials would I like to get?

I wold love to have some more baskets/bins from Really Good Stuff to make everything uniform but for now I will use my hodge podge of storage containers since I have already bought new baskets for my library and book bins for my kids.

How will I store them?

I will use boxes/baskets to store each activity. Stamps, magnetic letters and tiles will have Ziploc bags to hold them so that students can grab a bag and take it to their work space.

· Where will students work?

Students will be able to work wherever they like.  I will likely encourage students to work at their seats for some activities but I want to keep with the theme of giving them choice. 

Writing

As I read the writing portion of this chapter I was faced with some ideas completely opposite of what I had originally visioned writing looking like in my room.  Since my students will not have any prior knowledge of writing or letters, much less words I have to consider what they are capable of.  As the year starts, I was to have the kids working on the mechanics of writing.  I have a specific are that I intend on using for writing that will be the writing center.  In the writing center students will have a choice of what they want to do.  Students will be able to work on letters, sight words or writing their names or friends' names.  I will have paper, slates, magnetic boards, and white boards for students to write on. Once students have the mechanics down and we have worked on sounding out words I will have them start drawing pictures and labeling them.

P.S. I typed this on my lap top which seems to have a mind of its own.  It tends to jump around and I wind up typing or deleting in places that I don't intend to.  So if I have a ton of errors here.... sorry!

Another Book To Read

I've been reading the Daily 5 with several kindergarten teachers in a book study. We are doing a chapter a week and I have had my eyes opened to many things that I need to change in my classroom and getting some really great ideas. Tomorrow is chapter 2 so I will tell you more about that later. Right now I want to tell you about another book that I am reading on my own.




No, I am not reading this because I am expecting to teach my preschoolers how to write. I found this book by accident while looking at some other teaching resources and thought "Hmm...I maybe I should read that so I can help Hunter." When Hunter started writing it was very stressful, for all of us. Granted, he is just going in to first grade but my how the expectations of kids have gone up. I read all of his writing from kindergarten a couple of weeks ago and couldn't believe how much he had improved already. But I had a hard time finding his "voice" in his writing. It seemed that there was more "Write three things you learned about Antarctica" and other reflections of things that he had read with his class than things that came from his heart. Now, I am not discrediting his teacher in any way. She was wonderful!
 
I started reflecting on the ways that I had taught writing in second grade and what had been stressed to me as a teacher that needed to be done. I remember telling kids what to write about more than giving them choice. (sound familiar? Daily 5 maybe?) I realized how telling kids what to write about and how to write was taking away their voice in writing. They were told to reflect on a piece of literature or tell what their favorite food was and why or if they could be any flavor of ice cream what would it be and why. Where is the fun in that? What boy wants to be ice cream?

Anyhow.... I knew there was no way that I could read this book while I was in school so I saved it to my favorites and decided to wait for the summer so that I could concentrate on it. I just got my book in today and I have already read chapter 1. Here are a few things that stood out to me as I read.
-Boys, those troubled, troubled boys.... What are we going to do with them? All they want to do is play video games and pretend to shoot each other. They are so rough, always hitting and pushing each other. Here's an idea, how about instead of treating them like a problem to be managed, we try to understand them.

-"Boy writers have unique strengths, quirks, and weaknesses that every thoughtful practitioner or parent will want to be aware of." I can't wait to see what the writer has to say about this!

-"Think deeply about what concrete steps we can take to do a better job of teaching boys to write." What can I do to help my son be a better writer?