Throwback Thursday

I know I know, I'm a day late, BUT I still must link up because this is one of my favorite link ups! Cara's Throwback Thursday.

This post is from May when I talked about my reader's workshop and what it looks like! Enjoy!

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Original post is from May 4, 2013

I have decided to do a post on how I do reader's workshop in my classroom. I hope this helps anyone who is struggling with the "ins and outs" of reader's workshop. Whether you are a new teacher or not! Sometimes you just need a change!

My reader's workshop starts at 9:20. We start with our mini lesson. It normally lasts about 15-20 minutes or alittle more if the kids are really into it! :)

So this week we focused on main idea and did my pocket chart mini lesson to introduce main idea on Monday.

After the mini lesson, the students will have "read to self" time for about 10 minutes. This is when I meet with my lowest group. It's quite and the best time to work with him.

At 10:00am it's time to start centers. I continue working with guided reading groups during that time.

Here is how my students know where to go for centers time. Let me explain. 

Here are how my centers work! Some are self explanatory like read to self and buddy reading, but here are pictures of the rest of them.

 Writing Center- students have tons of choices to do during their writing center. poems, stories, lists, etc.

 Listening center- tons of books to choose from! They have a recording sheet to fill out after listening to the book they choose.

 Computer centers- my students love them some abcYA.com. the best website ever!

 classroom library- where they trade out book to put in their book box for read to self.

word work center- this isn't the best picture, but the word work center is to the right in the book shelf but the chairs. I promise to take a better picture soon! Here they have magnetic letters, playdoh, stamps, magic boards, and white boards to practice their spelling words for the week.

I hope this post is helpful for those who are putting their reader's workshop together! If you have any questions please comment or email me at flyinghighinfirstgrade@gmail.com.
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Make sure you go check out all the fun throwback posts over on Cara's blog!

Throw Back Thursday

I am linking up with Cara Carroll again this Thursday for Throw Back Thursday. I am pulling out a fun post on Alitteration and Acrostic Poems. Enjoy! This post is from April 2013. Not a very far throwback, but still a throw back!

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In writing lately we've been working hard on taking a piece of writing through the writing process so I thought it would be fun to take a break from the boring hard stuff and have a little fun this week!

After perusing instagram and my favorite blogs this weekend I decided to do alliterations and acrostic poems. I took the idea from Lindsay over at For The Love of First Grade and ran with it! Turns out she got the idea from Cara Carroll at The First Grade Parade. This is exactly why I love the blogging world! We all can use each others ideas! LOVE IT!

So we are going to spend a few days on both of these topics. We started today with alliterations and just focused on small sentences with 2 words, 1 noun and 1 verb. We used the students names for our nouns. They loved it! Well some of did. Some need some warming up to the idea! Tomorrow we will try doing sentences with 3 words, 1 noun, is, and 1 adjective.

After doing this activity whole group I sent the students off for independent writing time with this sheet for them to record their alliteration. Grab a copy of it below! The document I'm using for acrostic poems on Thursday and Friday is on there too. Enjoy!

Throwback Thursday {writer's workshop}

I am linking up with Cara Carroll and participating in her "Throwback Thursday". Now my throwback isn't a very far throw. Just back to April. But it's a good post that I thought would be good to share as we start thinking about next year and how we want to structure our teaching. So read up on how I do writer's workshop in my classroom!

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As I scrolled through my blog reel today I came across Rachelle Smith's blog "What the Teacher Wants". Everyone knows her! She's amazing. I absolutely love her. Her Holidays Around the World is one of my favorite units. Ok, back to the point of this post. She wrote about her writing conferences and I thought, "ya know, I'm going to write about my writer's workshop too!" It's one of my favorite times of the day!

My district has taken on the workshop model for all of our main subjects; reading, writing, and math. The workshop model is divided into 3 parts: mini lesson, independent learning, and sharing. So my writer's workshop is just that. 15 mini lesson, 30 minutes of independent writing, and 5 minutes of sharing. The 5 minutes of sharing normally is tacked onto the last 5 minutes of the 30 minutes of writing. Sometimes there's just not enough time in the day!

Our mini lessons are pulled from my districts scope and sequence and we also pull alot from Lucy Calkins. If you don't know who she is, google her! Her books are amazing. They are completely scripted for you and the kids seem to love those lessons.

After the mini lesson, I dismiss the students back to their desk for independent writing time. It is completely silent during this time. You may ask, "how do you keep them silent the whole time?" My answer is PRACTICE! We had to start with smaller chunks of writing time and more sharing time. It took till probably Christmas before they were ready to go the full 25-30 minutes. I had to introduce what they can write, where to get their supplies, etc. I will save all of that for another blog post.

I meet with 5 students daily at my round table. They know their day and immediately get their supplies and come to my table. I rotate between students helping them with their stories. I use the following recording sheet to keep track of my students progress. For the column "writing process" I just put what part of the writing process are they in. Of course they are at the conference point, but since they meet me at random times in their stories, I always like to document what part of the writing process they are at. Just print, copy back to back, put into a binder, and voila! You have a writer's workshop conference binder! Click the picture to download.

For sharing time, I use three questions that the writer says after they share their story to get the students listening involved. This way the "chatter" will stay down because everyone is involved; the reader and listeners. The idea comes for Lucy Calkins.

The questions are:
1. What do you remember about my story?
2. Do you have any questions about my story?
3. Do my story remind you of anything?

These questions open up so much dialogue! The one who is sharing also knows to ask "could you write a story about that?" after the "do you have any connections to my story?" That way the asker now has an idea for a new story. It's some powerful stuff!

Here are the posters in PDF form. They are from the amazing Amy Lemons. Click here to check out her blog post on her writer's workshop.

I hope you enjoyed how writer's workshop works in my room. How do you do writing in your classroom?