Daily 5 & Treasures

 I am part of a Daily 5 support group on yahoo and someone asked how I was able to merger D5 and my basal series Treasures, so I thought I would share how I was able to make it work in my classroom. First off I did not begin Treasures until October once I had established all our Daily 5 options.  I pretty much followed the Daily Five for Dummies guided off ProTeachers the first five weeks of school. Unfortunately I was never able to establish Read to Someone in my classroom so I can't offer suggestions there. I can however explain how I fit it most other things.

Weekly Theme:  I introduce this on Mondays during our morning meeting and followed through with it during my theme time 2-3 times a week. 

Spelling:  Each week I give my kids a spelling pretest test on Fridays after our normal test. I take the weekend to look over their pretest and decide if they need 8 words, all 10 or 12. If they needed 12 I would look for words that fit Treasures pattern but added another preciously taught element like sh diagraph or something. For Mondays mini lesson I would intro the pattern and give out their spelling packets. In their spelling packet I would have pages from Rachelle from What the Teacher Wants packet and pages from Abby's (The Inspired Apple) Word Work Packets. My kids knew they had to do 2 pages from the packet each day and then could do whatever they wanted from our Work on Words bins (stamps, wiki stix, magnets, etc). We would also read the decodable and highlight the spelling pattern in the words we found. On Tuesdays my mini lesson was a sorting the words together, Wednesday we tried to think of other words that would fit the pattern and use the spelling words in sentences.  Thursdays we would play Michelle's (Fabulous in First) Sight Words I have Who Has and spelling Sparkle. 

Weekly Comprehension Strategy, Skills and Stories:  On Mondays Tuesdays I would use the weekly big book and intro the weekly skill. I would also place the main weekly story in my listening story with a graphic organizer that went with the weekly skill. I mostly used Michelle's reading response forms for this. Tuesdays I would use the Oral Vocabulary Cards (I love these) and do a think aloud of with the weekly skill.  Wednesdays I would use any picture book of my choice and do an interactive think aloud with the weekly comprehension strategy and skill. Thursdays we would use another picture book and the kids would answer my comprehension questions. 

Grammar:  This is an area I had more trouble with, some of the concepts Treasures choses to spend a week on I don't agree with. What I ended up doing was making nouns, verbs and adjectives into units. I used Reagan's (Tunstalls Teaching Tidbits) parts of speech units, Made for First Grades sentence unit and a couple others. I would still discuss the weekly topic Treasures suggested just not in overkill. We did a lot of made libs and Brain Pop Jr as well. I would sometimes set up sorts or other type centers for the kids to do during work on writing. 

Leveled Readers:  At the beginning of the year I took them out of the unit approaching, on level and beyond bins and leveled them. I used them for my guided reading groups and ran true guided reading lessons (following Jan Richarson's lesson plan format) not Treasures small group lessons.  My kids typically used two leveled readers a week. This was my favorite time!  

  

Disclaimers--First I really dislike Treasures because of all the workbooks they have and how much whole group instruction they suggest.  I don't think their weekly assessment is a fair or accurate way to gauge a child's reading and didn't use them last year.  We did not order the grammar workbook last year so that was one less workbook to fit in.  Finally I was not required to use every page in the Practice O workbook, and won't be using it all next year.    

Next year I am hoping and planning to do Reading Workshop. I plan on using Treasures big books, oral vocabulary cards and possibly the weekly story in a listening story type center. I will be using Words Their Way instead of Treasures spelling list. I'm still figuring things out but will post once I have a better idea of my plan. 

I hope this post is helpful to someone, feel free to ask any questions you may have. 

1B Hearts Mo Willems

This summer my little AJ became obsessed with Mo Willems and all his books.  So of course as the mommy teacher I am, I went to the library and got any book I could find by Mo Willems.  This is how my love affair with Mr. Willems began.  We followed him on Twitter and learned how he was both an author and illustrator.  I found that AJ was able to read most of the Elephant and Piggie books herself and this was boosting her confidence as a reader.  She also started trying to draw the characters.  We became frequent vistors of MoWillems.com and Pigeon Presents.  Needless to say her obession became mine. 

     When planning for this school year I decided Mo (I can call him that now since I follow him on Twitter and all) would be our September author.  To introduce my kids to Mo I started with this simple craft. 

              

(picture to be added later, it's on my home computer)

We painted paper plates gray, added googlie eyes, and big ears to make our own Geralds.  All month we read his books and used them to identify characters, settting and other reading skills from Treasures.  We also learned to draw The Pigeon and other characters.  Well, can I just tell you that now 1B LOVES Mo, too!  I get families of drawn pigeons almost daily.  Once we finished a "Mo book" I put it in a bin for "book shopping" before Daily 5 Read to Self and they are fought over by my firsties.  To drill home character, setting and sequence we made a story elements display for our hallway.  I put the kids in groups according to their favorite story and assigned one person to be in charge of each element.  I think they came out AWESOME!  You can see some of our Gerald plates along the right side. 

Lastly we made class books based on the titles we read in class.  Here are some of what my kiddos came up with.  I used this lesson to assess how they were doing with writing sentences and what we need to review.  I contemplated having the kids edit these, but decided since this our first "book" I would leave them just like so.  I have photocopied them though and plan to have the photocopies edited as morning work.  If you would like to use these printables please feel free.  Class Book Pages  On their own they are nothing special but once the kids put their spin on them I think they turn out great. 



I love how Gerald is doing a flip!

  

How fun would it be to play tag with Pigeon! 



Can you tell we just talked about labeling?  I think discussing in Writer's Workshop and Treasures helped drill it in!



This little guy underlined banana because he remembered just keep writing not focus on spelling.  Love it!

 

Gerald's eyebrows crack me up!  He really looks mad!

I believe these characters have actually become part of our class! 



I wonder how many Knuffle Bunnies will be on Christmas lists



 

    

I, of course had to join in the fun and made my own page.  :)

I am desperately trying to get HR's first grade classes tickets to see Knuffle Bunny at the Kennedy Center.  Sadly, all they have available at the moment is 19 seats... so I put us on the waiting list for 50 :/, say a prayer for us.  I am sure seeing Knuffle Bunny the Musical would be an awesome surprise!