{Data Tracking}

Hey y'all! Head on over to The Elementary Entourage to see my post on how to track student data and set goals. You will see some of my favorite tracking pieces as a freebie in my store. I am sure you will love this series with our group over there!

{Back to School Bash! 9/1/15}

Welcome back, y'all! Can you believe it is September already? For most of you, school has been in session for at least one week. For me, I am going on week 7...that's right! In order to help you ease back into the swing of things, my friends at the Elementary Entourage and I have put together a Back to School Bash for you. What does that mean? That means you can visit us today for some amazing lessons, tips, ideas, and freebies...yes I said freebies!!

The number one tip I have for you is to get organized as quickly as possible. I picked up a planning set from A Modern Teacher this year instead of purchasing another EC Planner. While I loved my EC planner dearly, I needed more flexibility with my planning. With the new planner, I can pick and choose the sections I need for my binder in addition to creating multiple binders.

While this planner comes with editable templates for the inside, I have always designed my own. I love me a two page spread with plenty of room for notes throughout the week. :)

Build relationships with your students quickly. All too often we are the only ones in our students' life that shows them the compassion they so deserve. While setting your classroom expectations high at the beginning of the year, do not forget to leave room for lovin'. Yes, I am a very nurturing teacher. Yes, I tell my students I love them. Yes, I hug and tickle them when they need it. The feeling is mutual and I would not have it any other way.

Listen. Listen to your students. Listen to your team. Being a good listener means you take the time to hear what others have to say and consider their thoughts and feelings. The benefits of listening before acting are endless. Listen to your students ... they will reveal their inner most needs and wants.

Tip #4 includes a freebie! Please please please foster good reading habits from Day one. If you haven't done so already, start planning to meet with your little ones to read as much as possible. Create bags of books, and make your classroom library accessible to your students. The only way to create a literate generation is to allow them to read whenever possible. These bookmarks can be used in guided reading or during independent reading. The space is large enough to display two-three lines of text to encourage students to look ahead during their reading. Click on the image below to snag your freebie. :)

An InLinkz Link-up

Reading Workshop: Unit 8 {Readers CanRead About Science & Become Experts}

Welcome back for our last installment in our summer reading series: Reading Workshop? No Problem! I hope you have enjoyed this book study as much as I have!! We have seen a barrage of strategies presented on my friends' pages. I highly recommend you purchase the book from our study, or read it for yourself using the LiveBinder site I posted at the beginning of this book study {link the the first post at the bottom of this post}. We really have only skimmed the surface on each of the topics presented in this study. Remember, the ideas presented in this study are designed to work with your current curriculum plan or designed to help you plan out a curriculum plan from scratch. You can navigate through the book study on your own as a quick reference or a go to for strategies throughout your teaching year. The possibilities are endless! Enough chat...on to our last unit. I know you will love it as much as me!

One of my biggest struggles as an educator is teaching students how to read informational text. Since reading and writing go hand in hand, it only makes sense that I also struggle with teaching students how to write expository/informational pieces. It can be difficult to see the importance of writing about the nonfiction texts we are reading, or writing using similar structures found in informational texts. One thing I learned in order to bridge the gap between writing and reading nonfiction, specifically science related, is to make the work collaborative.

We have all heard the saying: Teamwork is the Dreamwork. The same applies and is even more true when it comes to teaching our young ones to become science experts. It has been my experience that students at this level have an innate desire to help others. Calkins stresses the importance of collaboration throughout this unit. She suggest using book clubs in order to reinforce the concepts learned in this unit.

Calkins recommends beginning the unit with Forces of Motion to allow for a range of learners to become involved. Collecting small text sets of books on each topic and categorizing them by both level of difficulty and subtopics will help keep your unit organized and help keep students interested. Remember, reading informational texts is different and has varied text organization across the genre; therefore, students will need help pulling apart important information and applying their knowledge with hands-on activities. This is where you want students to explore and show what they know through experimentation, questioning, and research.

