Spelling & Word Chunks

This past summer, my sweet friend, Amy, and I decided we needed to revamp our spelling. We were using the spelling lists that came with our reading program, and really, I feel like many of the kids were just memorizing for the test-not really learning the spelling patterns. This year we are doing word chunks and I am LOVING it! We structured our spelling based on this book:

Each week, we have a focus poem. We find helpful chunk words from the poem, and focus on 3 to 4 a week. My kids are doing GREAT! And they are actually using the chunks in their writing! They always point out old chunks and underline chunks in their work. LOVE IT!

For the spelling test, I give the kids 10 chunk words to study (most are 2 syllable words, some just have blends and digraphs). Then I add anywhere from 1-5 extra words (sight words, old chunks we need to review). On test day I give them 5 secret words that they don't get to study. They have to apply what they have learned.

It is very easy for all students to work on the same chunks, but you can modify the words for your struggling students, as well as your gifted students :)

Here is what our poetry and word work journal looks like. Our poem goes on the left, and we sort chunk words on the right. **Sidebar-this poem is also a great one to teach blends and adjectives!**

Here is what our Word Chunk Wall looks like currently. (I cut off the "U" and "Other" chunks, sorry!)

So this is kind of what our week looks like currently...

Monday: Introduce new poem at morning meeting (written on chart paper). Ask kids what they think would be helpful chunks. Pick out 3-4 (pre-selected) chunking words. Underline chunks in poem with highlighting tape (so I can reuse the poems on chart paper year after year :). Then I write the chunk words on construction paper in front of them. I do not have these pre-made, although I realllllly wanted to! I think they are more meaningful since we write them together. I give the students a copy of the poem and we read it again and circle our chunk words. Then they cut it out and glue it in their journal. We also go over our spelling words for the week.

Tuesday: We reread our poem. Review the chunks. Brainstorm words that have our chunks on the whiteboard. Then the students sort their spelling words on the right side of their journals. They will add other words at their own pace throughout the week.

Wednesday: I have a cut and paste word sort for my kiddos to do.

Thursday: We play our word chunk race! My kids get their marker boards. I give them one minute. They write as many words as they can think of for the first chunk. Then, I give them another minute, and I call on students to tell me as many chunk words as they can! I write them all on the board. Then it's my turn! Except I only get 30 seconds and I have to do it alone! (I don't win very often!) We repeat this for each chunk. They love playing against Mrs. Lynes :)

Friday: We play Sparkle and take our test.

When we have extra time throughout the day, I let them get out Word Work materials (magnets, pipe cleaners, stamps, etc). Once I get it up and running, it will be a rotation as part of Daily 5.

TGI (almost) F!

Apple Week!

I can't believe that Apple Week is over! The school year is really flying!!! We had a great week learning about Johnny Appleseed and doing different activities involving apples! At the end of the week we made homemade applesauce and the kiddos brought apple snacks for our apple tasting party. YUM! Here are just a few photos of some of the things we did this week.

Of course we read several versions of Johnny Appleseed and discussed what we learned, as well as comparing the stories.

I introduced adjectives to my students by giving them each a piece of a granny smith apple. I told them to use their senses to describe it. The very last thing they could do was taste it. They talked with their neighbors and then they came up with words to describe the apple! (I used this prompt to help make sure they were coming up with adjectives: I have a _____ apple). I wrote their responses on our huge apple (below). Next, I gave them a piece of a gala apple. We repeated the process, and of course they came up with different adjectives since the two apples look and taste different :)

The next day, we reviewed adjectives and I had them use adjectives to describe different things in our classroom aloud. Then they made these cute adjective apples!

This week, we worked on addition story problems. I had my students write story problems with apple stickers!

I had each of my students bring an apple to school on Wednesday to be used for some graphing and measurement activities. (Then of course we would use them for our applesauce!) First we graphed the color of apples we brought. At the bottom I had some questions about the graph for my kiddos to answer.

The next day we worked on measurement (and estimation) using standard and nonstandard units. First, we practiced measuring things that had a straight edge. We found that was pretty easy! We wanted to measure our apples, but could we measure something round using a ruler? Not really! So we decided it'd be easier if we put yarn around our apples and then measured that! I had my students measure (to the nearest unit) their apples using unifix cubes, dominoes, pennies, inches and centimeters. They did awesome!

My kiddos also got to make apple transformations. I have decided that next year I will now show them an example of an apple transformation... I may do a different object so they get the jist of it. Because even when you tell them 45 times, "No copying Mrs. Lynes!" you get about 10 who still do :) But they are still adorable regardless!

I can't believe Apple Week is already over! Pretty soon it'll be onto pumpkins, then Thanksgiving, then Christmas!! Eeep!

