Easy Center Differentiation for Reading and Math Workshop

Hey, friends! I hope everyone enjoyed taking a peek into the classrooms of all the Georgia Peaches in September. You must keep checking back with us in October, we have some awesome things planned!

But I am here today from my blog A Primary Owl to show you how I differentiate during my Reading and Math Workshop time. Hopefully you can get a few ideas to help with your Reading and Math Workshop rotations.

I have one big rotation board on my metal cabinet that looks like this:

I move my groups up through the different stations. One thing I find that my students want is a choice to Read with a Partner OR Read to Self. So I put those two choices together. Then I make Word Work one choice. Then I have Writing and Listen to Reading together.

Notice, one BIG thing....I am no where in this rotation. I realized I needed more flexibility to work with the students I needed to meet with. One day, I may conference with individuals on CAFE goals, some days I meet with Literature Circles. Either way, I don't mess up their rotations and being able to go to every center.

I do the same thing with my Math Workshop Centers.

Now for the differentiation of my centers! So I differentiate all my activities by color, which really is not a new idea at all. The thing that makes my centers unique is STUDENT CHOICE. All of students know that the pink will be the "easier" activity, green will be the "average" (or we say medium to make it kid friendly) and the blue is the "challenge" activity. Often I might say I need everyone to complete the green activity before making another choice. After that they can make choices in their own learning. I change out my activities as our skills change.

I even have a Morning Work board called Jump Start. Students can choose a Jump Start activity after they finish their morning work and they are also color-coded in the same way.

Thanks for stopping by! 

Don't forget to come back often in October.....you'll be so glad you did! 

Deanna

Workshop Wednesday: Finding Evidence with a {FREEBIE!}

Happy FALL, y'all! Jivey here!

It has been a hot minute since I blogged here at the Primary Peach!

I'm bringing you some Workshop Wednesday love... Primary Peach authors focus on reading and writing workshop on Wednesdays... but if you know me, you know I LOVE some content integration. If I can weave in some science or social studies too, I will! So I've got a reading/social studies lesson to share with you today!

4th grade teachers in Georgia, I know you are (or will be) teaching all about explorers. I've got a great freebie for you! And even if you are not a Fourth Grade Peach or don't teach about explorers, you might be talking about Christopher Columbus soon with his holiday coming up.

One thing students seem to struggle with is going back into the text to find evidence. Sometimes it's because we don't give them enough practice... and let's face it, sometimes it's because they are lazy. LOL! It is important to scaffold when teaching this skill until they really get the hang of it. (Do it with them, provide graphic organizers, etc.) In this Columbus activity, students will read about Christopher Columbus and then go back into the text to find evidence to show his years of exploration, reasons he explored, obstacles he encountered, accomplishments, and the country that sponsored his voyage.

(If you are wondering about the colorful notations, check this post out on my blog about interactive notetaking!)

Keep these tips in mind as you guide students to find evidence in a text!

1. Some of the evidence will come from multiple paragraphs, so showing them that they have to continually read and re-read and KEEP reading is important to help students find evidence!

2. Give students the reason or purpose they need to look back at the text (questions or graphic organizers).

3. Show students how to pay attention to key words, such as "difficult" when looking for obstacles.

4. Talk through it TOGETHER. Students need to understand the thinking process for when it's time to do it on their own.

5. Did I mention re-reading??


If you do teach about explorers, I have a whole pack with articles and graphic organizers just like this one, plus other activities! You can check that out here.

Thanks for visiting today! For even more ideas from The Primary Peach, be sure to follow us on Instagram, Pinterest, and Facebook to catch all the latest news and updates!

Workshop Wednesday - Talk Back to Books

Howdy y'all,
It's Gary from ScrappyGuy Designs.

Time certainly does fly when you are on Summer Break.  My responsibilities for the new school year will begin THIS FRIDAY! Our grade level is meeting for some planning time before we go back to Preplanning on Monday. I tried and tried and tried to convince my team to meet at the beach, but they weren't biting.

As I get ready to head back I'm thinking about how different this year is going to be especially since my BBB Jessica Ivey, more affectionately known as Jivey, will not be amongst us. She is going whole hog on this TpT thing and I wish her all the luck in the world. To pay homage to her greatness I'm stealing an idea she's posted on her blog before to share with you. Here's her post:

Jivey Talks Back to Books

Here's a picture of these great Talk Back to Books bookmarks that I use every year with  my students.

You can pick this up here.

I print these out on heavy cardstock and then cut apart to give to each student. I have them all come to group and read aloud a favorite book such as Clark the Shark. I hand out sticky notes after I read a few pages and ask them to fill it out this way:

Name Date Time
T - Title of book
A - Author of book
G - Genre of book

Then I pose a question for them to respond to on their sticky notes. Since the first question on the Talk Back to Books is "I'm thinking..." I usually go with that one. Students can write about the thoughts the book has already provoked for them.

I have them write at least two more stickies about the book (their choice) by the time we finish the read aloud. Then they take all three of the stickies and turn them into a Response on the book overall. This is a short one at the beginning of the year, usually just a paragraph. But I ask that they mention the three ideas they thought about while we were reading.

As we do more and more of these interactions the students will hopefully begin to internalize these questions and work them into their responses throughout the year.

This bookmark is a win-win in my eyes. I get to gauge what they are capable of in their writing and they get to learn the basics of a good response and how to think about books as they read.

I hope you find this useful!

Back to School: Read Alouds

Hey Friends! It's Theresa here from True Life I'm a Teacher! Here in my part of Georgia teachers go back to school on July 27th, and my sweet seconds will be coming on August 3rd! Ready or not?!?!

