Classroom Thoughts

After attending a summer institute on reading and writing, thoughts are swimming throughout my brain.

For those of you who teach, please keep reading and feel free to offer ideas, comments, and suggestions.

For those of you who don't teach and read my blog...thanks...you can either read on or find something else to do! :)

• Word wall - Do you have one? I heard Ann Marie Corgill speak and she showed where instead of displaying all of the words, they were in a pocket along the wall. One letter per pocket envelope. Kids were invited to go and grab the word or words they needed to spell. I like the idea of having more wall space to display their learning and other things. I also know that after a while, unless we are playing a word wall game, students barely looked up there. I truly am contemplating taking down the letters and making them more accessible to my students. I would also keep an updated list of word wall words so students could read them with partners, play hangman, etc.
• Reader's notebooks - Do you do them? If yes, when do your students write in them? I often felt like I had to tell the students to write in them and what to write. Granted, some of the writing were tricky words, the books they had read, and what thinking was happening in their head. I had to be the one though...it wasn't the students instigating the writing.
• Vocabulary - One of my coworkers has the students keep a vocabulary folder where she teaches the words suggested from the reading program. I had allowed my students to write down their own tricky words or words they wanted to learn. We wrote down words from my read-alouds and some students chose to write down the words, but they were made available to all who wanted them. I also want to do a little more guided group work with investigating spelling patterns based on the spelling inventory that I do from Words Their Way. So, should I do this in a folder? Or maybe just in their Reader's Notebook?
• Second grade teachers - Anyone else do writer's notebooks? I normally don't introduce them right away...I don't think the kids are ready quite yet. When they are, we begin them.

Thanks in advance for comments.