Children naturally want to explore and try new things...test the waters if you will. As children explore science topics in your unit, encourage them to collect materials through their research. Calkins reminds us that our whole group read alouds in this unit need to teach the big concepts and specific vocabulary in order to set the stage for individual inquiry. You must lay that foundation in order for your students to branch out on their own! Lessons in this unit should be as interactive as possible in order to hold interest. Use video clips, YouTube, and BrainPop to support your lessons and incorporate those technology standards!! When using videos, don't forget to pause just like you would in a text to reflect, talk, draw diagrams, retell, etc.

In Part One of the unit, Calkins reminds us of the importance of building base knowledge. Do this by reviewing nonfiction reading strategies, text structure, and how to research a topic. Model how to chunk text and use subheadings in order to determine the main idea and what the author is trying to teach the reader. Calkins mentions more than once the importance of our students sounding like experts. This is done through teaching appropriate vocabulary! Break out those word books, construct a word wall, design some word chains...whatever works! No more word substitutions...students need to use content and academic vocabulary in their everyday conversations. They need to look and sound like science experts.

Part Two of the unit focuses on how to compare and contrast texts on the same science topic. Calkins suggests placing books side by side and allowing your little experts to discuss the similarities and differences between the covers, illustrations, and overall text structure. How are the main topics the same and different? How did the author organize this text? How does is help you better understand how a pulley works (for example)?

In Part Three, Calkins examines the importance of students to learn by asking questions. This is where you teach the scientific method and how to increase wonder through questioning. Use post-its to jot down wonder statements and reflect on reading. Providing students with sentence starters for creating a  hypothesis will help them grow as science experts in their reading. In addition, reading historical fiction will demonstrate how famous scientists questioned and created hypotheses.

When you read this book, you get an abundance of reading and teaching strategies to help your teaching and your little learners. At the end of each unit, Lucy provides us with teaching points, including some dialogue we could have with our students. I recommend printing these out and keeping them handy. They really are a great synopsis of the main points in each unit.

I really hope you enjoyed our summer book study! Please remember to leave some love on our blogs and refer back to these posts as you need some help or reminders.


Use the links below to catch-up on our book study:

Click this button to be taken to last week's post

Click here to be taken back to the first post in our series.

Reading Workshop: Overview & Unit One {Taking Charge of Reading}

{Click on the image above to be taken to the first post in the book study}

Hey y'all! Welcome to the first installment of Mrs. Felts & Friends' Reading Workshop? No Problem! Summer Book Study! Like many teachers out there, I struggle the most with making my reading block run effectively and efficiently. I want my little sweeties to get the most out of their time just like I want to get the most out of mine. As a year round school teacher, I am pressed for time, especially in the summer. All these great ideas and changes for the better for next year are always put into hyper speed as I plan for students on July 20th. Therefore, I thought the best thing I could do is to read up on a text that goes right along with my district's writing curriculum. I am sure you have heard of it: Lucy Calkins' Units of Study. The book we will be talking about over the next few weeks is entitled A Curricular Plan for The Reading Workshop: Grade 2. You can follow along by downloading a copy from this LiveBinder. A few things first:

1. This book study will be fast! We will have two posts per week and cover this book at lightning speed that way everyone can take advantage of all the tips and tricks for the new year. This is especially useful for those teachers heading back early August, or even in July like me.
2. You can always click on the header image above on any of the participating blogger teachers' pages to be taken back to this first post in the series.
3. A button linking to the next post will be placed at the bottom of each post and will be captioned with a date on when that post will come available.
4. All comments are welcomed and encouraged!
5. We may offer products or links to ideas along the way, so definitely read the whole post each time!

Here is our schedule for this book study so you do not miss a thing:

1. 6/22 - Overview & Unit One
2. 6/26 - Unit 2
3. 6/29 - Unit 3
4. 7/3 - Unit 4
5. 7/6 - Unit 5
6. 7/10 - Unit 6
7. 7/13 - Unit 7
8. 7/17 - Unit 8 & Conclusion

If you are planning a vacation, no worries! We will be right here when you get back. Now for the stuff you've been waiting for:

What an easy and enjoyable read! The overview began with an outline of how to roll out the units in your classroom. This was especially helpful for me, even though I had to modify it to meet the needs of a year round schedule. As you can see below, this makes tackling the units and integrating the ideas into your pacing guide so much easier! And did I mention this book is aligned to the CCSS? Oh yeah! [insert fist pump!]

