Summer School Review

Ayyyyoooo!! I am sad to say that we have returned from our cruise. While there are oodles of exciting things coming up in the next few weeks, it was just so lovely to be away... just the hubster and myself. One of my favorite things about cruising is that there is no technological temptation. It takes me a few hours to get used to not checking my phone every 4.5 seconds, but it ends up being such a blessing to just cut ourselves off from the rest of the world and be totally immersed in paradise. Now that I am over a week removed from the end of Summer School Programs 1 & 2, and set to start Summer School Program 3, I thought it would be a good time to debrief the first two programs. You can CLICK HERE to check out how each program was set up in terms of student demographics, etc... but here is where I divulge the process... the ups and downs... the ins and outs... and give my ultimate evaluation of each program. Program #1 District Summer School
Training: 2 hour session in mid-June. Supplies were handed out and a packet including a list of Dolch and Fry words was given. This packet also included recommendations for activities to teach sight words.
Supplies given: 

• 25 pencils
• 15 boxes of crayons (8 crayons per box)
• 1 package of sentence strips
• 1 box of chalk

Sight Word Activities:

• Sight Word BINGO
• See and Spell word
• Cheer and Chant
• Blast Off

Week 1: 5 students attended. I assessed all students using my own sight word assessment -- available in my TpT Store HERE. I found that of my 5 students, only 1 students knew more than 10 of the 50 words. I knew that I had to jump right on the sight word wagon , ESPECIALLY considering the students with whom I was working were in grades 2 and 3. Based on their DRA2 scores, even though my students were in 2nd and 3rd grade, the highest student was barely at an end-of-Kindergarten reading level as our district requires students to be on a level 4 entering 1st grade. Sight Words for the Week:

• the
• like
• got
• of
• from

Read-Alouds for the Week:

• Huck Runs Amuck (Monday-Tuesday)
• The Relatives Came (Wednesday-Thursday-Friday)

Poem of the Week: Down By the Bay Skills for the Week:

• CVC words
• Word families

Week 2: 11 students attended. We continued with our schedule and the kids got right into the swing of things!
Sight Words for the Week: Read-Alouds for the Week: Poem of the Week:  Skills for the Week:
Week 3: 15 students attended.
Week 4: DRA testing ALL. WEEK. LONG. By this point, I had 17 students. Sadly, 2 of them began attending this week so it made it a little difficult. I tested them last, but they demonstrated no growth. Each morning we followed the same schedule...

• 8:30 am: Arrival/Breakfast/Attendance
• 9:00 am: Morning Meeting
• Greeting
• Question of the Day
• Poem of the Week
• Skills practice (i.e. short vowels, blends, magic e, etc...)
• 9:30 am: Read-aloud
• 10:00 am: Literacy Centers
• Roll-Write-Stamp-Build
• Computers -- Lexia
• Fluency Practice
• Teacher Group
• Sight Word games with my Paraprofessional
• 11:00 am: Writing Activity
• Usually a quick-write followed by skills practice
• 11:30 am: Share-Out
• 11:45 am: Sight Word Song or Game
• 12:00 pm: Lunch
• 12:30 pm: Dismissal

Being that only 15 students attended on our busiest day, no group was larger than 3 students at any time and on many days, students were able to work independently. On these days, I was at first concerned that the kiddos would get distracted wanting to work with a friend, but each student really took ownership of their work and ended up being incredibly focused! I was so surprised! This also allowed me plenty of time to get through assessing each student when the program began to wrap up.

When all was said and done, of the students who consistently attended the program, 4 students improved their DRA2 score of at least 1 level.

Program #2 Principal-Funded Cusp Program   Training: None -- My Principal handpicked members of our staff based on our various skills.
Weekly breakdown: Each week ran in the same manner. All students were present from Day 1. We followed a Balanced Literacy approach -- Short, targeted mini-lessons in the areas of phonics, vocabulary, fluency, and reading comprehension followed by workstations and small group teacher stations to better enhance skills taught. Student to teacher ratio was 4:1 which was phenomenal and I had the opportunity to co-teach with one of my closest friends!
Assessment: We used the DRA2 as well as the assessment from my Sight Word Assessment Pack (find it HERE) to monitor student progress. At the end of the month-long program, the students averaged a growth of 11 sight words and a DRA2 growth of 1 level.
Final Determinations
Of the two programs, which would I be the most likely to participate in again? Honestly, each had it's Pros and Cons. The first is a tried and true program that runs every year and therefore, a number of elements have been in place and the department running the program is incredibly organized.
The 2nd program was a pilot through a grant that my Principal acquired. She relied heavily on our Assistant Principal who is transitioning to Principal of her own school (Yay! Congrats, Ms. M! You totally deserve it!) and there were times when we all felt uneasy with the organizational level. But honestly, any pilot is shaky.... and when it comes down to it, our kids really showed growth. It was wonderful to spend so much time with our Tier 2 students and really work to push them over that hump.
I am incredibly proud of the work that I did this summer. Hopefully, I will have the opportunity to do something similar next year.
But, for now... let's get back into that classroom of mine and get it set up! I've got 24 little faces to prepare for!

