I haven't posted this week because I haven't even had 5 spare minutes to sit down and crank one out! It's been wild, in a good way!!
We've started our guided reading groups, tier 2 interventions, data day to view students reading and number levels, faculty and district faculty meetings, and throw an all day field trip to the zoo in the mix and I'm sure you understand why I haven't posted!!
My favorite classroom work from recent is math. The kids are learning addition! I began the first addition lesson last Friday when Mrs. Hoffman was out of the room. I was way nervous but I could have cried at how wonderful the students picked up on it!! I began the lesson by presenting the students with a number track, which they are very familiar with. It looks something like this:
I cut printed and cut out a picture of a frog and use some sticky tack to stick him on the board above the numbers. The students gathered at their floor spots and I started by putting the frog on a number, say 5. We discussed the number, one more, one less etc. I then said the frog took 2 hops forward, moved the frog, and landed him on the number 7. We discussed the starting number, number of hops, and the ending number. I talked them through saying that as ad addition problem, 5 add 2 is 7. We then plugged the numbers into an addition sentence format to look like: 5 + 2 = 7. I wasn't sure the students had a full grasp at what a big deal this was and they could tell that I was excited and I kept saying "you just did addition! Guess what? You can add!!"
We did 4 or 5 more examples and I kid you not, they picked up on it after the very first one! I was jumping for joy at how quickly they learned this! So amazing! They have math packets to complete after the lesson so I sent them off to complete the days pages and sure enough, they were all done in like 7 minutes. One students who lacks in confidence gave me a big hug after I starred her paper and told her "You just did addition!!" and she told me "I'm so happy I can do that." I love watching students see their own success!
We had our guided reading groups begin this week after we finished grouping them by reading levels. We have guided reading aids that come in every day for 30 minutes and take different groups to discuss books, present them new books, and introduce a new skill along with it (i.e. picture clues, predictions, repetitive words, non-sense words, lessons learned from the story etc.). Each aid rotates along with Mrs. Hoffman and myself each day so that we get a chance to see all the students read rather than one stationary group every day. It's fun for the students as well, because we all do our groups a little differently. It went smoothly so far, the only thing that is an issue is that we send their guided reading bags (gallon ziplock bags with their name on it) home every night along with a reading recording sheet. They are supposed to read their new book to an adult every night and the adult will record how long it took them and sign it to verify that they read. Well what's tricky is when students forget to read, or even worse, forget to bring their bag back to school!! If a student forgets to read someone will pull them into the hallway during recess or free-time to read to them, but when they forget their bag it really omits them from participating and us from gathering the information on their reading. Hopefully this week was rocky because it's so brand new. I think once students get the hang of it we will have less "I forgot my bag at home".....especially since I believe mrs. Hoffman is beginning a reward system for students who bring their bags back to school, with parent signatures 10 days in a row :)
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