Fluency practice, wonderful writing, and math at Morning Meeting...

Fluency Practice:

This week, we added another choice to our literacy station schedule--fluency practice using an app called Audioboo on the iPad. It's a pretty basic recording app, but WOW--student motivation to read independently SOARED last week! I have never seen so many students choose "Read to Self" as their literacy station as they did last week. Hearing themselves read was a huge motivation. Students practiced their reading and recorded it until they thought it sounded fluent. They could then save their fluent recording to share with me/others. If you have a recorder of some sort at home, I'd recommend inviting your child to use it to record their reading. They loved hearing themselves and I heard some pretty amazingly fluent reading! 

Here are a few photos of students using the Audioboo app:

 

 

Wonderful Writing:

These two girls worked collaboratively to write a book about chicks last week. They were excited to share it with our class, and the class was a very appreciative audience!

Math at Morning Meeting:

Math happens a lot more than just during math time! For example, one of our morning greetings last week was the dice roll addition greeting. Students touch the dice on the interactive whiteboard, add the total, and count that many people around the circle. They greet the person they end up facing. For example, if the roll was 3+4+2, they student would count 9 people around the circle and greet the ninth person. Then that person would take a turn rolling and adding until everyone has been greeted. We discussed how it's best to start with the largest number, try to find a fact you know "in a snap" (for example, 4+3=7 and then add the last number, so 7+2=9. I am trying to break the habit of counting all the dots on the dice to determine the total. Counting on is more efficient and having fact power (knowing the sum automatically or with very little thought) is even better.