Word Work...This is How We Do It

Daily Five: Word Work

This is how we do it

It's Friday night, and I feel all right

The party is here on the West side

Remember that Montell Jordan song? It's stuck in my head. That's how it made into the title of this blog post. I can't remember any lyrics past "...West side..." so these three lines are on repeat. 

Ok, nevermind...let's move on :-)

It's only week 3, but in room 301 we are well on our way to implementing all the components of the Daily Five. We've launched Read to Self and almost all of us can focus for 15 minutes. There's just those two or three stragglers. We've also launched Word Work, Work on Writing, and Read to Someone. 

Word Work is serious business in first grade. This is how we do it.

My district uses the Words Their Way program. On Monday I introduce the sort. I always stress that the words should be sorted by word family and READ OUT LOUD. Sort and READ 3 TIMES (I repeat, and repeat...). I want the kiddos to learn the spelling pattern and be so familiar with the words that they can read them quickly. So, we sort them together and I tape them on the whiteboard. Next, I use a pointer and we read them all together. First, we read each list three times up and down. Then, I tell my class I'm going to try to trick them and I point to the words randomly. They love when I fail to trick them. 

Now the students go to their seats with a half sheet of sorting cards. 

TIP: Have students color the back of the sheet before cutting out the words. If each student at a group/table colors the back a different color, then when one is found on the floor you can figure out who it belongs to. My partner gets credit for this trick. 

Color the back, cut them out, sort and read three times. Put the words inside of the baggie taped to the front of your notebook.

Now I get out the Big Book of Poems that comes with the Words Their Way program. We read the poem that goes with the word sort and use highlighter tape to find the words that have the same spelling pattern as our word sort words. Then, I give the students a mini version of the poem. I just type it up myself. Students add the poem to their poetry notebook and highlight the words we found. They also list the words beside the poem and illustrate the poem. 

It sounds like a lot, but once you've practiced the process a few times it doesn't take that long to get all this accomplished.

On Tuesday, we read the words that are still taped on the board three times as a whole group. I try to trick them again ;-)

Then, students go to their desk where they sort and read their words three times before rainbow writing the words in their word work notebook. First, we list the words using a pencil. Then, we trace the words using three different crayons. Ultimately, each words gets written four times.

Now it's the middle of the week. Again, we read the words taped to the board and I try to trick the class again, but I almost never do by this point. 

Then the kids independently sort and read the words three times (yep, we are broken records) and glue them on the back of the page that they rainbow wrote the words on the day before.  By Wednesday most of the kiddos can read the words three times at a record pace!

Worksheet time. I make the worksheets myself to supplement the Words Their Way word sorts. 

Find the worksheets I've created so far here and here and here and here. 

Thursday is free choice. Students who have finished rainbow writing, glued the words in their notebook, and completed the worksheet to my satisfaction can CHOOSE how they want to spend their word work time. 

Not finished with something? Gotta get it done before you can have free choice time. 

I plan to change my  choice options periodically. Right now students can:

1. Write the words on their desk using a dry erase marker. 

2. Build the words using plastic letters.

3. Use a golf tee to write the words in clay, or shape the words out of clay.

4. Play the game that comes with Words Their Way Program.

Test day. 

Thanks for hanging in there! Leave me a comment letting me know how you do word work. I might incorporate your suggestion into my week. 

Daily 5 FREEBIES

I've been on summer vacation for one week and I haven't accomplaished very much...but, it is summer after all. 

I've done some reading: The Daily 5 (second edition) and The CAFE Book. 

I've gone to Zumba three times, but I negated that effort with wings and cheese fries :-(

I really need to get with the program, ya'll!!!!! 

BUT today I was inspired by chapter 5 of The Daily 5 to make myself a check-list of all the foundation lessons so I don't have to flip through the text constantly.  And, I created some organizational labels for my Word Work drawers based on some suggestions by the sisters.  You can download them for FREE by clicking the links below the pictures. 

I made one change to the Work on Writing foundation lessons. I changed "Underline the Words You Do Not Know How to Spell, and Move On" to "Write all the Sounds You Hear and Move On". Beginning of the year firsties would have to underline LOTS of words! But if you want the list the "right" way, there is a second list (page 2 of the download) that lists "Underline...". 

Foundation Lessons Checklist

D5 Word Work Organization Lables

Are you doing any professional development type reading this summer? Also on my list is Marvelous Minilessons for Teaching Beginning Writing, K-3 by Lori Jaminson Rog and Interactive Writing: How Language & Literacy Come Together, K-2 by Andrea McCarrier, Gay Su Pinnell & Irene C. Fountas.

