Blooms - Oldie but a goodie

Hello friends,
When I first started teaching over a decade ago, one of the buzz words around at the time was Bloom's Taxonomy. I can't say I have heard it much lately but for this terms Daily 5 / Sustained Reading slot, my team decided to revisit it. We incorporated it into the Read to Self / Read to Buddy component of the reading block. First though, I'll recap on how last term went.
Our focus was as follows:

 Once we started of course, another goal came to light which was extending stamina (on-task focised reading) for a fixed period.
We monitored the Read to self (5min) as follows:

After listening to our buddies read, we discussed what it means to read fluently, and set this as the purpose for our Read to Buddy time:

Here are the anchor charts we used to give our buddy feedback (star) and feed-forward (wish or next step):

They worked a treat. Now in Term 2 we wished to extend into comprehension checkpoints, so our Bloom's Comprehension Fans were born.

First our stamina goals extended to 10 minutes Read to Self:

Next, the Read to Buddy time was split 3/2 minutes. Read to your buddy for 3min and discuss for 2minutes (up to 3 questions from the Bloom's Fans).

And the buddy still gave  feedback on fluency (out of 10) and on the ability of the reader to provide full answers.

As with last term, we will again reflect on the patterns that emerge after a fortnight of reading.

Finally:

FREE Daily 5 - Reading to self / Buddy Follow up.

used in Term 1  &

Bloom's Questions - Bookmarks or Fans

used in Term 2 are available here:
Teachers Pay Teachers - Reading at One Teachers Journey
Teachers Notebook
Help Me Learn (NZ)
And a BIG thank-you to...

Thank you for visiting. Would love to read about how you switch things up during sustained reading time in your classroom. Leave a link to your blog post below.

Using Traffic Light Self Reflections in Maths Today

Hello Friends,

Further to my previous post (CLICK HERE), I have add some photos of student reflections, using the traffic light reflection system, today for Maths. Its a great way to cover the Reflective learner profile for PYP too. As you glance down the separate images, you can quickly see how easily you can gauge the temperature if the group or class, about the lesson  you taught that day :)

This is my poster on the white board at the front of the room. I printed it A4 and laminated it.

Happy teaching :)

5W and 1H

Hello friends,

Today, for writing, I pulled out a section from my resource

Reading Comprehension Skills and Figurative Language Posters

It's the Who, What, Why, Where, When & How questions. I printed them in greyscale for my students, reducing to 2-1 as well. We make envelopes to keep them in and made our own tool kits for buddy conferencing.

Then we got together with a buddy to share our narratives. Students read 1 paragraph at a time, while their buddy held the question prompts ready to ask expanding questions of the writer. After taking turns with this activity, the kiddies regrouped and shared the results of their expanded sentences back to their table groups. What a difference!

This was a follow up to a great little digital motivator called "I made tea." Take your students through it by clicking onto each 'greyed out' word. It will blow their minds how you can expand 1 short, dull sentence into an entire paragraph.

(Here) is the link to the digital motivator and I added some images of our tool-kits, too :)

 

 

Audio Conferencing for Writing

Recently I began to use an app on my iPhone called Voice Memos.

My kiddies were in full blown inquiry mode and beavering away over their paragraphs for an information report. Each paragraph was drafted on a separate inquiry sheet and handed in for conferencing. They needed to follow this writing cycle;

1. research and take notes on the sub-topic
2. draft your  paragraph
3. discuss your paragraph with your research buddy and edit
4. conference with T
5. type into class Google docs account then drag into T folder for typo check
6a. research next paragraph, or
6b. retrieve T checked paragraph from Google Docs for publishing into presentation mode.

Then...in the middle of all this frenzy....I got sick. Oh no!
My trusty iPhone to the rescue.

I took their stack of draft work home and read them into voice memos. I gave oral feedback as I went and saved each one by name and subheading under the 'custom' option. I then shared each one by email to my work email account.

Mine would have been called e.g. Matt P2 causes. At first it comes up with the time of the recording and you need to re-name under custom .

 

Once they arrived into my in-box, I could save each attachment into a folder on my desktop as they were already correctly labeled. They come through in m4a format.

I uploaded this folder to the school server where the kiddies could access their feedback and went home to crawl back into bed, under a pile of tissues.