Communities

The first two and a half weeks of school have been awesome! I absolutely love my class-they are the sweetest kiddos! They are making it so easy to implement Daily 5 and I just know it's going to be a fantastic year! I will write about how Daily 5 is going in a future post :)

The past week or two we have been focusing on communities and mapping skills for social studies. We have read these stories from our basal to help compare the characteristics of different kinds of communities:

 

I am still trying to learn that I can LET GO OF THE BASAL while doing Daily 5, but these two stories went really well with communities. We have been comparing urban, suburban and rural. They loooved seeing my photos from NYC and Chicago, too! Many of them had no idea just how big a city could actually be!

 I made this bulletin board and we sorted out the different characteristics of each community:

Then, we made our own model of the different communities using milk cartons! The model turned out so cute, and I think they really got it! :) (This is a photo of my friend Amy's class' model-I forgot to take a picture of ours and had already let my kiddos take their buildings home!)

So stinkin' cute, right? :) The following day, we started our mapping skills. We made a map of our model. We learned that we needed a title for our maps, as well as a map key!

We will continue our mapping skills this week. We will read

and the kiddos will have homework-make a map of their bedroom! They will have to include a title and at least 5 symbols in their map key. I can't wait to see what they come up with!

Hope everyone has a great rest of the weekend!

Cheap Classroom projects

I have been blog stalking all summer long, looking for ideas for Daily 5. Many classrooms I came across have all kinds of fun, comfortable seating areas for students to read. I wanted to provide some more fun seating options for my kiddos during Daily 5 without breaking the bank. And then one of our 3rd grade teachers gave me this awesome idea! And it only cost about $6 a pop!

I bought a few baskets from Wal-Mart for about $3 each. I bought enough padding at Hancock for 4 seats ($12). I had some leftover fabric (free!) and my dad had some plywood in his shed (free!). My dad cut the plywood for me, but I found out that Lowe's will cut it to the correct size for free if you buy the wood from them! Have the wood cut so that it can sit inside the basket where you would normally hang folders. Hot glue the padding to the wood. Cover with fabric, and use a staple gun to secure the fabric. And voila! Cheap seating for your babies (or you!) plus extra storage! I am storing my kiddos' extra school supplies inside my seats. AND I use one of these seats at my easel! I love being that low and close to my kiddos! It is the perfect height for writing on my easel, too!

This is an idea I got when I was student teaching. I do not have cubbies to send my kids' papers home, and those things are expensive, and I do not know anyone who is into shelf building :) So I use cans instead of cubbies! They are the perfect size for papers!

This was a SUPER cheap project for me, and these things have lasted since I started teaching in 2007. I get a lot of compliments on them, too! I worked at a daycare before I started teaching, so I had the lunch staff save the large cans that fruit and veggies come in for me (you can have your cafeteria save them for you, too!) I made sure to put gobs of hot glue on the edges where the cans had been open so there would be no cut little fingers! I cut butcher paper to fit the size of the can. I used calendar numbers, then I laminated the sheets of paper. I hot glued the laminated papers at the seam, and bam! A cute, CHEAP way to send your kids' papers home :)

A View of My Classroom!

I know, I know. It's been FOR. EV. ER. since I last posted. I started working on my room August 1st, and went just about everyday (with the occasional day off to be poolside!) and by the time I would get home I just didn't have it in me to type a post! LAZY! Anyway, I put in a lot of hard work, and I must say that I love my new classroom! You wouldn't believe what a difference it is to be out of the basement and to have a window!!! And I love that my room has carpet! No more noisy chairs scraping on the tile everytime my kiddos move! :) It feels so much more cozy and home-y than my previous room.

I have absolutely loved seeing everyone's classrooms in the blog world, so I thought I would share mine! This post will be a classroom tour. ENJOY :)

These two photos are as you enter my room...

This is a close up of our "Words We Know" wall and our calendar/math meeting area (with lots of Everyday Math routines). Next to the clock are our Eight Expectations. (My window and teacher table/counter space are to the left). My Words We Know wall will be for high frequency words, but I will be focusing on word chunks this year (which is on a wall in the front of the room).

My reading corner with the canopy I purchased from Ikea for around $15!

This is my Bucket Filler area. The students place their bucket fillers in the orange basket for me to "deliver" This is actually so I can check them first :) My kids are already SO into this! We read How Full is Your Bucket? and discussed it. We made a chart of Bucket Fillers and Bucket Dippers. We hung up the Bucket Fillers chart and trashed the Bucket Dippers! We then did a reader's response and they were coming up with the sweetest ways they could be bucket fillers! Then they all filled someone's bucket. I wrote everyone's name on a slip beforehand and randomly handed them out so that everyone's bucket was filled this first time. I am so excited to be implementing bucket filling this year!

The next two photos show my book basket areas. These are the chapter books...

 ...and the blue and green baskets are the picture books. The bulletin board above those book baskets have our school creed, school song, character trait of the month, word of the week, and quote of the week. We say these every morning to help us start our day.

