Read and Write 180-Day 30

Thursday, September 22, 2011

Whew!! Almost Friday! First of all, let me tell you that I just read a REALLY good book this week! The 6th Grade Nickname Game by Gordon Korman. Of course, I loved it because it deals with 6th graders reading, AND it’s funny! It will be on my “recommend” list tomorrow!! 🙂

We took a practice word study test today (had LOTS of 100s!). I told them if they didn’t miss any today that they don’t have to take the test tomorrow (they can do Read to Self). 🙂

We reviewed some english and took the english test-I can’t wait to see the results (if I can lift my head from all the other grading I have got to finish TONIGHT!). Here is the english test that we took today:

English Test9-22-11

I read part of the next chapter in our read aloud and stopped before finishing the chapter or finding out what Helen was doing with the alarm clock. You should have heard the groaning!

We shared some of our homework thinking-there’s some GOOD thinking/writing going on. Then I showed them how to complete the last box on the comprehension thinking sheet-there shouldn’t be any questions anymore on how to fill this out each week. Hopefully. 🙂

My first class worked in groups on their compare/contrast essay (we didn’t have time in the 2nd class because we had a kickoff for our fall school fundraiser).

We did 2 rounds of “Fab Five” (about 20 minutes the 1st round and 10 minutes the 2nd round). I conferred with 2 students in my 1st class and 2 in my 2nd class. LOVE working with individual students!!! I wish I could do this for 1/2 of the class period (about 1 hour 10 minutes). 🙂

With my 1st class I gave them a copy of a good reading response letter that one of my students had written and we talked about why it was good. I want them to see what a good one looks like because I’m seeing the SAME mistakes and no effort in the letters each week!

OK-going to grade papers!

Read and Write 180-Day 18

Tuesday, September 6th, 2011

This teacher loved the loooong weekend we just had-is there another one around the corner??? 🙂

We were all sleepy this morning.lethargic. no energy. drowsy. Hmmmm…how many more synonyms can I come up with? After P.E. I gave the kids about 10 minutes to either read or put their heads down. Then we tried to come to life! 🙂

1st piece of business-they copied their word study words, segmented them (for spelling purposes), and wrote/drew something to help them remember what each word means. I am NOT happy with my word study routine so far. I. am. bored. I can only imagine that the kids are as well. 🙂 I have got to figure something out-will be thinking about it over the next couple of weeks. I really want them to “own” the words and be able to use them when speaking, writing.

English-We are learning about the types of sentences this week as well as subjects and predicates. Do you speak french? I started wondering if that was what I was speaking when I got to the subjects and predicates! 🙂 Let’s just say I had A LOT of “deer in the headlights” looks across my room. Why is English (which we speak every day) so hard for them to get and retain???? 🙂 They did well with the 4 types of sentences: Declarative/Interrogative/Command (Imperative)/Exclamatory

I explained each type, wrote sentences on the board, had them work in groups to decide what each sentence type was, and then let some of the students draw a line to match the sentence to the sentence type.

Then we went over subjects and predicates-Complete and Simple. Oh, boy! 🙂

Here is what the board looked like during one of my classes:

 

 Messy, huh? 🙂

Here are a couple of pictures of the kids working together today:

I read Chapter 7 of 6th Grade Can Really Kill You to the kids. I’m beginning to think this is their favorite part of the day. 🙂 We have some great thinking going on-we’re predicting like crazy (great comprehension strategy to keep them engaged in the text), and I’m trying to show them how to infer (guess at what the author means even though they may not exactly say it).

I showed them/discussed with them how to do the rest of the reading response letter. I can’t wait to see how they turn out this 1st time, and then how much progress we make with them over the course of the year. I LOVE seeing progress!

Our reading passage that I chose this week is “Spitting to Survive”. Now how can they not be intrigued by this title? 🙂 We created a KWL chart to activate their schema (background knowledge) and to see what we are wondering about before we read and then while we read. After we finish reading the passage we will go back and write what we learned. Before, during, and after activities with reading are CRUCIAL!!!! I’m really going to try and keep it up this year-it’s just sort of hard when we have such loooong stories. That’s why I’m using short passages right now-to teach them strategies/skills that they can transfer to ANY text! Here is what one of our KWL charts looked like in class today:

After all of that-I let them work on their reading response letters and read to self while I listened to a few more kids read to me (initial assessment). I only have 2 kids out of 47 left! Whoopeeeeeee! I can’t wait to begin small group/individual instruction. It’s just taking so much time to teach things that I will expect for the rest of the year to the whole class right now. Ideally, (ha-that’s a funny word in education) I want to teach whole group instruction for about 1 hour or 1 hour 15 minutes, and then the rest of the time teach small groups/individuals-this would leave me about 1 hour 15 minutes or 1 1/2 hours. But you wouldn’t believe how long it is taking us to go the bathroom in the mornings after PE!! LOL!

Read, read, read

Our goal for 6th grade is to read at least 50 books-10 being picture books. I’m also requiring that they read from different genres so their reading diet can have a variety! 🙂

Here are my requirements (I also added them to my Reading Tools page):

Reading Requirements for 6th Grade

They will also have to keep a reading response notebook. This is where they will write 1 letter each week to me about the book they are reading. Here are the guidelines for the reading response letter so they will know what is expected:

Reading Response Notebook Guidelines

Next week will be when their 1st letter is due. I am going to essentially help them write part of it each day. I’ll post more about how it goes next week-I’ll also try to remember to take pictures of some of them toward the end of the week. This will be a 100 point grade each week (comparable to a test grade).