talking chips

In a meeting last year, we were introduced to the idea of "talking chips" - giving each kiddo in a small group x amount of chips. They would put one in the center whenever they wanted to say something and when they had used all of their chips, they were done talking. The idea is to keep those who like to talk a whoooole lot from talking quite so much and giving others a turn. 

I think I may try this in some of my small groups just to help with my kiddos who are eager to share their answer and don't always wait for the person talking to finish :)

"the day the crayons quit"

I happened across this book in the library today and oh my, it's super cute! I love when books can be adapted to different grade levels. I think younger kiddos would appreciate the humor but the point of view is great for older kids. I can just see them writing their own letter to Duncan as a crayon! And my two favorites from the story would be Beige Crayon (I laughed aloud at him asking "...let's be honest - when was the last time you saw a kid excited about coloring wheat?") and Blue Crayon - he's stubby from overuse and too short to see over the box :) There are so many directions you can go with this: letter writing, point of view, persuasive writing (why one color is better than another), and even adjectives. I found an activity last year where kiddos were given a non-traditional color and had to write a sentence using color adjectives to describe their picture. 

In keeping with this theme, I found these at Walmart. I bought some last year but these were new additions to the family! I had them out for decoration in my classroom and how great would these be to go along with the story?!  I also have some plush ones that I think came from my local Dollar Tree.  

fluency freebie

I needed a way to keep track of my kiddos fluency progress. I wanted to be able to see how they improved each day (and let them know as well). So I made a quick table in Word and there you go. At the top I write the week and the title of the passage.  Nothing super fancy but just what I needed (I will say I used a cuter font but for some reason, it changed when I uploaded the file)!

You can click here to download it!