Self Seeking

Some of my favorite moments in teaching, are when a student has a question, has the tool, and takes the time to seek out their own answers.


"He was talking about sand dunes. I didn't know what it was. This is what sand dunes look like!"
"Please, share with the class!"

What other questions do you have? What is your plan to learn more about it?

Recording

After three days of practicing our pacing for fluency, it was time to record our work as the class listened. Ms. Leom made an audio recording of our reading then uploaded it into Google Classroom, so we could listen to ourselves.

In an ideal, glitch-free world, this is sound learning practice! In reality, the iPads are lacking something that makes it impossible for now to access those audio files yet ... Ms. Leom needs some time to problem solve this hurdle.

Friday Mornings

Students love Friday mornings. Our morning work is Cursive, and students are invited to listen to an ebook on Epic as they work.

It is every teacher's dream to hear, "I LOVE coming to school on Fridays!" Student excitement and engagement makes it a great day - if a little lonely without students wanting to share some personal stories ...

Bio Vocab

Our most recent vocabulary word root word part was bio. It means life. By learning specific word parts, it can help us determine the meaning of words, or even the partial meaning of words. We have six words we learn ... the most exciting part is when students are reading other texts and come across the pattern. Students driving their learning ...

Back in Black

Last week was National Bully Prevention Week, and we had a different dress up day all week long. Students wore orange on Wednesday, and were back in black on Thursday to "Black out Bullying".

Indoor Recess October

We had some rainy days, perfect for indoor recess. What does that look like? Here is a peek!

Mini Lesson

When Ms. Leom was working with students in her small groups, she could see there were many great efforts to respond, but they were many variations. It is ok to be individual, but she could tell that she needed to give more modeling and support. So she used a mini lesson on a text about geysers to support student reading and comprehension.

Dialogue

Last week in Writing, we took some time to talk about what is a dialogue (talking), and how do we write a dialogue. We likely need more practice, but we started our dialogue learning. We talked about how in a novel or chapter book, the author doesn't have the space to use speech bubbles like in a comic or graphic novel. Using quotation marks and indenting can cue a reading into dialogue between two characters.

Then we created shared Google Docs to practice these skills, with Ms. Leom actively jumping from our different conversations and jumping into our dialogues.

Additional Pacing

Once we had some basic pacing, feedback, and practice, we started applying our skills using a readers' theater script.

Each student had at least one part. Ms. Leom found several scripts for variety. We practiced for three days, each day having a different purpose as we read. On the first day (pictured here), we read through the script to become familiar with the story and the different parts. The second day, we started working out our part (parts) and adding our pacing thinking to our part. On the third day, we were working to be more smooth (fluent) in our reading and making our pacing sound natural as talking.

Pacing

For our first fluency unit, we learned about pacing. As readers, we change our speed. When we change our speed as we read, we demonstrate we understand what we are reading. We might change speech at different punctuation marks, unknown words or topics, based on what is happening in the plot, and to reflect emotions happening in the story. We practiced with partners, reading and rereading a dialogue.