Group Research Projects and a Freebie Rubric

Last year, I studied Comprehension and Collaboration with some AMAZING coworkers. If you've never heard of it, it's a fabulous read!

 

A big focus in the book is using inquiry projects to fuel student reading, writing, and content-area work. My grade level restructured our reading units to include lots of inquiry projects during the second half of the school year. We are gearing up for our first big inquiry project - Should there be zoos? I'm so pumped!

To prepare my students for these upcoming projects, we did a lot of cross-genre reading and worked on research and note-taking skills. We practiced them in the context of student-selected topics like George Washington, camouflage, and penguins. (Pictures to come soon!) My students worked in groups to research, so of course, I needed a group research rubric.

Click the link to grab your free copy!

I'm linking up with Manic Mondays at Classroom Freebies!
Goodnight, everyone!

P.S. I'm inching closer to 100 followers! And I've hit the 200 follower mark on TpT! That means a giveaway is coming!!!

Involving Parents in Home Reading

Several years ago, I found a wonderful post on Jessica Meacham's site about bags students could take home with books and other materials for sharing with families. I teach in a high-poverty area, and many of my students do not have books at home to share with their parents, siblings, and other relatives. Each kiddo takes home a book every night, but I wanted something a little extra that was a) motivating and that b) put a lot of books in my students' hands. This was the beginning of our literature bag program.

Since each pack includes many books (sometimes as many as seven or eight), my students have to get a parent's permission to check them out. In the four years I've used these, I've only had one pouch and one book lost! You can grab my permission slip (in English and Spanish) HERE.

After a couple months of school, I introduce my students to literature bags, which I display in an awesome book organizer I got through a DonorsChoose.org grant from Lakeshore.

Each one of my literature bags is in a School-to-Home Organizer from Lakeshore. (Again, I got these through a grant... Love DonorsChoose!)

I created cards to go into each School-to-Home Organizer, and numbered the pouches. Some of my bags have books that are in Spanish, and I've noted that with star stickers so my students know which ones have bilingual texts in them.

The pouch has two sides... One contains the books (which you can see when the organizer is closed), and the other contains the contents card and a thin composition book.

The contents card has a brief note to parents with a list of titles included in the pouch, so parents can check the contents before returning it to school. There are also a couple of writing prompts and suggested activities (which are basically the same for each literature pack... I also have math packs with similar cards and other ideas). Parents and students can write in the composition book and/or draw a picture. I don't require this (or participation in the literature bag program as a whole), but almost all of my kids and their parents participate.

These are just a few of the books in the Ocean Life pack. You'll see each is labeled with the literature bag number as well as my name and school.

My students L-O-V-E these packs, parents always have positive feedback about them, and best of all, it gets families reading together. What's not to love about that?!

Free Valentine's Day Activity

This will be a super-quick post, since it's getting late (and, believe it or not, I've managed to stay awake! Holla!), but I created a little printable for my firstie friends.

It's nothing earth-shatteringly new or anything, but I thought it might be helpful for many of you this week!

It contains a sorting mat students can first sort their hearts onto:

 And a math page with graphing, most/least, addition, and patterning:

You can grab it FREE {HERE}.

Does anyone else have kids who are acting like they're hyped up on candy hearts and chocolate already?! Ha!

Enjoy and good night!

Currently February

What. A. Week. I was sick on Monday, 12 of my 29 kiddos had English language proficiency testing Tuesday and Wednesday (which meant I was at 17 kids for half the day each day - talk about not getting anything done!), and then we had a full-day PD today. Phew!

So, here I'm sitting, with both kiddos asleep (at least for now), which in itself seems like a rare occurrence! I'm trying to enjoy the alone time while it lasts.

Today, we had back-to-back-to-back meetings, one of which was a study group meeting. Our whole school has formed study groups around different literacy topics (ours is teaching within a workshop model in the content areas), and I just love the girls in my group. They keep me sane!

