Day 2 of Daily 5 Cafe

We had excellent results in both fifth grade classes today! Yes! The talking about where the students are at and where we need to be this year helped.  I also did a better job of explaining the plan to my other group of students.  They had the opportunity to write their opinions in their journals.  This seemed to help that group to be more on-board with trying out our reading workshop model in Social Studies class.

We again had students take turns modeling the inappropriate ways to read to self followed by the appropriate ways to read to self.  I discovered that I have many actors and actresses in my class.  Some students wanted to go twice yet again.  Today I allowed everyone who wanted one turn to go and stopped with that so the kids would have time to read to themselves.  One of my classes started out with reading for seven minutes.  They did fairly well.  I only had three kids who whispered among themselves.  When they returned to the gathering area, students gave me a thumbs-up if they had successfully did what they were supposed to do to read independently and a thumbs-in-the-middle if they had some work to do.  My off-task students were honest in rating themselves.  Then I challenged them to read for ten minutes.  Again, we had success! 

My second group of fifth graders I had at the last hour of the day.  When they were dismissed from the gathering area, they tried 9 minutes of solo reading.  Some kids had troubles getting started right away, so I had to call them back to the gathering area and we tried again.  This time everyone was successful! Then we challenged ourselves to read for 12 minutes.  This time I had a couple of talkers who were slow to get started, but finally did.  I praised this group of children for reading 21 minutes in my class.  We added up the minutes that they read in other classes.  My students were excited to discover how much reading they could do in one day!  I left school feeling happy that my students had enjoyed reading today! Now next week I will try the experiment out on my fourth graders as well.  Wish me luck!

Daily 5 Reading Workshop in Social Studies

Today began my first day of implementing the Daily 5 into my Social Studies block in 5th grade.  I decided to do it today since I had both 5th grade classes in the afternoon which meant that I had each class for only an hour (versus the two days that I have them in the mornings for the hour and a half block).  I guess I figured if it did not go too well then I had less time to scurry around to find them something else to do.  I also chose today after being frustrated with the lack of enthusiasm in my Social Studies' classes over the last week.  It could just be the rainy, ugly, hot weather making everyone tired and draining us of energy.  Or, maybe the kids need another way of learning Social Studies.

I also had been reading my Daily 5 book the last few evenings and had liked how it matched up with how I used to teach Reader's Workshop (back in the days of elementary teachers teaching all subject areas).  The principal also talked about incorporating more reading into the Social Studies curriculum at our PLC meeting yesterday.  I have been wrestling with how I am going to do it since last January. I have been ordering books off of Ebay, buying books from Scholastic and library book sales, and setting up Donorschoose.org projects to add more books for the time periods that I will teach this year.  The Language Arts teacher said that she wanted to try the Daily 5 this year.  It reminded me of learning about in a graduate class I took a few years ago.  I began wondering if I could use the Daily 5 in Social Studies.

When my students came back from lunch yesterday, many of them were flipping through their library books instead of getting ready for the math intervention lesson that I was going to teach.  With the principal's words of giving the kids more time to read ringing in the back of my mind, I asked the kids if they would prefer to read their library books.  They excitedly said yes which led them to spending the next half hour enjoying their books while I jotted down a rough plan of reader's workshop.  When the students finished reading, I then had a community meeting about whether we should do an experiment and try to do more of a reader's workshop for Social Studies class.  After explaining the plan and answering questions, I asked kids to write in their journals their opinion of the plan.  Overwhelming most of them were in favor of it.  Thus began day 1 of Social Studies Daily 5 Cafe.

We began with the suggested go over the 3 ways to read a book.  Then we took down the purpose of reading individually (Read-To-Self).  All of my students really wanted to contribute, especially when they saw that I was putting names after their suggestions.  Sadly, known of them said that we read for fun, but they did use a lot of reading vocabulary in their answers (plot, theme, setting, characters).  Finally, we were able to move on to what the students do and what the teacher does during Read-To-Self time.  The students were very good with their suggestions for themselves, but couldn't quite come up with what I should be doing.  I had to explain to them my job of reading groups and conferencing (My grading and other duties should be limited to before/after school. They are my priority during the school day.)

