Show & Tell

Today was our first day of our second phase of reading training for Literacy First.  We had to go through five days of training last summer and then have three more days to complete this year.  Instead of doing it during the summer, they had everyone come in for three Thursdays in a row....  I'd much rather come during the summer to be quite honest, but whatever.  I'm not the one who makes the decisions.  (I'm not bitter or anything either about not getting paid for this training like we were initially promised either...  Grrr.)

Anyway, one of the activities for this phase is to share some thing that we have used or implemented in our classroom this year.  Each of the three schools that are training together have their own day for "show and tell." My school was up first, so I decided I'd share with you all what I took for my "show and tell!"

I decided to bring some vocabulary resources, but that by no means makes me an expert in this area.  I really struggle with making this a consistent and effective component of my reading instruction, but I do feel like it's improved this year with using the Literacy First model.

Oh, and I can't figure out how to rotate pics in Blogger...  Is that possible?  I'm too lazy to go back and rotate them once I've loaded them on here.  Ugh.

What I Took:

Word-A-Day - Grade 3 (published by Evan Moor)

Daily Vocabulary Practice - Grade 3 (published by Weekly Reader)

"My Word-A-Day Journal" (created by me and made into books at our district copy center)

Samples of Word-A-Day vocab and content area vocab from a non-fiction book.  (And a pocket chart showing how I display it in my classroom.)

This is my first year using the Word-A-Day book, but I really like it.  I've been kind of bad about consistently doing it, but if you're looking for an effective way to introduce your students to new words, this book is a great starting point.  I believe I bought my copy at Mardel during their online sale, but I know it's a pretty common find at a lot of teacher supply stores.  (Here is a link to the third grade book on Amazon.)

I used to use the Daily Vocabulary Practice book a lot more, but I've not been a consistent with it this year as I've tried to adjust things to fit Literacy First.  (They're not big on the kids doing worksheets during whole group, but I believe there's a balance and that they need to still have the writing practice.)  My favorite thing about this book is that it works on parts of speech as well as vocab in content areas like math and science.  It's a nice, easy way to fit in some language instruction with your vocab.  Weekly Reader's books aren't as common at my local teacher store, but this one can be found on Amazon as well.  (Here's the link to the third grade one.) 

My pocket charts and word strips are two items that I grab in stores whenever I see them.  I think Target's small pocket charts are pretty much one of the best things ever.  I hot glue magnetic strips on the back so that I can put them on my dry erase boards.  I get my word strips from Dollar Tree.  I've been working on getting all of my vocab and stuff labeled and in order for next year so that I can just grab what I need and not have to sort through all of them to get what I need for the week.  It's a process!

"My Word-A-Day Journals" use a Frayer Model for the students to explain each word through it's definition, examples, sentences, and a picture.  My student teacher has used this a lot with the kids this semester and I've seen a lot of success.  It takes some time for the kids to get everything completed, so my tentative plan for next year is to introduce the words during whole group time and then to have them fill out the Frayer during work stations.  I plan to use this with the Word-A-Day book as well as content area vocab.  (If you Google or Pinterest search "Frayer Model" you'll find all sorts of variations and examples.)

So, there's a little "show and tell of a few of my vocab resources!  

I'm off to go enjoy my three day weekend!  Tomorrow is our "snow day" off!  (And by that I mean, it's our comp day for not using our snow days this year after they added 10 minutes on to our day this year.  I guess  I should thank global warming?!?  LOL)