Science Weekly Five!

The past couple weeks I have been playing around with the idea of a Science Weekly Five. It will have to be a Weekly Five because we only have a 30 minute Science block. So the goal is to have each student go to each choice during a 5 day week. Whenever we have a shorter week, then they can choose to finish previous choices or play review games.

I have posted a new page to my blog "Science Weekly Five" with the preliminary plan which I will implement this fall. Check it out and leave me any ideas you have as well!

Spring Daily Five Math Update

We have been really successful this year introducing The Daily Five in Math! Since my first post in the fall, we have changed a few things however.

We are using a choice chart with cards under each Choice for them to pick. I still have my students in flexible groups by color, so I have put clips with their colors next to the activity I want them to start at. This way I make sure they are making purposeful choices for what I want them to work on. After they do the clipped activity, then they can pick from activities without a clip.

Here are our Daily Five Math choices:

1. Write it Out: Read a math book and write what math they learned, write their own math story or word problem, and choose from differentiated folders with math problems to solve with a dry erase marker.

 

2. Math to Review: Games in differentiated tubs that we have played in prior units. These are stored in red folders by unit skill/topic so I can easily grab what they need help in and place in their tubs.

3. Math Games: board games to review math skills. **Most of the games were purchased through a grant on DonorsChoose website! Others are from school Title 1 funds.**

* The Math Literature books are in a book file box for use in Write it Out *

4. Fast Facts: flashcards, dice and number games to practice basic facts

* You can kinda see the crate in the far right bottom corner where we store all the flashcards in a tub and the dice and card games in a magazine file box. *

5. Toys as Tools: Use various manipulatives to perform different tasks. Each task is explained on back of activity choice cards.

* stored in tubs on a shelf *

* using the place value blocks to build and compare *

* using coins to price out items in his desk *

Word Study

After doing some online research, I have tweaked my current spelling plan to accommodate more independent choices along with differentiated learning. Instead of simply giving a student a spelling list to memorize, they will have a chance to choose words they need to learn as well as having a vast amount of words to practice and assess the weekly phonics pattern better. Check out my plan as well as a few sample documents under the Reading Daily Five tab!

1, 2, 3, 4, 5...Get the Daily Five Alive!!

I've updated my Reading and Math tabs to include how I got started with the Daily Five in my classroom last school year as well as how I plan to start the Daily Five in Math. I am still making adjustments to find the smoothest transitional daily plan as possible. Please leave any comments you may have on how you got started too!  

Welcome!

My first blog! Going to be a great new obsession....