A Day Our Way Linky

Oh the great and powerful schedule!  It really can be a thing of beauty.  It can make your life go so smoothly but when someone tries to change it up on you, BAM!  It's like your children think the apocalypse is coming! Lol, luckily this year my kids are pretty good about with going with the flow.  One of the issues we have is getting back to normal after we have gone with said "flow."

It is quite the coincidence that this linky came up today because just this week my team and reading coach were discussing how our schedules seem to be ever changing and how that is one thing we would really like to focus on for next year.  Now I will have LOTS of ideas to bring back to the team to help us form a plan of attack.  Couldn't have worked out better!

This is our schedule for this year.  It's a little different for me because now I am teaching all subjects but it keeps me on my toes and it's never a dull moment!

Morning Work:
This is always such a hectic time of the day.  The kids come in and get out their planners and homework from the night before and then begin whatever morning work is up on the board.  Once they start working on their morning work, which could be ANYTHING, I am calling up tables one by one to check their homework, signed planner, and give them tickets depending on where they landed on the behavior scale the day before.  While all this is going on, the morning news announcements are also running.  Needless to say it's crazy but somehow it all gets done before we go to specials at 8:50.  If anyone knows of a wonderful morning work packet for either reading, math, and/or science, PLEASE LEAVE ME A COMMENT!  I would love to find something all inclusive that people love already.

Reading Intervention:
This is 30 minute block is focused solely on our students fluency and reading comprehension.  The slight difference in this intervention block is that their reading comprehension is a specific skill they are working on.  This two week block my kids are working on comparing and contrasting as opposed to a story with questions that encompass all the skills.  This is the time where we really target our neediest students.  What's nice is that through the books we use, it's not always the same kids every time.  I might see different kids every few weeks based on where their strengths lie and depending on what skill we are learning. 

Reading/Social Studies:
MY FAVORITE!  Through this hour we do our Daily 3/Guided Reading Groups, Interactive Notebook from Erin Cobb, and any type of Social Studies I can get in!  Sadly, that doesn't happen as often as I would like but we use Social Studies Weekly and my kids seem to really enjoy that and it's a wonderful example of informational text.

During Daily 3 is when my students work on their spelling, vocabulary, and grammar through the different stations.  I'll go more into the 3-in-a-Row next week but I will show you some of the activities that they accomplish.  If you're like me then you know that finding Word Work centers for intermediate is not always the easiest.  I switch these out every couple of months just to keep things interesting but they can be used with any spelling or vocab word so they are always changing in a sense.  For writing the complete classroom journals, amazing sentences, and reading response.

Read Aloud:
I adore this time with my kids because this is when we relax and all get cozy on the floor and read a book just for the pleasure of reading.  We just finished Janitors (a Sunshine State Book) and it was good.  It took me a while to get into it but the ending was really good!!!  Now we are reading one of my all time favorites, The Sisters Grimm: Fairy Tale Detectives.  My kids are already hooked and I just love to hear them beg for more and tell me that lunch can wait, lol.

Math:
Math usually begins with a problem of the day (a problem of what we will be working on that day) and then we share all the different ways people solved it.  From there we move into our lesson in our math journals.  We write down our learning goal for the day and then begin our mini-lesson.  After the mini-lesson, they break up into their groups and do their MATH rotations (math facts, at your seat, teacher time, or hands on).

This was the beginning of the year, now it's filled with all sorts of math goodies!

With five minutes left we write down our homework and write down our reflection for our lesson using Runde's Math Reflection Fans.  I have these fans for EVERYTHING and LOVE them!  So do the kids!  They always ask if they get to do a reflection as an exit ticket and I am only to happy to oblige :o)

Science:
The last hour of the day is science and you never know what that's going to bring!  We do a lot in our Science Notebooks thanks to the Science Penguin, digital experiments, actual experiments, breaking down the lesson and more!  This year science is also a tested subject and it is pretty intense.  I'm loving it more and more as I go but still not my favorite subject, lol.

I know it's hard to see, but they are creating a series circuit here!

Afternoon Wrap-Up:
The afternoon wrap-up is the second craziest part of the day.  Safety patrols are trying to jet out while we are still packing up, cleaning up, writing down where we landed on the behavior scale in our planner and going over last minute reminders.  At the end of the day I'm always impressed what these kids absorb on the fly!

So that's it!  That's my day.  It seems so simple when I type it out here but it never really is, lol.  I like it that way though :o)  Link up with Amelia at Where the Wild Things Learn and tell us all about your schedule!