Strategies for Checking Comprehension June 15, 2009

January/February

Growing Readers-Kathy Collins

Readers Think and Talk About Books to Grow Ideas

Strategies for Checking Comprehension

	Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday
Week 1  The Importance of Understanding	p. 180 Strong Readers get the words and the story	p. 181 When Readers Really Understand Their voices sound smooth	p. 181 When readers understand they can picture the story in their minds	p. 181 When  Readers really understand, they can retell it easily	p. 182 When readers really understand they just know
Week 2	p. 182  review chart	p. 183  Monitoring Comprehension Huh? Catching yourself when you’re confused	p. 184  Readers catch themselves when they’re daydreaming	p. 184  Readers stop and think after reading chunks of text	continued
Week 3	p. 184  Readers check their retelling	p. 184 Readers check their book talks	Strategies for Confusion  p. 185 Readers Go Back and reread to understand	p. 185 Readers read back and read to understand the tricky part	p. 185  Readers stop and make a picture in their minds to understand.
Week 4	p. 185  Readers read tricky parts aloud	p. 185  Readers talk to a partner about tricky parts	p. 185 readers talk to someone who has read the book before	Readers make sketches to understand	CELEBRATION! small big pics  Teacher child

Launching Reading Workshop in Kindergarten June 10, 2009

 

Growing Readers by Kathy Collins

Readers Build Good Habits!            

 

	Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday
Week 1 Good Habits p. 61	Strong Readers read everyday-p. 61 Assign Homework-best place at home to read	p. 61 Strong Readers Share and *Class Book Favorite Places	Turn & Talk p. 61 Strong Readers Talk and Think about books with people	Strong Readers Read Everything in Sight p. 62 *Our World (Environmental Print)	Strong Readers Take Care of Books and Protect Reading Time p. 62-63 photo-care of books p. 63
Week 2 Reading Identities  pp. 76-77	Explaining favorite book homework p. 68	1st Favorite Book-share *Class favorite books book	Sketch favorite reading memory p. 71 *class reading memory	Reading baskets varied levels & Genre p. 71	Take pictures during reading workshop to demo Reading baskets varied levels and genres
Week 3 Readers Take Care of Classroom Libraries p. 77	Putting books away p. 79 what’s in the library p. 81	Putting books away-what’s in the library p. 79	Borrow and return books carefully All readers are responsible for library (20 books to put away) p. 80	Conferences p. 85 List/book Noise levels Kind reminder *Understanding Reading Workshop Procedures p. 81	Be considerate Move smoothly and quietly
Week 4 Stay Focused on Reading pp. 88-90	Read the pictures Read the story p. 84	Notice details and new things Reminded of things (connections) p. 90	Sit side-by-side Plan ways to read together p. 91-92	Partners make decisions Partners solve their own problems p. 92	Partners talk about their books p. 92
Week 5	Sign contract CELEBRATION Interview office staff-reading identities	Buffer Day p. 100 Management mini-lesson as needed	Buffer Day

Kindergarten Language Arts Curriculum Mapping Day 1 June 8, 2009

Our kindergarten is a half-day program (2 1/2 hours of which 1/2 hour is a related arts/special). I hope some day it might be full-day, but that is not in the cards for the foreseeable future. When we went on classroom visits this past year, the teachers in Worthington had shared with us their month-by-month planning calendars they had created using the following resources. Our teachers greatly admired their curricular calendars and hoped to create our own version of them. We started today and I’ll share more as we go, but here is the list of professional resources we hope to include in our maps/calendars.  

Professional Resources to implement in map:

Reading Workshop:
Reading with Meaning by Debbie Miller

Growing Readers: Units of Study in the Primary Classroom by Kathy Collins

Writing Workshop:

Talking, Drawing, Writing by Giacobbe and Martha Horn

Primary Units of Study by Lucy Calkins 

About the Authors by Katie Wood Ray and Lisa Cleveland

Can’t beat time in a bookstore with friends June 5, 2009

One of the last events I managed before becoming a house-selling fanatic, was a trip to my favorite book store Cover to Cover with two of my fourth grade colleagues.  Neither had been there before ( I love taking newbies!) and both had some end of the year money to spend on their classroom libraries (Can there be any better type of money to spend?). A combination that can’t be beat in my mind, especially when followed by lunch at Northstar Cafe.  

One of our goals was to find poetry books to boost their classroom library (there are two of the teachers I wrote about in the poetry unit). We picked up:

• Georgia Heard’s vertical book Falling Down the Page
• Oh Brother by Nikki Grimes
• Been to Yesterdays- by Lee Bennett Hopkins
• Wonderful Words: Poems about Reading, Writing, Listening, and Speaking by Lee Bennett Hopkins
• City I Love by Lee Bennett Hopkins
• A Kick in the Head-An Everyday Guide to Poetic Forms by Paul Janeczko
• The World’s Greatest Poems by J. Patrick Lewis 
• Dinothesaurus by Douglas Florian 

Another was to find picture books to supplement their science and social studies topics. I have to say we successfully did both after many fun hours looking through books and exclaiming over finds to each other.  

I also had the privilege of selecting books that will be given to teachers as part of our August Writing Institute.  I’ll include a list of titles I picked up within the next week. 

I’m sitting in my beautiful backyard writing this post, enjoying the things I love most about it back here-dogs sleeping on cool bricks at my feet, luscious red strawberries growing in raised beds, kids swinging high enough to touch the clouds, a breeze blows the leaves of the surrounding trees and woods, music from the televsision show Grey’s Anatomy plays in the background, and a cold beverage drips a ring on the table.   I realize that I have missed the reflective component of blogging over the last couple weeks. It forces me to slow down and think about how the day, week, book, etc. and I haven’t slowed down enough to read or blog since entering house mania. Now that the main preparation sprint is winding down, I hope to be back to blogging almost every day.

Next week holds a curriculum mapping week of planning using Primary Units of Study by Lucy Calkins, Talking, Drawing and Writing by Horn and Giacobbe, and Reading With Meaning by Debbie Miller to plan out next year. Should be pretty fun stuff! Then a couple weeks off before heading to Teachers College (TCRWP) Reading Institute July 6th-10th.

Reading toolbox January 17, 2009

 

 

Make a Smilebox photobook

Kindergarten Author Study Eric Carle

Parent Project as part of Eric Carle author study. Done in two phases in small groups with parent volunteer while teacher did small group reading. Tissue paper and watery glue to make the caterpillar body.

Fall Kindergarten samples October 12, 2008

Make a Smilebox photobook

Writing with Kindergarteners

I think this bulletin board shows a great example of writing with kindergartners. They have each drawn a picture and then dictated (I am assuming the dictation part) a sentence about their picture. They have glued the words in the sentence separately which is a great way to teach spacing between words. A friend of mine told me that is a Reading Recovery strategy (which is a program that I am unfortunately pretty ignorant). Look at the student samples below.