The overview gives some much needed background information about why we do Reading Workshop. To say we do it for the students is simply brushing the surface. Calkins reminds us the importance of collecting data on our students as soon as possible and how it is not uncommon for one teacher to juggle first, second, and third grade curriculum simultaneously in their reading instruction. The goal explicitly expressed in the overview is to come away with a curricular calendar of your own at the end of the book. We will make sure you see some of our calendars at the end of this book study.

The overview further goes on to explain the importance of the minilesson as part of the reading workshop. "Students should be taught all about ways of working with partners, how to organize a reading life, tackling tricky words, monitoring for sense, using fix-up strategies when sense falls apart, jotting in response to reading, and so forth." The minilesson is designed to set the stage for the day, focusing on a given skill - not a set of work assignments that changes daily. We all know that stamina is difficult to achieve, but by the time we get our second graders, they should be able to read independently for at least 30 minutes. If not, Calkins stresses the importance of building and tracking that stamina daily. SET GOALS!

The overview closes out with an explanation of balanced literacy and what that should look like in a given classroom. "One cannot stress enough the importance of reading aloud," Calkins explains. This sounds like a no-brainer, but would you believe that some individuals think it is not as crucial? The read aloud is a time for students to hear correct fluency, phrasing, and intonation {and so much more}. The read aloud paired with shared reading, word study, small group instruction, and assessment make for balanced literacy instruction.

Unit One is all about independence and getting books in those hands as fast as possible. It is easy to get caught up in the classroom management side of things at the beginning of the year. One of the most important things I took away from this unit was to look at students' previous data and have book bags or bins ready for them on DAY ONE! This is something totally doable. Ideally, you want students to read during the summer with some paper books sent home on their independent reading level from first grade. With PLCs in place across many states, bags of books should be easily accomplished when planning with other grade levels.

Students need to be reminded to make smart choices with their reading when they enter your classroom that first week. Teach them how to use sticky notes to mark important parts, funny parts, questions they may have during reading. Comprehension that Sticks is a great pack to help with this. Understanding how long it should take a student to read a book can give you a good idea on your class' stamina at the beginning of the year, and help gauge what type of just-right books they should have in their hands.

One of the biggest Ah-Ha moments I had while reading this unit was when Calkins said "remind children not to point at each word as they read." I will be the first to admit I tell students to read out loud and point to each word. DOH! It is my mission to rectify this for next year, and I may use some of these to help students track....or make my own. ;)

Unit One goes on to explain the importance of reading as thinkers by asking questions before, during, and after. This is something students can forget easily, and we need to help them remember its importance as soon as possible. As students grow that first week with you, allow them to read with partners and discuss text openly in whole group, small group, and partnered settings. Allow them time to write down their questions and observations when reading and listening to reading. Develop or remind them of the excitement found in a book and how rewarding reading really is.

I hope you enjoyed reading this section of the book. I cannot wait to begin the next section. Read up and check out Lupe at Kindergarten Common Core on Friday for Unit 2 in our series.

{Click on Lupe's button to be taken to Unit 2 in the book study}

A Book Study You Don't Want to Miss

Are you looking for more in your reading block? Are you new to second grade and just need some guidance on how to get the ball rolling? Or are you just looking to change some things for your own sanity? Well I have teamed up with some amazing teacher authors to bring a great book study your way.

We are reading the book "A Curricular Plan for the Reading Workshop: 2nd Grade" by Lucy Calkins and Colleagues. This book is an easy read and is sure to give us some useful tips and tricks to make our reading workshop model run smoothly next year. Whether you follow a true reading workshop model, or a mix of reading workshop and Daily 5, you are sure to take away something that will help you in this coming school year.

Come back tomorrow to read all about the first unit in this book: Taking Charge of Reading. Download the book from this LiveBinder site and get your highlighters and notebooks ready! Click on 2nd grade then click Lucy Calkins Readers Workshop Curricular Planning Guide to read the book through the LiveBinder site.

{Wordless Wednesday 4.29.15}

Hey y'all. Sorry it has been so long. Those of you that follow me on Facebook know that I am currently in competition prep. In addition, it is the end of the year so everything is being slammed in on the classroom side of things.

