Daily Five in Grade 2 and 3

Parents: Have heard about the “Daily Five”? We have been working with all parts of the Daily Five for a week or so now. They are Read to Self , Read to Someone, Listen to Reading, Work on Writing and Word Work . The Daily Five is a popular Early Years Literacy Block method that allows the teacher to work with individuals or small groups while the rest of the class works independently on activities that will improve their skills as well. You can read more from the teachers who started Daily Five here.

 Currently we use Raz Kids on the IPads and computers for Listen to Reading but we will also be using TAG pens, MP3 players, and Kindles at this station later in the year. Word Work is a place to the spelling words, right now  all the words start with 'qu". The Work on Writing Station is a journal where they can write about things they do or make up stories.  The Read to Someone station had an exciting addition yesterday, reading text messages on Cell Phone Sliders!

Students choose which station to visit first but we make sure they have been to all five before doing one twice. The board pictured above in our classroom helps keep track, especially when we don't get all five finished in one day and need to carry some over to the next day.


Ask your child about their favourite Daily Five!

Go Noodle!

Our class is currently enjoying a new website called Go Noodle.  This is a free site that gives Brain Break activities between 1 and 5 minutes long that quickly get the class re energized between activities.  We have a mascot, a "classroom champ" who grows a little bit with every 10 break breaks that our class completes. 

Children need to move to learn and I have found just a couple of minutes of movement goes a long way with increased concentration and time on task, especially in the afternoon.   

Some of our favourites so far are yoga- like activities with a character called Massimo and Run Like a Kitty!


The video below is from Ed-Tech Tuesdays for teachers to learn more about Go Noodle and set up their own account.

The Summer Slide!

Today Ms. Simms was telling us about the Summer Slide that teachers talk about.  We thought it was

•  a mountain? a hill?  a roller coaster? a waterslide?

We had no idea what she was talking about!

Then she told us that is really means when kids forget things they learned at school this year over the summer.
Use this link for more information about Summer Slide. 

After all our hard work in Grade 2 and 3 this year, we really don't want to Summer Slide too much!    We thought of a huge list of ideas to keep this from happening.  But don't forget - everyone needs some time to relax, including our teacher!

• go on the internet and go to Mathletics, Happy Numbers, Teach Your Monster to Read, ABC YA, Raz-Kids,  Storybird, Storyline Online, Sand Castle Spelling, and lots more learning websites
• read a book -go to the library, look in your room, trade with a friend, shop yard sales
• practice math facts - flashcards, calculator, card games, dice games, board games
• writing - practice cursive, write and illustrate a book,write a diary, use up old scribblers
• art - drawing, colouring, plasticine or playdough, sidewalk chalk
• science - experiments with ice cubes, plants, balloons, build structures
• social studies - research a special place, read maps
• gym - bike, play tag, swim, mini sticks, skip, soccer, catch, run, exercises, trampoline, swing, baseball, football, volleyball, basketball,treadmill, dance , just dance
• music - karaoke, play instrument, sing, 
• french - read the cereal box, read the French captions on DVD
• agendas - French, trouble words, internet passwords, shapes, math facts
• There are lots more ideas on the internet!  Try Pinterest or a Google Search.

Don't let Summer Slide happen to you!  See you in September!

Storybird

Have you heard about the new website we have been using called Storybird?  We use it during Daily Five time, our part of the day where we work on Reading and Writing.  We use this website during the "Work on Writing" part of the Daily Five.

 

Storybird lets you use their pictures to write a story that goes with it.  The red wavy underline under a word will tell you that you have made a spelling mistake and it will give you some choices of how it should be spelled instead.  You still need to read over your work carefully though because it won't tell you if you are missing words or punctuation or it won't be any help with homonym mistakes or names.

 

Everyone has their own account on Storybird but they can also see stories created by their classmates.  There is a way to see stories from other people as well but we haven't used that part of the site yet.

Once the spelling and other errors are fixed, we will publish our work on the site.  We hope you will try Storybird too!

Storyline Online

Another favourite part of our Daily Five time is when you have the chance to Listen to Reading.  Other times during the year we have used the mp3 players or even the cassette tapes and books that our teacher has from the '90's!  Right now though, when we choose to Listen to Reading, we go to Storyline Online on a desktop computer or a laptop.

We each have our own set of headphones that we can adjust the volume on to make it easy to hear whatever story we choose.

Storyline Online lets you choose to listen to a story read aloud by a famous actor or actress.  They also show you the pictures as you read.  They have 26 books online currently. 

From their website:

Reading to children has been repeatedly shown to improve their reading, writing and communication skills, logical thinking, concentration and general academic aptitude… as well as inspire a love of reading. The Screen Actors Guild Foundation records well-known actors reading children’s books and makes graphically dynamic videos so that children around the world can be read to with just the click of a Storyline Online video book image.
Many teachers play SAG Foundation’s Storyline Online videos for their students. Doctors and nurses play Storyline Online videos for children in hospitals. And parents and children around the world watch Storyline Online videos millions of times every month.

You should try it yourself!

Happy Numbers

We have just started a new Math website called Happy Numbers.  Ms. Simms noticed that teachers on Twitter were talking about the free website that works on number skills and she set up accounts for all of us.

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One of our favourite games is Mini Bomb.  There are different levels of difficulty in this game but students need to answer the Math fact questions before the bomb explodes.  It challenges us to work quickly and use strategies and memories rather than counting to find the answers.

 

Another game is Buy Yourself a Toy where we are given a "wallet" of coins and we need to count them up to find which toy we have enough money to buy.  We have quickly learned that it is easier to start with the largest coin first when we count.

Our teacher thinks that the best part about this website is the way students can work through the standard Math algorithms and receive instant feedback of whether their answer is right or wrong.  Most computer practice doesn't have any place to carry the one as is shown in the picture above.  Ms. Simms overheard one student making an exciting discovery using Happy Numbers - "You can carry a two sometimes too!"
 
Here is another review by a teacher of the Happy Numbers website.  Our user names and passwords are glued into the front of our agenda.  We hope you will try it soon!

Teach Your Monster to Read

We have monsters in our room.  We are teaching them how to read!  

Actually, our teacher found a great website that was suggested by another teacher that she follows on Twitter.  It is called Teach Your Monster to Read. She was able to set up free accounts for each one of us.  First we had to build our monster and then we start exploring the islands.

This is a picture of someone's computer screen who is playing the game.  Their monster is in the middle and the voice on the headphones might say to drag all the sheep to the word "air".  Then the student would have to use  the mouse to move the sheep in a group.

You can keep going through all the islands (because there are 9 islands) and it gets harder the more that you get right. You get prizes for your monster like clothes, food, underwear or a treasure box!  The website is free.  It was created by the Usborne Book Company to help kids learn to read and have fun doing it!  We hope you will teach your monster to read too!

Literacy Center Tickets

When we work on reading and writing in Grade Two and Three, usually we are not all working on the same thing.  We have small groups so the teachers can work with a few kids at a time at their own level.  We did Daily Five for a couple of months in ELA time and also some Literacy Rotations or Stations.  Now we have tickets where we keep track of which center we have been to and which ones we have left to visit.  Everyone has favourites but we know it is important to visit all the centres to practice the skills we need.

Here is our first ticket:

Puppet Pals is an exciting app on our IPads.  Would you like us to blog about it someday?