daily five ((all the chapters i've slacked on))

I am so slack.  I could say I've been busy with work (true,) practice (*gulp* I entered in the Masters Zone Championship,) the conference I went to (that sucked but was at the beach so it evened out,) watching the Olympics (my minor claim to fame is that Michael Phelps once pushed me into a pool,) or making stuff for my classroom (which will be more accurate now that my macbook is fixed,) but I don't really have a good excuse.

Except for naps. And shopping for school supplies. I think I've purchased sixty glue sticks. I might have a problem.

Anyway, no excuse.

I have a problem with not finishing things so, even though I'm not sure I have anything meaningful to contribute, I'm going to toss in my two cents on the rest of the book. I'll make it quick.

Chapter Four

Read to Self. My class was pretty good at this last year. We talked about the Three Ways to Read a Book, built stamina, made an anchor chart, and such. One of the things I think we need to improve upon are checking in after practicing. Also, I want to help kids make connections between the reading strategies they learn with me to the books they read. This is more difficult for my littles who are in Reading Mastery Kindergarten (different orthography) than my first grade and up Reading Mastery littles or the ones who just do reading conferences/guided reading. Finally, I want to make sure to emphasize that this is independent reading to the other adults in the room. Sometimes, adults have trouble leaving the kids alone to read. I want to make sure that we all know that Read to Self and Read to Someone are both important, but are separate things.

Chapter Five

Read to Someone is harder to implement in my room because there can be so few children. This was mostly accomplished last year by littles reading to my wingman paraprofessional or to other adults who visited. I want to try to encourage them to read to each other more this year and set my schedule up in a way this will be feasible.

Listen to Reading is something that we kind of tapered off with throughout the year. I cringe at this, but it was mostly because the littles that were in my reading block by the end of the year were not there at the beginning when we went over how to use the materials. I want to also expand past our CD player to using the iPod nano I don't use anymore and Tumblebooks.

Chapter Six

Work on Writing might have to be a once-every-day thing in my room. Because of our schedule (I essentially teach an extra subject) and some other external factors, I'm not sure I can do a separate writing time. I think one of the mini-lessons during D5 is going to be a writing one, then they can choose when during D5 to work on writing. During my post after reading No More I'm Done I went more into depth about some things I wanted to change about my writing instruction.

I've given some thought to Work on Words this summer, because I want to make sure I have engaging options for the littles to practice with. I've purchased some stamp pads and letter stamps, unifix letter cubes, cheap stickers, letter beads, and play doh with stampers. I also have some of the standards: white boards, magnetic letters, markers, etc.

Chapter Seven

This is kind of a non sequitur, but I'm having this nightmarish anticipation that, when making an I chart, one of the littles will say that the teacher will be on the computer or at a meeting. Urgh. I don't have a planning period (or a bathroom break) all day, so sometimes I'm doing non-instructional things out of necessity when I wish I didn't have to.

Instead of me taking the notes on who's doing what during check in, I think I'm going to have them keep track on a sheet on their own. I also think I'm going to make a little clip chart with the choices for them to show what they're working on.

I'm really excited about getting started with using this format for our literacy block. Everyone who participated in the book study had such great ideas, I'm glad I could learn from everyone. :)