Student engagement

Welcome Back!!!

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by C. Elkins, OK Math and Reading Lady

Welcome Back! Here are a few links to some of my previous posts regarding teamwork, student engagement, literacy and math. You might be interested in these to help start your journey this year.  And in case you didn’t see it, I have an easy link to most of my own free resources. Click here to get it now, but it is also available in the black bar above. Have a great start to your year and Enjoy!!!  Please invite some of your new teachers to check out my blog! Also check the categories list on the website (side bar if using a monitor, bottom of the webpage if using a phone). The search bar might also help you with what you are looking for. Have a great start to your year!!

  1. Getting to know you literature connection and math activity
  2. Building a classroom community (includes link to great team building practices)
  3. Writing part 1
  4. Guided Reading Part 1: Getting Started
  5. Guided Reading Part 2: Routines and Procedures
  6. Meaningful Student Engagement: Whole Class Reading
  7. Daily Math Meeting Part 1: Building Number Sense
  8. Daily Math Meeting Part 2: Subitizing
  9. Addition and Subtraction Part 1: Numerical Fluency
  10. Addition and Subtraction Part 3: Facts Strategies
  11. Multiplication Strategies Part 1
  12. Fractions Part 1: The basics

Some other tips to get prepared for your literacy lessons:

  • Organize your classroom books. Small tubs that can be brought to desk pods is helpful. Labels such as these help get the books returned to the right tub:  animals, friends, plants, weather, Clifford, by author, etc.  Think about a gradual release of your reading materials so students aren’t overwhelmed at the beginning of the year.  This way you can go over procedures for book selection, silent reading, how to treat books, etc. When I was in the classroom, I selected 5 tubs to put out onto desk pods each week (1 tub per pod). These were rotated daily.  The tubs were selected based on developmental level and theme. At the beginning of the year the tubs might be: friends, school, alphabet, problem solving, etc. Students could select from the tub at their pod during the day instead of everyone gathering at the bookshelf. Each student made a bookmark with their name on it (which I laminated).  They could put their book mark in it to signal to others in their group that they wanted to continue with that book later in the day. Each group had a “captain” for the week and they were in charge of making sure the books were in good order.
  • Plan for your word wall. I recommend building the word wall as the year goes along, with the children involved in placing words there (rather than coming in with a complete “busy” word wall).
  • Make a pledge to keep your guided reading table cleared and ready. Do you have these materials handy? Small whiteboards, markers, erasers, pencils, letter tiles or magnetic letters, sight word cards, pointers, small magnifying glasses, post-it notes, laminated graphic organizers, small teaching reference charts . . .
  • Literacy activities for students to do while you are assessing.  Get out those task cards for students to review skills from last year so you can do your required assessments. Try to include a running record if possible to help determine each child’s strategies. Procedures for the activities will be important to establish so that by your sixth week of school you will be ready to start guided reading.

General welcome back tips:

  1. Sharpened pencil(s): This is my most recommended tip. Give each student 1-2 already sharpened pencils to start their first day.  I learned this the hard way. First graders couldn’t sharpen their own pencils so I just about tore my arm/shoulder up sharpening pencils for them. Plus the electric one can’t take so many attempts. So it’s worth it!!
  2. Welcome bag: Check out this link for a cute poem and ideas for goody bags to welcome your students to your class: https://blog.reallygoodstuff.com/welcome-back-to-school-goodie-bags-by-hadar-maor/
  3. Think about how you are going to keep contact with parents.  I recommend some of the following:
    • Keep a separate log to keep track of phone, text, or email contacts (date, student name, parent name, reason, result)
    • Make it a goal to contact a specific number of parents each week with good news.
    • Try a weekly or monthly class newsletter. This is a great communication tool to let parents know what stds. you are working on, what they can do to help at home, activity ideas, sharing successes, advise them of things coming up, etc.
    • Start your own blog for your class. Then you can include the above newsletter type items, plus pictures, etc.
  4. Work to create a classroom community. I love the Responsive Classroom approach (Morning Meeting is one highly recommended routine). Everything you can do to build the sense of a classroom community will pay off in many ways!! Here is their website link to great articles and advice: https://www.responsiveclassroom.org/articles/

Text Structures Part 1: Compare and Contrast

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by C. Elkins, OK Math and Reading Lady

I have come to realize just how important knowledge of text structures is to almost all of the other comprehension skills and strategies. So that will be my focus for the next few posts — how this text structure connection relates to main idea, summarizing, note-taking, and writing. This post will feature the compare and contrast text structure (and some resources at the end of this post).

What are the text structures? Most sources consider the following 5: (Picture from Mrs. M’s Style. Here’s the link on Pinterest:  Text Structure Mini Anchor Chart)

  1. Compare and Contrast
  2. Cause / Effect
  3. Sequence
  4. Details / Description
  5. Problem / Solution

When I see reading texts that indicate the week’s skill is text structure, I cringe a little bit.  Why? Well, if you are teaching all 5 of them – that’s too much to digest in one week.  Here’s what I think is much more practical:  Teaching about text structures should occur with each and every reading selection — and refer to the structure that is most evident regarding that selection.

Here’s an example of what the teacher might say:  “This week we are reading an article titled Whales and Dolphins.  This article will compare and contrast whales with dolphins. Compare and contrast is a text structure in which the author will tell ways the whales and dolphins are alike and different from each other.”

How can I further connect this to comprehension and text structure?

  • Venn Diagrams or T-charts are helpful graphic organizers regarding compare/contrast text structure. Student can take notes using the graphic organizer. The idea is that with frequent use, students can eventually visualize this graphic organizer model in their head. Then this visual model serves as a thought organizer when they are not able to physically utilize one.
  • I can direct my questions to focus on this text structure such as: “On page 37, can you find one way the author compared whales to dolphins?”  “On page 39, the author told 3 ways the whales and dolphins are different. What did he say?”

How can I further connect this to help students with the main idea and/or a summary of a compare/contrast article?  Using information from notes on the Venn Diagram, students can use sentence frames like these:

  • This article compared _____________ to ______________.  (main idea)
  • This article compared ___________ to _____________.  Whales and dolphins are alike because _____________ and they are different because ___________________. (summary)

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