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5 for Friday!

Time for a little LINKY PARTY! I just love Doodle Bugs Teaching! If you're stopping by as part of the linky, then THANKS! :) If you haven't heard of her, check out her blog! She has some pretty amazing ideas! A quick clip from the music video my colleagues and I are working on! This was from my grade partner and I goofing around in a dry-run. I can't say much right now as I have been sworn to secrecy, but I cannot wait to share the final product with you all! :)

I posted my first product on Teachers Pay Teachers and am throwing a sale this week! This Sight Word Assessment Pack has weekly assessment, complete word lists, and parent information letters. Refer to my post about this product HERE and click the photo to link to the product page. It's only $2.40 for a year's worth of assessment through Saturday! Please remember to leave me feedback or comment back here. I want to put out my best work and would love to hear any recommendations! I saw this little gem posted by a Facebook friend this week and literally LAUGHED OUT LOUD! Report card time has come once again! Our report cards are done entirely online which makes it less tedious, but there are definitely limitations! For example, we have to fill out components for all 4 marking periods, but then a SEPARATE section for the full year evaluation. Since I teach Kindergarten, a lot of the areas that I am asked to fill out don't really apply and aren't truly appropriate, developmentally speaking. This marking period, I tried to get a jump on report cards, so here's hoping that I can get them done nice and early! :) My kiddos are FINALLY embracing my crazy obsession with writing! One of my little girls shyly handed me this note. She found it in her mailbox the other day following our literacy workstations! At the end of the day, she asked for it back and told me that she wanted to write a "love note back to him". I am so lucky to be looping with this group of kiddos. They are just so unbelievably sweet to one another! And one of my favorite moments from the school year... During Family Fun Day (our school's version of Field Day), the kiddos had the opportunity to get their faces painted and my little one on the left said, "I want to be a grown up!" so they gave him this HILARIOUS goatee!! And of course his best friend followed right behind him! Many thanks to their families for letting me post! I hope you all had an exciting week and I am extremely jealous of those of you who are finished already! 9 more days! (8 if we don't count today!)

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Sight Word Studies & TpT Sale!

Good Morning, Everyone!
I am so excited to be sharing my first product on TpT with you all! As we wrap up the school year (I can't believe that we've still got 11 days!), I reflect back on our school year. Last year, my grade level team and I decided to test out a greater emphasis on sight word recognition as a method of boosting fluency and reading comprehension. We had no parameters set by our school or district and put it all together on our own. Initially, we created a list of 36 sight words and required students to successfully identify 17 words by the end of the year. Our students blew that out of the water!
This year, we decided to expand upon that idea. Last August, I sat and developed a list of 50 words. For this year, we have doubled the expectation -- students are expected to reach proficiency at 36 words. Well, this year... our students DESTROYED their goals! Through the year, I ended up creating TWO ADDITIONAL LISTS of 50 words apiece and check out these stats!!

• 23 out of 24 students in my class have COMPLETELY MASTERED at least the first 50 words taught!
• 5 students have mastered ALL 150 words!
• 12 students have mastered OVER 100 words!
• 24 out of 24 students have reached the benchmark of 36 words!
• Last year: 11/24 exceeded proficiency on the DRA2, this year? 22/24 exceeded proficiency!

I am extremely proud of my KinderSTARS for all of their hard work towards achieving mastery in sight word recognition this year! They were motivated and worked diligently on a daily basis. What amazes me most, though, is that we were so focused on the benchmark of 36 words -- just imagine what will happen when we raise the bar again next year!!

One tool that was particularly helpful was a series of weekly assessments. Every Monday, I sent a letter home to families indicating the 5 focus words of the week. I asked that parents work with their child on learning these sight words both in and out of context and help to prepare them for a Friday quiz. Students practiced these sight words during our morning meeting, through literacy workstations, during guided reading, etc... I plan to share more regarding our sight word strategies in the future! Each Friday, they took their quiz which included the current week's words as well as all past words in ensure they retained the previous words.

What was wonderful about these quizzes is that they were done QUICKLY. The goal was sight word recognition so each one-on-one quiz took 1-2 minutes per student and could be completed by myself, a paraprofessional, or our building intern!

The last step was that I would make a copy of the quizzes to keep for student records and data collection, then cut up and send home each weekly result to the parents. My families really enjoyed checking the back packs for these quizzes each week and the kiddos LOVED celebrating their successes!

For my first-ever TpT product, I have put together all of the parent letters and weekly quizzes into a master Sight Word Pack. Right now, they only cover the first 50 words, but I will add the next 2 lists soon.

Click here to grab it up while it's still on sale! :) Also, please leave feedback. Since this is my first product, I would love to hear what I can improve upon for next time!

And please comment below on how (or whether) you teach and use sight words in the classroom!

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Let's Talk About Books Linky!

As I mentioned in a post last week, I will be linking up with numerous blogs through the summer months! Today I will be linking up with Mrs. Jump's Class to for her We <3 Books linky!

