Online Resources
Writing Games - Online!
Sheppard Software (which has a link on the Reading page), also has some useful games for helping children understand the conventions of writing and some word games to help expand their vocabulary.
Here is the direct link to their language arts webpage.
http://www.sheppardsoftware.com/web_games_vocab.htm
Dance Mat Typing
This is a great website that will help teach your child how to type.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/guides/z3c6tfr
Sheppard Software (which has a link on the Reading page), also has some useful games for helping children understand the conventions of writing and some word games to help expand their vocabulary.
Here is the direct link to their language arts webpage.
http://www.sheppardsoftware.com/web_games_vocab.htm
Dance Mat Typing
This is a great website that will help teach your child how to type.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/guides/z3c6tfr
We are currently reading:
The BFG James and the Giant Peach
I read to the students each day during snack time. This helps the students hear voice and fluency, it also is a fantastic story that they really enjoy listening to. We will use this story to discuss important reading skills such as inferencing, predicting, visualization, and making connections. I encourage you to ask your child about the different stories they read or hear in class. This helps them build other necessary skills such as recount and comprehension.
The Daily 5 and CAFE
The Daily Five is a way of structuring the Literacy block so every student is independently engaged in meaningful literacy tasks. These research based tasks are ones that will have the biggest impact on student reading and writing achievement, as well as help foster children who love to read and write. Students receive explicit whole group instruction and then are given independent practice time to read and write independently while I provide focused, intense instruction to individual and small groups of children.
There are very specific behaviour expectations that go with each Daily Five component. We will spend our first weeks working intensely on building our reading and writing stamina, learning the behaviours of the Weekly Five and fostering classroom community. I will also spend the time learning about your child's strengths and greatest needs in reading, writing, and spelling, in order to best plan for each student's instruction.
This program has been adapted from the resource:
There are very specific behaviour expectations that go with each Daily Five component. We will spend our first weeks working intensely on building our reading and writing stamina, learning the behaviours of the Weekly Five and fostering classroom community. I will also spend the time learning about your child's strengths and greatest needs in reading, writing, and spelling, in order to best plan for each student's instruction.
This program has been adapted from the resource:
When it is up and running smoothly, students will be engaged in the following five components of the Weekly Five:
Children reading to themselves is the first of the Daily 5 choices to be launched and is the foundation for creating independent readers and writers. "Whether starting Daily 5 at the beginning of the year or midyear, we always launch Read to Self first. We begin with Read to Self because it embodies the language, routines, expectations, and behaviors on which all the other components of Daily 5 are based." (pg 66, The Daily 5, 2014) |
Of all the choices children participate in, Read to Someone is often their favorite. Reading with someone helps readers, especially developing readers, increase areas of comprehension, accuracy, fluency and prosidy. It also increases reading involvement, attention and collaboration. What's more, children love partner reading and readily participate with books of their choosing. Children LOVE to Read to Someone, and why not, they have a friend with them who will listen to them and discuss their reading. |
Listen to ReadingListen to Reading provides pronunciation and expression models that can only come from hearing fluent and expressive examples. Because of this, Listen to Reading is especially beneficial to our older struggling readers whose listening comprehension exceeds their reading level. Listen to Reading is a great option for our English language learners. It is a popular favorite of most primary students as well.
During Word Work, we focus on spelling and vocabulary work with children, creating a richly literate environment that provides essential and often-skipped practice time. (The Daily 5, p 117) During the Word Work time, students experiment with spelling patterns, memorize high-frequency words, and develop a genuine curiosity and interest in new and unique words. By playing with words, word patterns, word families, prefixes, suffixes, and so on, students hone their knowledge of words and increase their writing skills. |
"The writing component of the Daily 5™ provides additional support children require to become effective writers. Its purpose is to provide daily writing practice."(The Daily 5, p. 107) Writing workshop and Work on Writing within Daily 5 are not the same. During writing workshop we may focus on different writing techniques or teach a specific type of writing students must learn based on our current unit of study. Children often use Work on Writing time within Daily 5 to continue work they are doing during writing workshop, but not always. Students thoroughly enjoy the freedom of choice that is part of Daily 5. It is then that they may do sustained writing of any form they like. |
CAFE goes hand in hand with the Daily 5. It helps students understand and master the four key components of successful reading:
Descriptions for the daily 5 and CAFE were found at https://www.thedailycafe.com/daily-5 please feel free to visit this website if you would like anymore information on the Daily 5 and CAFE.