Next began the most interesting part for most of them.  They got to take turns modeling the inappropriate ways followed by the appropriate ways to read during Read-To-Self time.  I had so many kids that wanted to model it for the class.  Each kid wanted to outshine the student before him or her.  A handful of kids wanted to go twice.  I took the book's suggestion and allowed them to get their attention now rather than later.  After the modeling, then I had the students go back to their reading areas one at a time to begin the independent reading.  My first class did really well with this, but this was my homeroom that had written the journal entries the day before.  My second class had to go back to the gathering area a few times to practice going to a quiet area to read.  I think I will have my second class journal write their opinions tomorrow so that they have more of a voice on whether we should try the workshop model (which hopefully they will want to do).

Here is the link to the Daily 5 Cafe:

Daily 5 Link

Here is a link to the Daily 5 book on half.ebay.com:

Half.ebay.com

Now wish me luck on Day 2 tomorrow!

Bubble Mapping (Prewriting for the State Project)

Knowing the writing process is important in doing research.  Therefore, my fifth graders are learning and experiencing the writing process as they study about a state.  I have been having the students write notes on a certain aspect of their state every other evening for homework.  We began taking the notes in class and students were to finish their notes for homework.

On the other evenings in between, students work on writing their rough drafts of that section.  In class that day, we take the notes that they finished for homework the previous evening and bubble map them.  We put the topic of the notes into the center bubble in their journals.  Then I model possible bubbles coming off of the main bubble depending on the types of notes the students may have written.  I also model what facts (or smaller bubbles) would be written off of those main bubbles.  Students ask clarifying questions and then begin mapping their notes, helping each other, or asking questions of me as they arise.  Then students are better able to write their rough drafts with the bubble maps.

Parent Brochure

In trying to communicate with parents, I decided to create a brochure to pass out at my school's open house to let parents know what their child will learn this year.  I used Microsoft Publisher to create my brochure, but Microsoft Word can be used just as well.  I included information on the topics covered, the different notebooks that the students will keep, my homework expectations, different ways that the parents can help their child to be successful in my class, and how the parents can contact me.  I also provided a little bit of information about myself.

Here is a picture of the inside flap, back cover, and front cover of the brochure:

Here is a picture of the inside of the brochure:

Our State Project

A couple of weeks ago I assigned my students a state project that will take them most of first quarter to complete.  I had each fifth grader choose a different state.  Given that there are about 40 fifth graders, everyone had some choice.  The states were chosen on a first come, first served basis.  The research project will help them meet four of their Language Arts Common Core Standards.  They will be gathering and reading information from at least three different sources.  They will learn how to write notes on what they are reading, how to use an index to find the best pages to read to find information, how to organize their notes to make sense, and how to write, revise, and edit their report.  Students will also work on their speaking skills as they present their state information and their listening skills as they record what classmates teach them from their presentations.  I am very excited to incorporate many of the reading, writing, speaking, and listening skills that students will need to be successful in the upper grades and at their future careers.  I am also excited that I am starting the groundwork of teaching kids how to break down big projects into smaller steps so that everything can be completed on time.  My students will work on responsibility and time management skills as they complete a small section of the project each evening for homework.

Here is the link to the State Project Directions, Rubrics, and Language Arts Common Core Standards that the project is meeting:
State Project 

Purpose

The purpose of this blog is to share ideas of how to teach 5th grade Social Studies.  While I have been teaching fifth grade for the last four years, I only taught Social Studies for two of those years.  Those Social Studies hours were only 1-2 hours a week (unless you count the Social Studies I incorporated into the Language Arts block).  This year I have the privilege of teaching fifth grade and fourth grade Social Studies.  I am glad that my students will now receive 5 hours of Social Studies instruction a week.  Now I have the task of finding fun ways to make our early US history come alive for them so that they can make meaning from what they are learning.  I am also trying to help my students meet the Language Arts Common Core Standards as well.  I look forward to the fun challenge and hope others may share their ideas or be able to use some of my ideas!