Here is another mini-lesson using a strategy for the Accuracy section of the CAFÉ wall. I use the Accuracy mini-lessons to teach strategies (flip the sound) and phonics (long a, sneaky e).
You can also tell from this video that we had begun using Word Work. I usually do a lot of Word Work activities whole group first so the students have all had a chance to practice them before it is a choice in Daily 5. For example, I have a long a, sneaky e PowerPoint where the students read the words and the picture pops up to show them if they are correct. After we have read the words as a class I have them pull out their Word Work spiral.
Since it is early on in Word Work I would have the whole class practice rainbow spelling with the PowerPoint words. If you put your PowerPoint on the screen where you can see all the slides (slide sorter view) it helps students move at their own pace. This gives me a chance to see all of the students using rainbow spelling correctly. If a child is writing the word ‘snake’ but writes the ‘s’ in blue, green, red then the ‘n’ in blue, green, red and so on then he is not really learning how the word is spelled. Many children make that mistake with rainbow spelling; but if I have them all doing it at the same time I can walk around and correct them quickly. That way when they are at Word Work independently I can work with small groups and trust that they are using rainbow spelling correctly.
As I see my students have learned a couple of different Word Work activities by using them whole group then I will let it become a choice in Daily 5. My first three activities are usually: rainbow spelling, word family flip books, sight word hunting with monster fingers.
Rainbow Spelling – all you need are crayons and paper. The students write words (word sort we have done on a pocket chart or sight words from the word wall) in 3 different colors. *Management Tip – Make them use the same 3 crayons for the whole session so they aren’t changing colors with each word*
Word Family Flip Books – all you need are word family flip books (or something like them), pencil, and paper. I use Lakeshore’s word family flip books. The link is below. The students write each word in pencil noticing the pattern in the word family.
Word Family Flip Books
Sight Word Hunting – all you need is the student’s book bag, a monster finger, pencil and paper. I use monster finger pointers from Really Good Stuff. The link is below. The students go through their books from their book bag and use the monster finger (it just keeps them focused for some reason) to hunt for sight words from our word wall and then write them down as they find them.
Monster Finger Pointers
Once these three Word Work activities have been taught it is really easy to manage. When I first started Daily 5 I got really caught up in a bunch of ‘cool’ supplies for Word Work. It ended up being a mess and I hated that choice. It is much better now that I remember to focus on the patterns in words and not the supplies. I don’t have to change the activities very often. Rainbow spelling changes based on the phonics rule and sight words so they are changing weekly. I change out the flip books to reflect word families that we have already learned so they change out every few weeks without needing to teach anything new. Sight word hunting is always changing because we add new sight words each week and the students change out their books from their book bags.
I have found that if I can make some things easier to manage then I am more likely to focus on teaching instead of supply management and/or clean up.
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