Classroom Library Facelift... or Full On Surgery!

Alright. All teachers have pet peeves. I have a couple, or a few, or maybe a lot! Haha. But each year I pick and choose one or two things to tweak to see if my peeves can become more of a perk.

One of those pet peeves was my library area.  Problems included how to organize (leveled?, genre?, none at all?), and (the big one) how kids put my organization back in order! Throughout the years, I've tried a variety of methods, but here is a picture of the latest method before the major library facelift (combo of baskets with major themes and then other books on shelves by genre/theme).

BEFORE picture

Last year, I even made a sign letting kids know how to use the book markers in the library and how I've pulled out my hair every year. It doesn't work.  

Let's start the FACELIFT!!!

I felt after this last year, I needed to change up my environment to feel fresh & new again. So what better time than now to just fix this library up. I knew it would be a tedious process, but I guess that's what summers are partially for! Teachers on a break completely??? Pishh!

Basically, I researched different organizational styles and decided to follow these directions: 

• Daily 5/CAFE article on Classroom Library Makeover - 7 Steps  
• or video explaining the process

Critical Reading & Writing (OR Close Reading?) with History

So the buzz phrase for language arts that I'm seeing everywhere is Close Reading.  In the district I'm working in, we're focusing on something called Critical Reading strategies (skills and behaviors that AVID identifies for academic success).  With Common Core directing our students to be able to read and then WRITE about what they read (and even citing proper evidence), students will definitely need better reading skills, especially with non-fiction texts.  After doing brief research on what Close Reading is, I feel the Critical Reading strategies we work on are quite similar.  Different name/term for similar things?  That doesn't happen in education (insert sarcasm).

Basically, Critical Reading strategies in our district help teach students skills that they need to read and interact with text on a deeper level.  Some key strategies Critical Reading includes are below with an emphasis on marking the text.  Knowing how to mark text is key because this is how students interact with text no matter what comprehension skill or focus they have while reading.

• mark the text (what is marked is dependent on what the focus is for that lesson)
• purposeful rereading
• ask questions
• pause & connect
• summarize
• analyze evidence
• analyze author's purpose/point of view
• writing to respond to prompts using textual evidence

ANYWAY, I wanted to share some reading and writing strategies I have used in my classroom.  Most of the texts I use are primary sources that relate to our 5th grade history curriculum.  I find that it interests students while challenging them as well.

Pocahontas Myth

The Pocahontas Myth by Chief Roy Crazy Horse article that I used can be found at this link.

Basically, students read about Crazy Horse's viewpoint of Disney's movie version/life story of Pocahontas.  I do show clips of the movie here and there so students who have not seen the movie can get a gist of its outline.

For this text, I chose to focus on clarifying (for meaning) and pausing & connecting text within text.  Therefore, our markings were specific to these strategies. We marked clarifications on the left and connections on the right. A sample of what we did is below:

Daily CAFE Conference

I attended the Daily 5 and CAFE conference in Vegas this past week.  It was very informative since I had many reservations about aspects of it since starting my implementation of Daily 5 and CAFE this year.  You can read about that post here.  The sisters had some revisions & updates to the original Daily 5 book.  They are currently finishing up the second edition.

Well, here are some things I plan on trying out since the conference.

Assessments to Guide Strategy Groups
At our school, we currently have been trying to find a way to progress monitor comprehension.  We measured fluency pretty well, but didn't have something school-wide for upper grades when it came to assessing and monitoring comprehension.  My biggest problem with fluency assessments are that by the time they get to 5th grade, my biggest concern is comprehension.  Some kids just don't read well, but man, do they think outside of the box!  Also, the fluency assessment didn't even monitor their pace or expression.  It was simply read as fast as you could in the time frame given.  Who reads like that?

Anyway, the upper elementary assessment recommended by the sisters (which looks pretty good) is the Informal Reading Inventory by Roe & Burns.  It has the fluency, accuracy, vocabulary, and (most importantly) a comprehension piece.  Our reading specialist just ordered it and I'm excited to have something that will assess students' different reading areas and abilities.

Daily 5/CAFE

Okay, so ever since I did the book studies last year at my school, I have discovered Daily 5/CAFE has been a pretty big craze, meaning I've found a ton of posts and blogs all about Daily 5/CAFE.  This is my first attempt at it this year and I wanted to post some things that are working well and reservations I have.  Obviously, trying anything new takes time and I plan to use it next year too before deciding how I want to run my reading/writing stations.

Book Boxes:
Can we talk about how EXPENSIVE magazine holders are?  Even cheap ones multiplied by 30 does not equal cheap.  Anyway, I found a pretty inexpensive way to make book boxes and did it this past summer.  Here's the site I found with the information & directions: Book Boxes from Priority Mail Boxes.  I ordered the boxes from USPS and they shipped it to me for free.  The cost of labor was spending some summer time doing all this, but after buying paint (about 3-4 cans for 15 boxes), the cost was about $0.82/box.

Telling the Kiddos You're Expecting

Well, my pants are starting to get a bit snug and I'm 15 weeks pregnant now.  I figured it was a good time to tell the students and families, especially since people (school staff) were starting to find out.  We're a pretty small school and I wanted my students to hear it from me.  If I had told my staff first, the parents would have known and then my students would be the last to hear.  So I decided last night to tell them and put something quick together this morning.  We talked about inference on Monday and I thought I would tie that into telling them 1) so as not to waste precious teaching time and 2) because they would not see it coming.