Happy reading!

Daily 5 (2nd edition) Book Study Ch. 1-2

Last summer I read The Daily Five and did my best to implement the structure during my literacy block. I heart D5! I did a really good job at implementing much of the structure, but there is definately some room for improvement next year. I had just began reading The CAFE Book, when I read on Kristen's blog, A Day in First Grade, about the second edition of The Daily Five and the summer book study linky party. I immediately knew I wanted to participate. I checked with my principal today, and sure enough, she had a copy of the second edition and I got to bring it home. Plus, the sisters are coming to Texas this summer and I just might get to go to the training ;-) 

Chapter One

Chapter one shares how the sisters classroom management evolved over time, as well as how the D5 evolved and how it has been refined since the first edition was published. 

p. 2 We no longer do all five roundsof Daily 5 each day, which confirms what many of you are already doing.

p. 14 ...we are calling our children back for a focus lesson because time has run out rather than because off-task behaviors have shown us their stamina has run out. This is our indication that it is time to drop off one more round of the Daily 5 in order to give children more uninterrupted time to read and write. 

I am soooo happy she said that!It seems like time is never on my side!!! Announcements are over at 8:08 am and we go to recess at 10:45 am. Do the math... 2 hours and 37 minutes. My district expectations include Read-Alouds, Reading Workshop (minimum 70 min.), Word Study (15-20 min.), Phonological Awareness (15 min. as needed), Writing Workshop (50-60 min.), Shared/Interactive Writing 15-20 min.), and Handwriting (10-15 min.). I tried to marry the my distirict's expectations with the D5 structure. For example, my district uses Words Their Way for word study so that's what we did during D5 Word Work. At the beginning of the year I barely managed to fit in all five rotations. As the year progressed I changed to four rotations, then three. All the time, I worried that I wasn't implementing D5 correctly, but I was convinced the kiddos needed more time and I required more time in guided reading groups as the year continued. As soon as I read that line I thought, "KaSandra, you've been doing it right all along; you just didn't trust yourself." 

P.S. I'm not complaining about 2 hours and 37 minutes. In middle school you get 50 - 65 minutes for reading/language arts per day. That said, I simply did NOT have time for a mini lesson between each rotation when my class was trying to complete all five tasks every day. 

Later the sisters talk about choice and it being a key reason students love D5. This is where I can improve. My firsties had some choice...choice in what they read and where they read, or what they wrote about, but not a choice in the order that they completed the D5. I was too worried about who would be where when I needed to pull them for guided reading or an RTI group. I prefered for the kids to miss Read to Someone or Listen to Reading over Read to Self, Work on Writing, or Word Work. By creating a schedule I could controll that. Children rotated to different tasks at different times. Some kiddos were at Read to Self while others were at Work on Writing and so on...but I controlled the rotation. I substituted Meet with Teacher for Listen to Reading or Read to Someone when I wanted to meet with somone. 

Next year, I vow to do better. After we have learned the expectations, mastered the procedures, and practiced, practiced, practiced, I'm just going to go for it. My firsties are going to have more choice!!!

Chapter Two

The second chapter details six of the seven core beliefs that serve as a foundation to D5. To keep this post from getting extremely long, I'm just going write about the Brain Research section.

The sisters mention Ken Wesson and his research that suggests that the average number of years our children are in age parallels the average number of minutes they can maintain attention during direct instruction. This gives me 6 minutes!!! I can keep it to 10 or 15, but 6 seemed out-of-this-world until I really thought about it. I don't talk, talk, talk for 15 minutes straight. We turn and talk to each other (peanut butter, jelly time!) and answer questions, and write things on our anchor chart, and magnetize things to the white board, etc. I got this!

I also think the chart, How Much Students Read and How it Influences Achievement on page 31 should be shared with parents. I really like how it shows the percent increase in word exposure with an added 10 minutes of reading per day. 

If you haven't read The Daily Five, I strongly encourage you to do so. I love, love, love it. It's great for the kids and the teacher. Plus, you save a ton of time because there is no need to prepare traditional centers. You save some trees because you don't really need worksheets. We have a monthly paper quota on my campus that is for real! When you use up all of your copies, the copy machine will not spit out anything but white paper for you. D5 really helps out :-)

Head on over to A Day in First Grade to read what other teachers had to say about The Daily 5 (second edition) chapters 1-2.