The first week of school is a time of routines, procedures, expectations, relationship and community building, and sometimes feels like herding about 300 wet cats. One of my favorite things to incorporate are LOTS of read alouds that lend themselves to having conversations about rules and expectations, and how we should treat one another.

Perhaps my favorite thing about these books is that it's almost as if the characters in the books become part of our class. We think back to what Alexander did when he was having a terrible day, or how Albert kept trying, and thinking, and reading to learn and discover new things. We refer back to the characters throughout the year when students in our class face problems and challenges in real life.

Below you'll find my 26 (because 25 would be silly, right?) favorite back to school read alouds! Since I've included a bunch of books, I'm not actually writing about any of them...just giving you some ideas for books I personally LOVE!

Each picture links to Amazon just to make it easy - you can read reviews, a summary, and order should you choose! You can find the entire list HERE!

You made it to the end! I sure do hope you found a new book you'd like to read this year (and maybe not even at the beginning of the year)!

One of the books I mentioned above is "On a Beam of Light" which tells the story of Albert Einstein. I actually just discovered this book a few weeks ago, and pretty much fell in love...with a book. Surely, I'm not the only one this happens to?

Anyway, throughout the book there are several words that just "spoke to me" - made me want to yell, "YES!" The words serve as motivational reminders for students, teachers...anyone really, and I knew I had to have them represented in my classroom! Below you'll find a printable of the words. You can grab it here, or by clicking on the picture below! Enjoy :)

Want to save the list for later? Just pin the image below!

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Workshop Wednesday

Hey, y'all! Jivey here!

I thought it would be VERY appropriate to post for Workshop Wednesday because, way back in the day (okay, last year...) I was the original Workshop Wednesday Girl! Check out some old posts here if you are interested!

Today, I am going to share with you what I have found to be the BEST way to teach grammar and writing... and I'm going to focus on lower grades (1st and 2nd grades). Make sure to hang in til the end of the post to grab a freebie and find out about an exciting opportunity! If you are interested in upper grades, there's plenty of info you can read here!

Mentor Sentences are THE BEST way I've found to teach grammar and writing. The idea is: students are exposed students to well-written sentences from quality texts that will help them become better writers and have a greater understanding of how the parts of speech work together.

First and second graders can absolutely benefit from mentor sentences, just as the kiddos in upper grades can! It might take a little longer for students to understand the routine than upper grade students, but just like with anything else, consistency is key!

Here is the schedule for the way I use mentor sentences in the classroom:

Here is a sentence from my first unit of mentor sentences for second graders:

Depending on your students, you might do all of this together just on chart paper, or you might have the students copy/write in a notebook, too. The things we hope for students to notice during Monday's "Invitation to Notice" in the lower grades are going to be different than upper grades- they are going to be more basic. This sentence includes proper nouns, which will be the focus of the week's lessons, so it will be important to talk about why there are capital letters at the start of names.

On Tuesday, the "Invitation to Notice Parts of Speech" will definitely look very different from the upper grades, especially in the beginning of the year. I have still included the list of all the parts of speech on the lesson suggestions page for your own information and in case you have some higher level kids that are ready to go more in depth...

But, I would focus more on the part of speech skill for that week- maybe labeling just those in the sentence, or making a t-chart, like this:

Having a discussion about just the proper and common nouns in the sentence would be a great lead to a lesson where they find their own proper and common nouns in their books! You could even have them write those nouns on sticky notes and put them onto your t-chart you've created!

On Wednesday, for "Invitation to Revise" it would be a good idea to help guide the students in how to revise a sentence. One of the skills required by common core is to expand simple and compound sentences. One way to do this is to add adjectives before nouns. Giving them the sentence with blanks in front of the nouns so that students can brainstorm and help you revise the sentence first is a great way to get them thinking before they try to revise the sentence on their own.

Thursday's "Invitation to Imitate" will be the hardest part for most of the lower grades students to grasp at first, but it will be the most important for students' writing progress! Don't give up- it will come! I would suggest giving them a sentence frame, almost like a MadLib:

You can have students brainstorm with you, or you can have them try on their own after you walk them through a think-aloud of your own sentence. You should use your own judgment based on what your students are ready to do.

I like to keep all of my weekly invitations up each day so the students can be reminded of the focus and see our progress. Also, because the week's focus is proper nouns, I would point them out when I see them in reading, as well as do some short lessons on proper nouns throughout the week during writing/grammar time.

On Friday, I would remove the chart and sentence from the students' view so they can't just copy on the "Invitation to Edit" quiz. In the lower grades quizzes I've made, I have included handwriting lines to encourage proper letter formation when the students re-write the sentence properly. The quiz will assess the skill that you've focused on all week. To give you an idea, here is the answer key to the weekly quiz that goes with the lesson I've shown you:

I hope this helps you understand how to use mentor sentences in second grade, and even first grade in the second half of the year! If you want to try them in your classroom, you can get a freebie here!

You can also get the first set here, perfect for the beginning of the school year:

You can see other mentor sentences that can be used for the lower grades by clicking here. You can also see a video of mentor sentences in action in a FIRST GRADE classroom (for the first time, too!) below:

And if you want to hear all about it IN PERSON, I am delivering professional development workshops this summer that you can attend! They are at Gwinnett Technical College in Lawrenceville, Georgia, so I know that might not be ideal for some of you... but I know there are some Georgia Peaches that read the Primary Peach so I wanted to make sure to share with you! If you'd like to find out more information, click here!

Please let me know if you have any other questions! I love to hear how they are working in your classroom, too! :o)