In my last post I promised that I would share what we did during our first week of school and I just realized that it has already been two weeks since then, SO, today I'll share with you what we have done during the first three weeks of school :)
Student Interest Survey & Faces of Fifth Grade
Ms. Leslie Ann over at Life In Fifth Grade is one of my favorite Fifth Grade bloggers and she has some really fabulous free activities for the first week of school. This year I used her Student Interest Survey to get to know my kids a little bit better and to help me figure out what kind of things they are interested in. I also had them do her Faces of Fifth Grade activity so that I would have something to post outside our classroom for Back to School Night.
Disclaimer: Some of my boys did not want to draw a self-portrait so I ended up with a few that looked like this:
Friends and Family Board
As I mentioned in my last post, my school has adopted Conscious Discipline this year and one of the things that our trainer suggested was to have a "Friends and Family Board" in each classroom. She said that it would be a great way for students to be reminded of the people who love and care about them while they are away at school and would help foster a stronger family-school connection. I decided to give it a shot and have been loving the results.
Almost every day someone brings in a photo to add to the board during our meeting at the beginning of class. I have found that it's a quick and easy way to get to know each of my kids better! We ask the presenter of each picture to tell us a little bit about the people in the photograph and when/where it was taken and we learn a lot about each other that way.
When I brought my photo in, I told them all of my siblings' names and now, when I share a story in writing about my older brother picking on me or some other childhood memory, someone will raise their hand and say, "Why did Michael do that?!". It cracks me up!
Independent Reading Time
You might think that by the time kids are in Fifth Grade they are able to pick up a book that they are interested in, sit down, and just read for an extended period of time. While this is a skill that they have been working on for YEARS, it's something I have always found that I have to reteach, model, and practice, practice, practice at the beginning of every school year.
After explaining how important it is for them to work quietly while I pull students for testing, conferring, and/or small group meetings, we talked about what the expectations are during "Read to Self" time. I made them repeat these expectations to my every DAY for the first two weeks of school before we started reading and by the end of that time I had them reading for 30+ minutes without a sound in the classroom.
Because Fifth Graders love competition (at least mine do!) I talked to them about building our reading stamina as a class and made a chart of their growing stamina beside the chart for my other Language Arts class. Every day, after reviewing the expectations, I set a timer for a few minutes longer than the day before and reminded them that if anyone interrupted our reading time or stopped reading to look around or draw or whatever, that I would have to stop the timer and that would be the time that we would put on our stamina chart for the day. No one wanted to be the one that ruined it for the whole class, so this worked out very nicely. We started with 15 min and worked our way up to our goal of 30 minutes. Once we reached our goal, I started allowing them to sit on the floor, under their desks, or wherever they wanted as long as they continued to meet the expectations on our chart.
Homework
In the past, I have required my students to read for 30 minutes, five days a week and to keep a reading log and write one reader's response per week (confusing...I know). This year I decided to try to make my life a little bit easier. I'm having them read for 30 minutes still but they only have to record it on their reading logs Monday through Thursday. (I can't tell you how many of them, in the past, would be filling their reading logs out all week and then "lose" them over the weekend and get no credit). Here's what my Reading Log looks like now:
For writing, I'm having them choose a prompt from the "menu" each week to write about the book that they are reading at the time. This "menu" will last them nine weeks since there are nine prompts and each time that they complete one they have to cross it off and can't do that one again.
Of course it hasn't all been fun and games these first few weeks! The kids have had to take their beginning of year Math and Science assessments and I've had them doing beginning of year writing samples, DRAs, DSAs, and PALS to determine their independent reading, writing, and spelling levels. I (and they) can't wait until all of this testing is over and we can really get down to business. (I am going to need a separate post to complain explain how I am staying organized and on top of all these different assessments that we are supposed to be administering this year.
