Interactive Journaling, Fluency Practice & MLK Jr.

    Do you ever feel like a short school week feels longer than a normal 5 day week? We had a good three days of academic review and a review of classroom expectations. (Boy, some of my boys were a little too CRAZY excited to be back at school!) My kiddos noticed right away when they walked through the classroom door the changes I made to one of our Daily 5 center shelves. Here is a look at what they look like now...

   I still have my literacy centers in the blue plastic bins on the bottom shelf. Right now they contain materials from my 15 Winter Common Core Math & Literacy Centers in them. The top shelf now holds my independent Comprehension Centers, antonym and synonym puzzles (in the green tubs), and Fluency Center. 

   We introduced our interactive comprehension notebooks during Walk to Read this week. You can read about them here. I am so EXCITED how excited my kiddos were to begin making these. We spent this week learning how to cut, assemble, and record our information in the visualizing and connections flipbooks, from my Ultimate Interactive Comprehension Pack, for the stories Snowmen at Night and The Biggest, Best Snowman. Our goal is to practice a few more interactive journaling pages together before my kiddos can dive head first into the independent centers. 

   One of the newest addictions of my kiddos is the Cookie Fluency games in my new fluency center. We spent a few minutes each day playing one of the games from my One Smart Cookie! {Fluency Phrases for the First 100 Fry Words}. My kiddos asked to skip our Friday word work Promethean game to play these fluency games longer. Here is a look at the fluency rotation stations we completed with this fluency pack...

                          
   This upcoming week we will begin practicing the other items from this fluency pack. We will use the cookie fluency tracking sheets to help track our progress while we read through the ten practice fluency phrase pages. I have placed this fluency practice in binders with plastic page protectors so my kiddos can write their score after one minute with a dry erase marker. 

   Looking at the week ahead it will be an eventful one. My district has decided to have all classroom teachers pilot two math curriculum's over the next 18 weeks. We will be using Math Expressions and Envision. Both are very different ways of learning for our kiddos with different teaching techniques then what we have become accustomed to with Georgia Math. If you use either math programs let me know what you think and how they work with your kiddos. We will also be introducing Martin Luther King Jr. in our writing block. I will be using my Martin Luther King Jr. {An Interactive Literacy, Writing, & Craftivity Unit}. There are many activities within this unit that will be a perfect review of the 7 Habits and Leadership for my kiddos. You can grab a copy of this unit by clicking on the image below. 

Have a fabulous week!!!