Today, for Wordless Wednesday I ask you...how do you teach vocabulary and text evidence? We tried this and the kiddos really got it!!

{January Pinterest Pick 3 Linky!}

{Click image above for a direct link to the Linky Party}

I am so excited to be a part of my first Pinterest link up. We all are always looking for inspiration for the things we have coming up in our classrooms. If you are like me, much of this inspiration comes from blog hopping and, of course, Pinteresting. (maybe this will become a word added to the Merriam-Webster dictionary...random thought for today)

Read below to find out three of my favorite pins for January. Click the images to be taken to the original pin! :)

If you are like me, you try to get in everything in any given minute in your classroom. I decided this year to bring in holidays and themed activities into my small group activities. This allows me to still do major concepts whole group, but to still introduce the fun stuff during our guided reading meeting times. This pin allows me to bring in close reads for MLK Jr day. Because we are a year-round school, we do not go back until the 12th. Therefore, we will be jumping right into learning about Martin Luther King, Jr. This is a perfect way to do just that!

{Click image to go to the original Pinterest Pin}

Up next... math!

Again, I try to keep things simple while still getting the most bang for my buck in the time department. These math pages do just that! Use these for math warm ups or for Seatwork as part of your daily math rotations. GENIUS!

{Click image to go to the original Pinterest Pin}

On to...New Year's Resolutions!

Last year was my first year in second grade, and I wanted to teach my sweeties about New Year's Resolutions. This proved to be harder than I thought. This next pin really helps bring things down to their level. I'll admit...it is a two for one kind of pin. :)  Use the book to introduce the concept and then drive it home with the fun tab book. Seems like it is easy prep work and a fun way to get our little sweeties engaged.

{Click image to go to the original Pinterest Pin}

{Click image to go to the original Pinterest Pin}

Follow Me and The Elementary Entourage on Pinterest for ideas and quick links to our newest products. Don't forget to check out my product pins on Snow Much Writing for January and my READING stations and SMARTIES math stations for creating and maintaining rotations in your classroom!

An InLinkz Link-up

Wordless Wednesday {12.17.14}

{click on the picture above for a direct link}

I told you I was on top of things this week! Look at me getting on my exercising in, all my planning, all my products, and all my DIYing. I must be excited about my upcoming three weeks off. Gotta love that year-round schedule! :)

What do you do to increase and reinforce comprehension skills during the holidays? What do you do to relieve stress on the weekends?

Unwrap A Gift! A Linky Party!

 

{Click the picture above to be taken directly to the Linky Party!}

So I am sure as it nears Christmas you are sitting there on your couch with your eyes glassed over wondering how you will muster up enough energy to make it through the next two weeks of school before Christmas break. Am I right? Well if it is only me that feels this way I do apologize. Hehe!

As y'all know, I have recently started this little blogging journey and I am still getting the consistency down. I get better by the day and I am starting to get the hang of making products for TPT. So I have put together a little gift for you today that will help make the next two weeks a little easier.

Anything I can use in my small groups is a plus! I know many of you are looking for ways to simplify your planning for small groups. These pages may be just what you are looking for.

First, I need a schedule. I don't know about you, but I need to know who I am working with and what we will be focused on for the week. This sheet is a life saver at my table. Simple checkboxes and one or two words to describe what we are focused on. I meet with groups that are focused on similar skills and strategies to make planning easier.

This detailed lesson plan template comes in handy while I am meeting with those small groups. I can take notes, jot down any interventions, and plan out what I need to work on with certain students during our next meeting. Don't forget that academic vocabulary!!!

Pulling and tracking data is easy peasy with this progress monitoring sheet (technology is not nice to me right now...head over to the TPT store to get the freebie that is NOT digitized). I keep one of these for each student in a binder for both my READING and SMARTIES stations. I can monitor standards mastery with ease!

 And who doesn't love a good To-Do list??? Use this to make sure you have all your copies and resources in check for the week.

For this sweet little freebie, head on over to my TPT store and download. Happy Holidays y'all!!!

{Click the picture above to be taken directly to TPT to download the file}