Sound Cubes

Posted on July 4, 2017 by lisasporn

Our class has started using the new sound cubes to help us when we’re recording our voice on an iPad. These sound cubes block out all surround sound so we can clearly hear our voices on recordings we’ve made, e.g. we’ve recorded our voices using the Seesaw app to listen to our reading fluency, our sounding out skills, our ability to back up and re-read if we make a mistake and to hear what we sound like when we’re reading out aloud.

Our sound cubes are a fabric box (cube) and have egg cartons glued on cardboard along each side. Some have sound proof foam too. The cubes are really easy to use and we can’t wait until we try them again – what a great reason to keep reading.

Mannequin Challenge

Posted on November 22, 2016 by lisasporn

screen-shot-2016-11-22-at-8-28-16-pm Today as our class set up for our Daily 5 Listen to Reading session we started off with something a bit different!! We love to listen to stories using our iPads, iPods, laptops and computers. We listen to stories from Sunshine Online, Ziptales, Storyline Online and some different book apps.

It’s really important to listen to reading because:

it gives us ideas about how to read using expressive voices for characters
it shows us how to pronounce words
we listen to the speed or pace of the reading (steady, faster, slower paces as needed)
it can teach us how to sound out difficult words
it gives us examples of how to read fluently.

We also have some people doing read to self today because they’re reading books that they just LOVE.

Today we started Listen to Reading by doing the ‘mannequin challenge’. This viral video trend is where people remain frozen in action, like a mannequin. We’re sure you’ve all heard of it – well now you can see how our class does it!

What do you think of our Mannequin Challenge? Did you see the students from the class next door watching us – they just couldn’t resist.

Daily 5 – Listen to Reading

Posted on August 16, 2016 by lisasporn

Every Tuesday we use our laptops, desktop computers and iPads to listen to different books online. Our school has subscribed to Sunshine online and Ziptales and we LOVE them! There are lots of different books to choose from and there’s lots of different levels that suit everyone’s different reading levels and interests. We also do listen to reading on other days – depending on how many devices we can use.

Here’s some photos from today’s listen to reading session:

Tell us about some of your favourite stories.

Whisper Phones

Posted on April 12, 2016 by lisasporn

We now have some brand new ‘whisper’ phones in our class to use during reading activities, as a part of our Daily 5 Reading tasks.

We LOVE our whisper phones which were made by John Nuske, Isaac’s Dad from our class. John made 80 whisper phones – a class set for each of our Year 2 team classes. We use our phones to whisper reading our books from our good fit book boxes. We MUST whisper into the phone because it’s too loud in our ears if we speak into them. These phones are a wonderful way for us to hear ourselves read and help us to further develop our reading skills.

We’d like to say a huge THANK YOU to John for making our whisper phones – he collected the materials, negotiated cheaper prices for our materials, had materials donated by Bunnings and Reece’s Plumbing in Blackwood and spent many hours putting them together. You’re amazing John – thank you so much. Also, thanks to Isaac for being a handy helper.

Daily 5 Reading CAFE

Posted on March 21, 2016 by lisasporn

As we continue to make progress with our daily reading activities we’ve added 3 more reading skills to focus on whilst reading.

Ask questions while reading – readers should ask themselves questions before, during and after reading a book. It helps with comprehension of the book being read and it further engages the reader in the reading process. It also helps us to remember more details and information about the book.

Make a mental picture or image –Making a picture in your mind helps to recall facts more clearly. This is a way to make sure we remember more of the story we’ve read or heard.

Chunk letters / parts together –

Chunking letters and sounds together within a word to make decoding more effi- cient, rapid, and accurate.

Daily 5 CAFE Reading

Posted on February 24, 2016 by lisasporn

We read everyday in our class because it’s so important to practise all the time!

We use the Daily 5 CAFE model in our reading every day. We choose a different reading strategy to focus on. CAFE is an acronym for Comprehension, Accuracy, Fluency and Expanding vocabulary. Each of these areas are really important for and as good readers we know we need to practise them everyday.

We have our CAFE menu on display in our classroom and use it all the time. As we practise each specific reading strategy we add it to our CAFE menu – we often go back and refer to our menu when we’re reading.

This week we are working on:

Check for understanding.

As we read our good fit books we always ask ourselves-

Does this make sense?
Remember did I read and try to retell the story.
Use the pictures as clues.

Accuracy

We have also learnt about this strategy-

Use the pictures – do the words and pictures match. (How can we use this to help us understand the story?)

What books do like to read?

What areas of reading would you like to learn this year?

What reading strategies do you use when you read?

Listen to Reading

Posted on February 23, 2016 by lisasporn

Our class has been developing our reading skills using the Daily 5 CAFE program to help us.

On different days of the week we do:

read to self
partner reading
listen to reading.

Every Tuesday we use our iPads and iPods to listen to stories being read to us. We use different apps to listen to stories or we use the Ziptales website – we LOVE this site as there are lots of different books for different levels of reading skills. There’s a good fit book on the site for our entire class.

Here’s photos from today’s session.

Deep reading time

Posted on August 11, 2015 by lisasporn

Today we changed our partner reading session – just to keep things interesting!

We used our non0-fiction texts that relate to our inquiry unit about livings things – their needs and what our responsibilities are in looking after them.

We looked for the different features of a non fiction text:

We LOVED reading with our partners and learning so much new information about living things, plants and their needs. So many of our questions from the Wondering Wall were answered -as well as had us thinking about new questions to add.

We really enjoyed using non fiction texts for partner reading and we LOVED having a long reading session to really take time to read different texts.

Listen to Reading

Posted on March 3, 2015 by lisasporn

As a part of our Daily 5 reading we LOVE to use our devices to listen to stories on our iPads and iPods.

We have lots of different apps we use for different stories, a favourite one is Storychimes.

When we listen to reading we can hear how to use expression to make stories more interesting and come to life, we look at how the pictures support the words that tell the story and we love to hear someone read to us.

We use rockstars to help more than 1 person to hear the same story – you’ll see how we use our rockstars in our photos. We plug our earphones into the rockstar so that each of us can hear the story.

We’re going a on a reading picnic!

Posted on October 21, 2014 by lisasporn

Today our class went on a reading picnic. It was such a lovely day outside we decided to read outside and enjoy the warm weather. We packed our picnic blankets, book boxes, chairs and pillows. We went out to the oval and sat under the shade of the big gum tree and got into our reading.

We did read to self or read with a partner and loved our reading picnic.

Here’s the photos from our picnic.

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