Five For Friday 9-25-15

I had the class help me generate ideas for the celebrations this week.  I love that they are generating ideas about the kind of successes we are having.  I am really enjoying working with this class.

5. Rocket Math is starting to really come around.  More students are passing each day as students get into the routine and learn how to get their answers on the paper quicker.  I have talked to the kids about how much better they will do if we transition to our practice more efficiently so that we aren't taking a break for a conversation between our practice and daily test.  It is important to keep working on these facts as they will help students become more precise in their daily work.

4. We started reading groups this week.  This was my best first week of reading groups in Davison when it comes to effort.  Each student finished their assignment and was ready to talk and share about the story I assigned to them.  We then worked on summaries of the story for next week.  I look forward to seeing where our skills are so we can target the skills that we need to improve.

3.  On Friday, I rewarded the students with a ten minute outdoor fun time because I have never had a better first time lock-down drill.  These kids are spoiling me.  In some ways I feel like they are in mid-year form.  I was super pleased that students were able to sit patiently for five minutes until we were done.  I didn't promise them anything if we did a good job.  I believe we are starting to absorb the principle of intrinsic vs. extrinsic rewards.  This effort towards building character and responsibility will pay off academically as we save time on not needing to reteach behavior expectations.

2.  The first celebration idea that came up from the kids was to celebrate our problem solving from Thursday.  We have a morning huddle each day where I call the plays (outline what we will be learning,) make any announcements that need to be made, and we discuss any issues we are having in the class.  I have controlled most of the conversation so far, but Thursday an issue of personal space was brought up by a student and I let them generate a solution and we decided that we will talk about it a week later and see if it improved things.  It is scary for me to take my hands off the wheel, but I am glad they are taking responsibilities on our team.

1.  Writing time has been awesome this year.  On Friday we talked about writing passionately.  This lesson included my best attempt at a cartwheel to catch their attention and to explain the type of excitement we needed to have for our writing time.  We worked this week on generating ideas to write about.  We also practiced many strategies for planning our writing and remembering details before we write.  We will continue to work on a story with strong feelings.  We will hope to work towards a finished piece next week.