Making Word Work Work!

Okay, so, spring conferences at my school are "optional" - as in, they're mandated for some parents...but those families whose students are doing A-OK pretty much stay away. Since my super awesome split class is full of those students who are doing way better than A-OK, I've been stuck in my classroom with a looooooot of extra time on my hands this week! So, what else could I do but put together some new materials for my kiddos?!

Some of you know I have been SUPER struggling with how to manage Daily Five. I can't seem to figure out what I want to do... How to make sure there aren't too many kids flooding a station at once, how to make sure they have something to DO when they get there.. And I think (and yes, I mean THINK... It's possible this will all change in like, a week) I've come up with a solution!

First, I worked super hard on developing a station check-in on the Smartboard. My plan is to have the kids drag their student numbers to a different station for each of the 3 rotations. I'm already thinking that for next year, it might be nice to have their pictures rather than their student numbers in the squares.. But one step at a time! You can download the Smart Notebook file here.

One of the stations that had kind of been bogging me down was Work on Writing. I like to do a separate writing mini-lesson and workshop to follow our curriculum, and I wanted to make sure this piece of writing included some sort of reflection on reading. At the beginning of the year, I had them write weekly letters to me in their readers' notebooks - but to be honest, responding to them just became way too much to keep up with! I wanted a simpler, less sheer time-consuming way to check in on their writing. I think I've come up with an answer with this menu. They'll be able to pick one option for their Work on Writing station every week. I'm planning on changing it up every few weeks - Since we're focusing on poetry in writing right now, I figured I'd at least give them one poetry option!

With 15 rotations a week, I'm asking them to do every station at least once a week and keep track of them on this sheet. That way, I can see which stations they're going to and how often. Right now, I'm thinking I'll limit them to one Word Work and one Listening to Reading station a week ... mostly because I don't have tons of word work games or tons of computers. But again, I'm mostly playing this by ear right now!

And speaking of word work -- did I mention I had a lot of time on my hands this week? I've been noticing lately that my kiddos are pretty atrocious at building sentences. So, I also made this sandwich-themed sentence-building center for our inaugural word work lesson!

Whew... Sorry for the SUPER long post! I think that's all for now -- Cross your fingers that THIS incarnation of Daily Five works for me and my kiddos!