Fluency on Fridays

My Fridays are completely different (schedule-wise) than the rest of my week.  Monday-Thursday are identical with an hour & a half of Language Arts plus a 30-minute block for Social Studies.  I do this twice since there are 2 sections of 6th grade in my building.

But Fridays are another story.  On Fridays we go to the library, which is 30 minutes long.  To be honest, I considered skipping "library time" altogether this year, because a part of me feels like it wastes time & isn't very productive.  In the end, I chose a time for both of my classes to visit the library once a week because our awesome library aide, Mrs. Genton, does a great job of adding minilessons to make it a worthwhile experience.

In addition to our 30-minute library time, we also are required to administer a weekly assessment through a system called Pro-Ohio.  This is straight-up test prep, but it's "disguised" as something more because it has to be done online.  Unfortunately, my kids won't take an online state assessment for a couple more years.  Instead, I print out the test so they can read the passages, mark them up with their own thoughts & ideas, and then bubble in an answer document at their seats (you know...what they're going to be asked to do later this year, for the state test?!).  Then later each student takes his or her answer sheet to the computer & quickly logs in his or her answers into the system.

The last wrench I throw into my Friday is a weekly fluency check.  I follow a variation of 6-Minute Solution, where the kids read aloud the same selection for one minute with a partner.  They do this once on Mondays and again on Wednesdays.  On Fridays, however, I have them read through the passage to me, so I can get a gauge on each student's fluency.  At minimum, it takes 20 minutes to get through my entire class, but it always is more like 30-35 by the time it's all said & done.  There's also a comprehension component, so the students are responsible for 4 multiple choice & 1 open-ended response question, too.

So on Friday, my day typically looks like this:
*Homeroom/pass out Friday Folders with the week's important papers to go home
*30 minutes in the library
*Back in the room, students work on Pro-Ohio assessment at their seats.  While they work, I call each  student back to read aloud to me, then return to their seats to finish their Pro-Ohio and work on the fluency-check questions.  When they've finished all of that work, they can choose one of their new library books to read, work on words with Scrabble or Boggle, or work on an unfinished writing piece.  I can usually cycle each kid to the computer to log in the Pro-Ohio answers during this time, and often there might be a spelling or grammar activity to finish, too.
*Then we move on to our 30 minutes of Social Studies, and have just enough time to finish up with our weekly lotto before we switch for the day.

That's it!  It's a relatively easy day, I'll admit, but it works for us and the kids like being able to move around the room while they're working.  I always go into the day feeling like I should have more activities planned, because on paper, it doesn't seem (to me) like all that much work is being done.  Yet inevitably, we run out of time and are scrambling to finish up each week, which will probably surprise no one :)

Spelling City

One way I've been trying to have my students practice thier spelling & vocabulary words is through this great site, Spelling City.  The kids can play games, practice their words, and hopefully find new ways to use their new words.