Series book talks

Just a little share...book talk ribbons I made to assist my students with the "talk" in their series book clubs.

Enjoy!

Characters in a Series

SOS!! Please someone help us!! What is happening in education today? 

Anyway...today I had my students focus and think critically about what their characters are saying and doing, as well as looking at how these characters are reacting to problems and events in the story. They are struggling with developing ideas about the characters and how they have gotten those ideas from these elements.

I put together a graphic organizer for them to use to help them in a visual sense. It worked for this lesson! I am hoping that they will gradually be able to do it without the organizer. 

PEACE,
Carol

Teaching Inference

Involved in the Reading and Writing Project's Unit 5...Series Clubs and working on having kids infer giving text evidence. I have always found that teaching kids, especially 2nd graders, to do this kind of work as readers is such a challenge. Not only for them but for me as well. Each year each group is so different. I have a lot (10) of struggling readers and have them working on word attack and simple beginning reader strategies. They are just simply, not ready for inference work at their independent levels.  Just my thought for the day.

PEACE,

Carol

On to unit 5 in our math series...double digit subtraction with regrouping. I put together a couple of centers to have kids practice the skill.  Most of them have it but they forget so quickly. Below is the place value chart I printed out and had laminated. The kids use dry erase markers and a damp tissue. Works great.

PEACE,
Carol

Hosted a Primary Lead Teacher group meeting today at my school. It is such a wonderful learning experience to get to work with this great team of teachers. We got to share some of the great things that each of us is doing. We also went into my classroom today. Staff developer did a mini lesson on raising the level of the jots kids are making. She had them state their opinion, give a reason for it, and give an example from the text to support their ideas. The "giving the reason" part seemed to be the biggest challenge for my kids. I am going to reteach it tomorrow. We'll see how it goes!
Anyway, I put together two ways that I think will help my kids write longer off of an idea that they recorded on a sticky note during their reading. (Part of the Opinion Writing Unit of Study from the Reading and Writing Project curricular calendar).

PEACE,
Carol

This is the anchor chart that I created to model what a jot would look like at each level.

Anchor Charts for Series Book Clubs Unit

As I sit here thinking about lesson planning for the upcoming week…looking at the kid's jots from the lessons completed on character traits this past week...I am thinking that I could possibly move most of them into inferencing, as they think about the actions and traits of the characters in their series books. My ELLS are struggling a bit so I am going to stick to having them sort feelings and traits for a little while longer. Below are the two anchor charts we are working with in the current unit on series clubs.
Happy Saturday!

                      

Character Traits vs Feelings

In my classroom today we worked on how to distinguish between character feelings and character traits. The kids were asked to meet with their series book club members after a brief mini-lesson. They began by sorting a variety of feeling words and traits words. Then they were instructed to talk about how the character's feelings in their series books have changed across the text so far. Finally, they were asked to identify some traits of the main character in the series and to support their thinking with evidence from the text. They had a great time and the level of talk was excellent! Here's a peek!

PEACE,
Carol

                                      

                                      

Inquiry Teams

My students began their inquiry teams this Monday. They browsed baskets of books related to weather and went on a "nonfiction weather words hunt." They devised a list of words that they predicted they would find as they browsed the baskets full of weather related resources. They each chose a word and kept a tally on how many times they came across those words as they explored the materials in the baskets. Great lesson. Kids loved it and learned so much!

PEACE,
Carol

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year! I had my kids write about what they thought they could do to make a difference in the new year. They wrote some magnificent responses!

Inquiry unit on Weather

Started a new inquiry unit on Weather. Just thought I would share the bin labels that I made. Enjoy!

Peace,
Carol