Under my wonderful relief teacher's supervision, they took their paragraphs, red pens and headphones to the computers to listen to their feedback and make edits.

The joy was being at home in bed and seeing their work begin to appear in the Google Docs account in real time, as they began typing up their edited paragraphs. I could then correct their typos for them from home, as soon as they were done, so that they could move onto their next step.

Now some of you reading this will be quite skeptical, I'm sure. From my point of view, here are the benefits for the students, as I see them:

1. students receive their conference privately through their headphones
2. they can pause, rewind, re-listen to the feedback while editing and even come back and listen again if  they were asked to go away and add more detail, to ensure they were on the right track.
3. the conferences can be recorded after classes are finished and multiple students can work through their feedback at the same time, the next day (depending on the number of devices you have in your room).
4. this also avoids students leaving you after a conference and immediately forgetting what they had to edit, despite the notations you made on their work :)
5. students make their own corrections, not you, that way they own it and there is a higher chance of it crossing over into their typing / publishing.
6. they listen to an informative feedback model and will hopefully develop the skills to provide feedback in a similar way, when buddy editing.
7. the inherent stress of being with the person while they critique your work, is also removed
8. it slots easily into Daily 5 with an authentic 'listening to reading' model

Would love to hear what you think so please leave a comment. Have you used anything like this in your class? How has it worked for you? Please comment below :)

Tracking That Daily Independent Reading

At the moment I am introducing the Read to Self & Read to a Buddy. We all do this together as a whole class, all at the same time. But eventually I'd like to move it to the independent realm. With this in mind, I developed the following tracking sheet. Its good for 2 weeks if you read 5 days a week. Ignore the last two rows in each table if, like me, you read 4 days a week. (my 5th day is specialist day - Music, PE, Spanish etc).

The Read to Self has a Stamina column where the student can reflect on whether they 'got lost' in their book for the full 5min (tick all 5 boxes)
For Read to Buddy, I have found my students have continued with their own chapter book for this session so, instead of recording the book title again, I want them to reflect instead on the feedback that their 'coach' gave them (remember 2 stars and a wish?)
At the end of 2 weeks, students can write a reflection about how they went over the fortnight. Honesty in the recording needs to be emphasised for this data to be meaningful /useful to them at reflection time. Here is the Fortnightly reflection sheet.

If you would like to use these in your classroom, you can download these here at my TpT store.
Please let me know how you get on by leaving me  a comment below.

Parent Sharing Morning

We enjoyed hosting our families this term and held a sharing morning during which students had their parents undivided attention for 30 min in the classroom. It took us a day to prepare and organise the learning we wanted to share.

Included items were:
Explain the subtraction strategies that you have learned this term and teach one of them to your parent.
Play a math game with your parent that helps you practice your maths knowledge goal form your student profile sheet.
Share your current handwriting practice sheet with your parent and discuss the feedback you receive from the teacher.
Read your favourite paragraph from your Scampered Fairy tale that you are working on and show how you are working on your writing goal, then show the VCOPS wall to your parent.
Take your parent to the reading wall and explain how the reading timetable works, then share one of the comprehension strategies from you book and the follow up reading activity where you had to use it.
Share your time capsule from the unit we finished under the Where We Are in Place and Time theme.
Take your parent to the topic wall and explain our community map to them for our current theme  How We Organise Ourselves.
Finally show your parent how you use the digital technology to reinforce and extend your learning.
 

The students were very excited and proud of what they had prepared. At the end, they all received a star from their parent/s and then they wrote a wish together.

 We then ended the day by giving each student a star and a wish to write about their teacher, e.g.
'what is one thing that you feel I do really well in supporting your learning?' and
'What is one thing that you would like me to do that would support you learning even more?'

A very interesting reflection exercise.

The most common theme for stars were - everything is just right and you give honest feedback so I know what to do next.
The most common theme for wishes were - I'd like my own office* where I can work without being taken off task by other students and I'd like to have my own computer device to use at school, e.g. laptop or iPad.

* I set up 2-3 focus zones in the classroom that we call 'offices'. These are available for students when they feel they need to focus more or are feeling distracted by others at their group tables.  They are working so well!

   

View these in my TPT store HERE: