Daily 5 a little late

We're almost halfway through the year, and I'm just getting started on Daily 5. Since I'm the Title I reading specialist now, I wasn't quite sure of the best way to do this. Actually, I didn't think I could. I've been doing lessons and activities that are for the entire group and working that way. Now that I've been at this job for a few months, though, I decided it was time to try it out. 

So today I had my students come in and find books that were on their reading level (or one above or below). They grabbed 1-3 since I don't have them for long, and most of them were really excited to put together a book bag. We don't have any nice bags or baskets yet, but I (well, actually my wonderful para) just labeled gallon size Ziploc bags and put them in containers based on their group. Then I can pull out each container at the beginning and let them find their bag.

My plan is that I'll do read to self, work on writing, and word work as my centers (since my classes are so small and time is limited), and I'll try them 2 or 3 times a day. Then I want to do whole group lessons to review the new skills they're working on or to work on test-taking strategies. I'm about to lose my para for a few weeks because she's having surgery, so I'll be on my own for a little while. I think this system will help with that, though. Then when she comes back, I'm going to have her help me either pull kids or help with the word work station.

What do you do for word work with the upper grade students? I have kids ranging from level I-Q that I see, and they are from grades 3-5. I was thinking prefixes and suffixes for my higher 4th and 5th grade students. Then for my lower ones, I want them to practice a LOT of decoding strategies. Any recommendations?

2 new products

I finally made another novel unit, and I'm SO excited about it! This is MY favorite Christmas book. I cry when I read it. I have been wanting to put together a literature unit for it, and today was finally that day. I hope you're able to use it and enjoy it!

This week, I have also been working on decoding strategies with my students. I've noticed that this is something my 5th graders especially struggle with, and I wanted to download some posters to put in my room. But when I looked online, none of them quite matched. So I created my own! Here's an example of one, but there are 8 total. Click on the picture to go to my store!

Finally, there are only a few more days before my giveaway ends, so don't forget to enter!