This is my Tree-riffic Words tree! Each week we will add our Word of the Week on a leaf and hang it on the tree. By the end of the year, our tree will be blooming with Tree-riffic words! :)

Next is the door to my closet. It will be my Celebrity of the Week area! There is a sheet protector in the middle for the Celebrity's poster to hang all week long! I made a bag over the summer for the Celebrity to take home and bring all the things they will need to share during the week! The library pockets on the bottom of my door are for my students' library sticks and their Everyday Math login cards. The library sticks are the large popsicle sticks where I will write their reading range to help guide them when they visit the library.



This year I am starting Daily 5 (well, more of a Daily 3)! I am so excited about it! This is my word work area. Students will have the choice to use magnets, stamps, pipecleaners (same idea as Wikki Sticks, only way cheaper!), letter tiles and dry erase boards. They may also do rainbow spelling with crayons or stair spelling. I may add more choices as I find other materials or other ideas I like :)

And those are the only pictures of my room that I have at this point! I hope everyone has had a great school year so far!

Spelling, OWLS, school buys, daily 5... CATCH UP TIME!

Wow, I have been a little MIA lately! I have been trying to soak up all the summer that I can before I start working on my (new!) classroom next week!

First off, I just have to say that I. LOVE. SAN. FRANCISCO. My best friend and I went for a few days a couple of weeks ago and I absolutely fell in love!! And it didn't hurt that the temps were between 50 and 60! Such a nice break from the 30 some odd days of triple digit heat we have been having here. Bleh.

ANYWAY. I have been in school mode more this summer than I think I have any other summer. I think that is because I have all of these woooonderful blogs to look at that have really inspired me :) Here is what I have been working on schoolwise lately!

Spelling

Yesterday my friend, Amy, and I totally re-did our spelling! We wanted something that was more effective than what we feel our reading series provides. We felt like some of our kids were just memorizing for the test and not really learning the skills. We used the poems I use in my class and this book as a guide/reference to come up with the chunks we will be focusing on.

Each week, we will have a focus poem and we will pick out words from the poem that have the 3-4 chunks that we will work on (in this book she uses anywhere from 3-5 chunks per week... more for 2nd graders, less for younger kids). We will do lots of word work, games and activities during the week to really learn those chunks. As for spelling tests, our plan for the first semester is to give our kiddos 10 words each week that they will study, then on test day, 5 more words that follow the chunks we have been working on (but they won't study these at home). This will let us see who can really apply what they have learned. We are really excited about the work we did and I really think our kids are going to have much greater gains in their spelling! Especially our at risk kiddos. Yay.

OWLS

I have been obsessing over owls lately. I have never really had a theme in my room.. just random stuff. I have been keeping with a lot of light blue and lime green stuff. But I found THE. CUTEST. owl stuff at Mardel's educator sale and just HAD to have it.

*I am using these nametags for my book bins*

Just TRY and tell me those are not the cutest little guys :) So since I am having an owl theme in my room I had to make a new go-home folder. I used to have a FROG folder (For Really Organized Guys & Gals). I have used that for the past few years, but now it just won't seem to fit. So I came up with the OWL folder: Organized & Wise Learners. I would upload my documents on here buuut I am still unsure how! I know the contents and rules are very similar to what many of you probably have in your take home folders :) I am really excited about incorporating the owls into my room!

Our Rockin' School

Our school theme is "Our Rockin' School." I know, I know. I decided to do an owl theme for my own classroom. But outside I always decorate for our theme. Mardel had some cute rockin' stuff, but I knew everyone would probably have it and I like to do something different :) I really wanted to find some records to decorate with but did not want to pay a fortune! And then I just happened to stumble upon a big box of 7 inches while garage sale-ing! I got about 75 of them for $3! I put various green and blue scrapbook paper on them and will write the kids' names on them to display for open house! I am really happy with how they turned out!

School Shopping

I have been doing lots and lots of school shopping throughout the summer. I was super excited when Target put out their dollar bin school stuff. And you gotta love Staples' penny sales! Our poor workout room/junk room has become my school storage room... it has all of my book bins and all of the goodies I have been purchasing all summer :) I know the hubs is just counting down the days until I can get that stuff outta here :)

Target dollar bins! WOO!

Soooo excited about my penny pencils, highlighters and notecards!

Random stuff for centers and math tubs.

Can ya believe summer is almost over?!?! Enjoy what little time you have left :)

DonorsChoose

Last year I was funded through DonorsChoose and Limeades for Learning. I was so fortunate to receive class sets of books and literacy units for Where the Wild Things Are and  Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day. These were two books I really enjoyed growing up so I just HAD to have them in my classroom! The kids LOVED these units!

I just posted another project requesting different materials to include in my math rotations and literacy rotations. Please visit my teacher page at www.donorschoose.org/lynesl to make a donation :) You may have to click on Project Requests.

Oh and here's something I made yesterday!

I will use a dry erase marker to keep track of my To-Do list. I always seem to have a gazillion sticky notes stuck to my computer and desk and this is a cute way to keep track of what I need to do! I got the frame for super cheap at Ikea and just made the paper in word. And you can see I am slooowly working in an owl theme into my classroom :)