I absolutely LOVE the idea for this linky party because I am OBSESSED with Children's Literature as I so many of you are! I studied Children's Literature almost exclusively throughout both my undergraduate and graduate careers! I love learning about new books and getting ideas about teaching with old favorites! I actually keep a binder with lists of books I enjoy and lesson/activity ideas to correspond with them! I suppose I should make a mental note to post about the binder setup in case anyone else is interested!! ANYWAY... ON WITH THE LINKY! :)
One of my all-time favorites is Big Al by Andrew Clements and Yoshi! I have read it so many times that my copy is BEAT UP!! I should probably invest in another copy or two ;) For those who have not read Big Al, it follows a fish named Big Al on his quest for friendship. He finds that his appearance frightens and offends others, making it a struggle to find and keep friends. This story hits home for a lot of our kiddos. Even my little ones in Kindergarten! One of the best parts of this book are the SPECTACULAR illustrations!


Check out some samples below:

I just love how vibrant the colors are! And each image has such detail... I could spend hours with this book, just pouring over the illustrations!
I like to use this book right alongside The Rainbow Fish by Marcus Pfister. Reading the two books together provides with a wonderful, authentic opportunity to discuss vocabulary relating to friendship and character traits.  Since both characters make changes to themselves throughout their respective stories, the kiddos all take away something different! My favorite part of reading these stories together is the debate that takes place at the end! It is truly magical to hear my KinderSTARS try to prove their reasoning for each and every choice!
Enjoy!

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Blizzard Nemo Productivity!

This has been a wild couple of weeks. I have not been in school since February 7th. My school happens to sit right on the water in Bridgeport, CT right in the epicenter of where the blizzard dumped over 3 feet of snow in under 12 hours. The city is still digging out and as far as I know the schools have not yet been touched. This coming week was scheduled to be our Winter Break and there was much discussion regarding possibly canceling the break to get our kiddos back to school after over a week off, but unfortunately it did not happen. I will not be seeing my KinderSTARs until February 25th! I cannot believe there will have been an entire 18 days off since last seeing them. I sure hope they've been practicing!

We were supposed to celebrate the 100th Day of School on February 12th and we missed Valentine's Day. The kids were extremely excited about both days and hopefully we'll be able to squeeze them in when we return.

I was not expecting to have school canceled on the 8th so I did not bring nearly as much work home as I would have liked. However, I got myself started on a number of projects that I have been thinking up recently. I am super excited to unleash these new projects to the kids, I have a feeling they'll love them.

Once everything is up and running in my classroom I will post pictures. However, a rundown of what I have been up to:

• Sight Word Poems
• I've been putting sight word poems on sentence strips to use for guided reading, whole group lessons, and literacy centers. I have a number of plans for exactly how I will use these with my students, but I will go into more detail with that later.
• Alphabet Anchor Charts
• I was assigned Kindergarten very late in the summer and like most, had to make due with what I had on hand. We currently have two 3 alphabet charts that we use in our class. All are very small. This week I created a rainbow alphabet to coordinate with our rainbow theme. I am currently collecting photos, labels, etc... to add to each 11" X 14" letter.
• Sight Word Star Search
• I love my KinderSTARs and I love that through our PBIS program we reward our students with Star tickets. I try my best to bring stars into our activities as often as I can. The kiddos always brighten up as they are familiar with the idea of stars and truly have a great deal of schema to go along with the idea. I found these sturdy yellow foam stars at Dollar Tree this week and bought enough to cover all of our sight words covered throughout the year. Using Crayola Slick Stix I wrote 1 sight word on each star. My plan is to hang these from the ceiling then create binoculars out of toilet paper tubes. I thought it might be a nice alternative to Write the Room placing a much heavier focus on sight words as it is a grade-level goal this year.

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On another note, my husband and I are set to embark on our, albeit delayed, honeymoon. We could not be more excited. We have chosen to take a week-long cruise to the Bahamas. Neither of us have ever been on a cruise before and our excitement has kept us from getting any sleep the past few nights. Everything is packed and we're just waiting on my father to pick us up so that we can head to the city. I honestly LOVE the snow, but I am definitely eager to feel a little warm sunshine on these cheeks! :)

xoxo Tiffany

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Roll a Sight Word Freebie!

It has been awhile since my last update and for that, I apologize. I haven't yet finished my Early Finishers Pack, but I am uploading a freebie! Feel free to download the Roll a Sight Word component. This is one my kiddos' favorites. Anytime I throw in dice, they're ecstatic! 

There are 13 pages in this pack. I keep these sheets in file folders by group based on which word list each of my students has reached. With our rainbow theme, everything is easily color coordinated and makes it simple for my kiddos to find everything that they need. 

My kids typically play this game in pairs with colored pencils or fine tip markers. Once rolling a word, they must read it aloud to their partner. If correct, they write it in a box, if not... the other partner copies it into the box. Click the photo to access the files! Enjoy! And please leave feedback if you download! :)

xoxo Tiffany

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