My son turned 8 months today, and my daughter turns 2 1/2 Sunday. It's crazy how time flies. I didn't really believe it when people warned me you'd blink and the kids would be grown up, but I see it now. Declan is too big for his baby seat, so we're upgrading the kids... Avery to a big girl booster seat (which, BTW, seats kids up to 120 pounds. Seriously??? Some adults aren't even that big!) and Declan to her infant/toddler seat. Before that happens, there better be some mad vacuuming to get up all the pretzel crumbs that have taken up shop in the backseat!


So, we live in the city and there are about 831 different cupcake shops (okay, not really, but there's a couple awesome ones a few miles away), but not one that delivers. I really think one would do a fabulous business catering to college students/pregnant moms-to-be/teachers who've had a busy week and want to unwind with a little sweetness!

It has been way, waaaaayyyy too long since I've gotten a haircut, and it's really starting to show. It's the bare basic stuff that's the hardest to get done sometimes!

Okay, my pet peeve is totally random and insignificant in the grand scheme of things, but does it drive you nuts when you're walking down the street and someone in front of you stops? I used to live near Michigan Avenue (aka heart of Chicago tourist-ville), and huge street + lots of shopping and thus window displays + scaffolding for construction + tourists = a walking traffic jam! It's not so bad now that we're not living downtown anymore, but still, it's a mega pet peeve of mine!

I'm linking up with Farley at Oh' Boy 4th Grade!

Free Rubrics for Guided Reading and Daily 5... And a Pending Giveaway?

First of all, I'm home today with the FLU. Yuck. Double yuck. All last week, I had no fewer than 4 kiddos gone each day. I Lysoled, I Cloroxed, I Purelled... But I, too, have been attacked by the flu bug.

I'm hoping a little R&R will let me be back in the classroom tomorrow!

I thought this would be a good chance for me to post a couple freebies that hopefully will help some of you all with assessments (particularly as we reach the end of second quarter - and grading/comments loom overhead)!

First, this freebie is a guided reading rubric to assess your students on a range of key skills and behaviors.

And here's a freebie rubric to assess your kiddos as they use the Daily 5.

You can click on either image to download from Google Drive, or hit up my Teachers Pay Teachers store by clicking {here}.

I am currently at 79 followers - just 21 more till the big 100! I plan to do a big giveaway here when I hit that mark, so if you or anyone you know might be interested in donating a product for the giveaway, please let me know by clicking {here}.

I'm linking up with Manic Monday at Classroom Freebies!


Happy Monday!

Getting Guided Math Up and Running

One of my goals this year was to revamp how I teach math and move toward guided math. I LOVE (with a huge heart!) guided reading, so why not do the same thing in math? I have tried to do guided math groups before, and feel like it always flopped. I'd try to teach the mini-lesson to my more advanced, average, and struggling kids in three separate mini-lessons, but that seemed like I was just repeating myself over and over (and over). I tried some pretty elaborate grouping, which then fell apart when kids finished early or needed independent work. So I thought about it and I think I have something that will work.

Note I said "will."

My firsties came to me doing SO GREAT in reading, but not-so-great in math. I noticed even my more advanced students struggled with lots of basic concepts, so I have spent the year thus far getting some basic skills and strategies in place, like counting on a number grid, number recognition, addition and subtraction strategies... The list goes on and on.

As soon as we returned from winter break, I gave all my students a guided math assessment to check what they knew. Now, this isn't exactly Common Core aligned... We use Everyday Math, and a lot of the key skills we've learned so far don't necessarily show up in the CCSS. So, it's more so aligned to the first four units in first grade Everyday Math.

(Click the pic to go to Google Docs and download the PDF)

Then, I created this spreadsheet (it's a PDF... Leaving it in word messed up formatting bigtime) to track how students did on each component.

 

Then, I looked at my students' scores, and created a readiness group (in my case, kids who had fewer than 8 points) and an enrichment group (kids with 8 or more points).  Within each group, I have groups of four students, or math teams, and each team has a leader. I'll describe these groups more in a later post, as well as what we'll be doing in our groups for mini-lessons, independent work, and math centers.

Hope these documents help! :)

January Currently

Keeping it simple tonight, folks!

 

I'm linking up with Oh' Boy 4th Grade!

I'll be back later this week with freebies, info, and pictures of guided math done my way! Good night!