Tuesday, June 26, 2012

My Latest Workshop

Yesterday I taught a workshop entitled, Make It Today, Use It Tomorrow! After about an hour presentation of the 20 projects they could make, I let them go to town. The participants could choose any or all the projects I was featuring for the day.


The first photo shows my paint chip word families. I created these by using paint chips from home improvement stores. I am totally in love with paint chips and can't resist hoarding them! If you click here, it will take you to the blog I used to create this activity. Soon, I will upload the sheet I created for my workshop so you can make your own. You can make over 500 words from a few paint chips!


The next photo is a picture from my interactive notebook. We were reading a Marvin Redpost book at the time. My students were struggling with r-controlled vowel sounds, so we had a mini lesson. I used post-it notes and had students hunt for examples in our text. Since this photo was taken, I have improved the lesson by color coding the r-controlled vowels. I put er, ur, and ir on the same color post-it note because they make the same sound. We stick them on one side of our notebooks as well. The ar and or r-controlled vowel sounds each get their own color and go on the opposite page. 


The last photo shows my whisper phones and fluency folders. The whisper phones are PVC pipes from a home improvement store. I have two different sizes to give students an opportunity to make a choice. We use these for our independent reading or while we are using the fluency folders. These folders contain the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd 100 phrases by Tim Rasinski. He is my fluency hero! When students do the fluency phrases in the folders, it is important that they use their index finger on their dominate hand. They need to scoop the phrase and read read it. They should progress from left to right and work their way down each page. This multi-sensory method really works, but you need to monitor students to make sure they aren't "cheating" the method. I also emphasize with students that as they are reading a phrase, their eyes should be already moving to the next phrase.

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