Still Here! Read on for a Freebie!

Oh no! It's been a week of no blogging! I'm not neglecting my blog, I swear! This past week and this current week have been crazy. Last week was a short week with Friday off for professional development. Sat through a whole day training on how to use EnVision Math with the common core standards. Fun, fun. At least the food we got for lunch was good!

This week we have three days designated for the "as needed" conferences. So, time to prepare for those!

I'm currently working on fully implementing Daily Five into the classroom. We pretty much have Read to Self and Read to Someone down. Now to combine the two and continue introducing the other things. Today, I divided the class in half and half did Read to Self while the other half did Read to Someone. We did that for ten minutes and then I introduced a part of "Work on Writing"...sticker stories!

I learned about sticker stories last year from a parent who is also a credentialed teacher. The kids really loved it and I thought it would be a perfect activity for the kids to do when they are doing "Work on Writing". The kids really enjoyed this and they all got really creative in their work, especially in the scenes they created with their stickers. Unfortunately, I don't have any pictures of their work right now. But I will be sure to post some soon (next entry, maybe?)!

Tomorrow, I will introduce "Listening to Reading" to the kids. I have three personal cassette players and two personal cd players thanks to the generous donations from my parents. My eventual plan for Daily five is to have my students go through the rotations in their table groups. I have six table groups of 4 each. With such a small number in each group I thought it would be better to have the kids have their own player to use. I'm not sure how many of my kids actually know how to use a cd or cassette player given that technology has now updated to mp3 players and ipads. I searched around pinterest for directions on how to use these equipments but all the ones I found were with color-coded stickers on the buttons. I didn't want to do that because: 1) The buttons are way too tiny for stickers, 2) I think the kids should learn what those icons mean since they will see them with other things they may use. So, of course, I created my own. :)

Click on the images to see and download them. 

These can also be used for your listening center and you use any of these equipment. Of course the icons might be a little different from the equipment you use so if you need some things changed, feel free to leave a comment requesting it. Please also include the name of your equipment so that I can look it up and hopefully see what the icons on the buttons look on. 

Hopefully you like and find this useful! I'm also currently working on an animal research packet. Hopefully I will get it done within the next week or two. :X

Cheers! :)