Five for Friday Teacher Travels

I am linking up with Five for Friday. Here are five exciting things on my TEACHER TRAVELS...

SECOND GRADE 

One of my second-grade teachers is implementing the Reading Units of Study, at the end of the non-fiction unit of study the classroom held a Topic Museum. The students were excited to become Tour Guide experts.

               Below shows some of the steps the children took, to get ready for the BIG day.

Now that the second graders have become experts about non-fiction topics, they are prepared to share  their learning with first-grade classrooms.  

 The got special hats. 

 They made special signs for their stations.  They used post-its to mark important facts in their books to share. They practiced reading with VOICE. They learned to present their information using different voices for different facts. They worked in partnerships. 

                                                       

They wore TOUR GUIDE labels. 

KINDERGARTEN

A kindergarten class learned about reading mats. This is an excellent way to build reading stamina.

A wonderful reading intervention teacher in my building made these simple books for her students.

She has one student who was struggling to learn her letters. At first, she was playing games using magnetic letters and the child would get frustrated. The teacher decided to read simple pattern text and then created these little word books. The child was able to choose what to put on the different pages of the book and take part in the illustrations. PRESTO... she started to learn the letters.  These books were added to the child's book bucket.

In the picture above the teacher wrote the word, but now, she is having the child take part in the writing too.

In a kindergarten classroom, we are working on having students take part in creating the anchor chart. We wrote a few words together today. When students take part in creating the charts, they become more meaningful, and kids are more invested.

I have been learning how to take part in Twitter Chats. Last night, I participated in a chat with Majorie Martinelli, who wrote the book Chart Chums. I love her advice below about making charts.

A3 Customize the charts by reducing the # of bullets to 3 key strategies then lots of repeated practice #tcrwp @eriuqse695 @Marjorie_Writes

— Marjorie Martinelli (@Marjorie_Writes) February 4, 2016

Joyfully yours in five more school days until February vacation,
Melissa