Daily 5: Chapter 6 and An Award :)

I can't believe how quickly we are flying through this book study.

Which also means we are quickly flying through summer. Gah! Where has the time gone!

Head over to Lory's page to link up and see what great thoughts and freebies she's got to offer! 

Work on Writing and Word Work

Like Chapter 5, I feel like these are two really big components to squeeze into one chapter. 

One of the things that attracted me to Daily 5 from the beginning was the philosophy that reading and writing need to become a lifestyle, not a mandatory "school thing" that kids learn to dread. 

As teachers, our presentation and classroom management are the two big factors that can shift a child's opinion of reading and writing. 

Work on Writing

When implementing Work on Writing in the past, one thing we really tried to emphasize was all the different types of writing. We introduced post cards, lists, letters, everything. Our Work on Writing station had different templates for all of these things for our kids to use. We also encouraged students to use different types of paper (lined, colored, etc.) and different types of writing utensils (markers, pens, etc.) 

The latter was particularly tough for this control freak, only because I had so many students in Third Grade taking spelling tests with crayons. (I'm a little OCD about students only using pencils.) So while making anchor charts for "Your Job/My Job" during the launching phase of Work on Writing, we also made sure to introduce each type of paper and writing utensil, brainstorming when and why you would use each different material. 

I think it's important to expose students to all sorts of writing so they can make real-world connections and understand the importance of writing in our day-to-day lives. No, we don't write 5-page narrative essays every day (really hardly ever, once you're out of school) but we do still write. 

I think the sisters do a good job of helping guide teachers on how to portray that idea to our students. 

Word Work

Word Work was another component that I struggled with in Third Grade. 

Apart from picture sorts, sight word games, and rainbow spelling words I had a hard time visualizing what Third Grade level Word Work looked like. 

Don't get me wrong, a lot of my kids still benefited from the basic word work activities. It never hurts to reinforce a foundation. We also did a lot of figurative language word activities (alliteration, synonyms, antonyms, etc.). 

Sidenote: my kids were obsessed with poetry and one Word Work activity that they LOVED was piecing together limmericks (also known as "Giggle Poetry"). Limmericks have an AABBA rhyming pattern so I took several different limmericks, scrambled each line, and stuck them in ziplock bags for students to unscramble and rewrite in their center notebooks. This activity stayed in Word Work for months! We also did a lot of whole class activities on the Smart Board using this website as a guide. 

Nevertheless, I was always looking for more intermediate Word Work activities for my kids that better aligned with their curriculum and increase their vocabulary. 

On a different note, I was nominated for another award!
(I'm telling you....this blogging community just gets better and better.)
Mission Control nominated me for the Leibster Award. I'm so glad I got this award for two reasons:
1. I love getting awards. Seriously, y'all are too sweet.
2. I've been seeing this award on other blogs and had no idea what the heck a Leibster was.

Well, now I know and have another award to add to my page!
Leibster is a German word that means beloved or favorite and is passed along to new and upcoming bloggers.

So here's what you do:
1. Link back to the person who gave it to you (and thank them immensely!)
2. Post the award to your blog.
3. Give the award to at least 5 bloggers with less than 200 followers.
4. Leave them a comment to let them know they've been nominated - and that they rock, obviously ;)

I'm giving the award to:

Brianna at Adventures of the Southern Wife

Kristin at iTeach1:1

Ashley at That's so Second Grade

Lindsey at The Good Life

Angie at Timeouts and Tootsie Rolls

All of these girls have super cute blogs! So go check 'em out - you won't be disappointed.




Hugs,