The Daily Five = Success!

I have been using the daily five in my classroom now for about 3 weeks, and it has been working wonderfully!  I use the following centers:  leer a tu mismo, leer con un companero, escribir, trabajar con palabras, y escuchar a un cuento.  I also have been using the daily five bookmarks (see earlier post) for students to know which three centers they will be working on that day.  I set the timer for 15 or 20 minutes, and they do their assigned center.  When the timer goes off, they know to clean up and switch centers.  They do all of their responses in their daily five journal, which saves a ton of paper since our campus is going green this year.  During this time, I have been able to pull small groups fairly consistently and we are actually getting a lot accomplished.  SUCCESS!!  Don't you love when something is successful after you have put so much time and effort into it?  I am loving the daily five this year thanks to a few tweeks and modifications.  Let's hope it stays this way!

Reading Strategies Bookmark

Well... as you can tell by my lack of posts, things have been a little crazy.  But I'm back!  I am finally ready to start pulling my kids in reading groups next week, so I modified an idea I found on pinterest and created this reading strategies bookmark.  I plan on making 5 or 6 for the kids to use when they are in reading groups with me.  I hope you find it helpful as well!

Reading Strategies Bookmark in Spanish

Read with a partner questions

I'm been working hard this last week to get everything ready for the Daily Five.  I decided that I want the kids to be held accountable for what they are reading, so I created some questions for them to answer with their partner at the "read to someone" station.  You need Avery 8150 labels to print them out on, and I think that they would be great to put on large popsicle sticks.


Read with a partner questions

I did not have popsicle sticks, though, so I decided to be thrifty and use what I already had.  So I put my questions on coffee can lids that I had sitting in my closet at school.

I haven't tried these out with my students yet, but I'm hoping that they will be great for building comprehension!

Daily Five Bookmarks in Spanish

In an earlier post, I mentioned using bookmarks for the daily five.  I finally figured out how to upload the file for them, so here it is!

Daily Five Bookmarks in Spanish

I'm Alive & Daily Five

Whew... I survived the first week back!!  It was a whirlwind of a week that seemed to take an eternity... if that makes any sense?!

Tomorrow, I plan on starting to introduce the daily five to my kids.  I am going to do things somewhat differently this year, which I will get into more later.  For now, I am taking it one day at a time.  Tomorrow, I will be teach the I-PICK lesson where the kids learn how to pick "good fit books".  Since the acronym is in English, it doesn't work in my classroom.  Here is my version of the acronym in Spanish.

Yo Escojo un libro

P- Propósito (porque lo quiero leer)
I- Interes (Me interesa el libro?)
E- Entender (Entiendo lo que estoy leyendo?)
S-Saber (Se la mayoría de las palabras

To teach the lesson, you use shoes to show the students how to pick a book.  Each shoe has a purpose, and the same shoe that fits you might not fit your friend.  We all have different interests, different levels, and different purposes for reading so we need to pick the book that is right for us.  (not necessarily the same one that our friend has!)  This is why I went with the acronym of "PIES"-- it relates to the lesson on choosing a book.

I'm looking forward to teaching this lesson tomorrow & hope that you find this acronym helpful!

1-2-3 Line

Well, I have been MIA for the last week as I have been crazily trying to get my classroom ready for the first day of school.  Whew!!

As the first day of school is approaching, I am thinking about procedures that I want to teach my kiddos.  One that I do is the 1-2-3 line system.  After all the kids are lined up, we do the following:

1-- Hold up a number one and put it over our mouths saying shhhh to remind us to be quiet in the hall.

2-  Hold up a number two and put the fingers on our eyes to remind us to face the front.

3- Hold up both hands with a number three and then put them at our sides to remind us that our hands go at our sides.

I have found that many of the line-up songs are in English and are difficult to translate, so I use this method.  Do you have a line-up song in Spanish that you use?

First Day Activity

I love the scavenger hunt/ bingo idea that many teachers use on the first day of school.  Students walk around and get signatures of friends in different boxes (ex:  find a friend with 2 brothers).  I had thought about doing this with my students, but many of my first grade babies would not be able to read all of the boxes on their own.  I envisioned chaos in my mind, and decided to revise the activity for my class.

What I am going to do instead is to have each box be a letter of the alphabet.  Students will have to walk around getting signatures of friends whose names start with that letter.  They must get a row vertically or a row horizontally to win the game.  If you are a visual person like me, here is a sample of how it will look!

Loteria de nombres

Here's to getting the kids up & moving the first day of school!