Book clubs in first grade?! It may seem like a stretch, but the Spring is such a great time to get your students ready and used to reading, thinking about, and discussing books with their peers instead of me, the teacher! When done right, it can be such a fun learning experience for both […]
Fluency is such an important component of reading. Low fluency rate may not always be detected until late elementary or early middle school. Suddenly, a student is expected to read more curriculum in a short period of time, and is not able to keep up with his or her studies. This is one area of reading that I wanted to tweak so my students would be well prepared. I realize that in order to increase a student's fluency rate, he or she needs to practice reading. I reflected back to my personal experience of joining a book club. My book club read a different genre each month . . . i.e. we didn't read chick lit. each month. I thought this must be what it's like for my students. You know, reading a book that's not really your personal taste. Whenever the genre wasn't my taste, it took me all month to read it. Most months I would have a cram session a couple of days before my book club met to finish the book. UGH! This must be what my students feel like! I decided to do something a little different to help my students. On Wednesdays, students are encouraged to bring a book of their choice to school. It can be a book they checked out of the library or one of their personal books. If they don't have one, they may check a book from my class library. I give them 20 minutes of time to read in class. Then we meet in book club groups. Students are grouped differently each week. Sometimes we meet according to the genre of the book. Other time I will have students meet in groups of 3 and do a book talk, mini-commercial about their book. Each student has a Book Club folder. I attached the assignment sheets (below) in the 3 prongs in the folder. I made each student a Book Club booklet. I cut construction paper in half, put copier paper in it, and stapled it together. The assignments are numbered. Each week, students complete an assignment about the chapter they read at school. Some weeks I assign a specific assignment, other weeks I let students choose their assignment. I found these assignments from different websites, but I'm sorry I can't remember which one or I would give him or her credit for the great ideas. Please let me know if you know the source. Book club is making a difference! I'm sure the key factor is CHOICE! Choice of book and some weeks they have choice of assignment. Below are the forms I use:
As our reading tutor training continues, we’ve learned a lot of great new ideas about how to teach the basics of reading and phonics to students of all ages, especially students that are English language learners (ELL). One of the things that we’ve done some extensive work with is the vowel circle. The vowel circle is composed of five categories designed to help students recognize vowels patterns in their spelling and in their every day speech. It starts out with the first group that is the smilers. Smilers are vowels or vowel patterns that, when said, have your mouth form a smile-like shape, such as the “ee” in cheese or the “ay” in play. Next come the open vowels. When open vowels or vowel patterns are used the mouth usually ends in an open position, such as the “aw” in saw. The round vowels are ones that usually leave your mouth in a rounded position with your lips slightly puckered, such as the “o-e” in tune or the “oa” in coat. The crazy r’s are there to remind students that r’s make vowels do crazy things that they wouldn’t do around other consonants and that –er, -ir and –ur all sound the same in a word. The sliders are an interesting category because they make your mouth slide from one position (either open, round or smiler) to another, such as the “ou” in out when your mouth slides from open to smiler. The vowel circle is a great tool to use in many elementary grade levels. It really helps students to make associations with vowels and create connections in their brains where they might not have had them before. The vowel circle enables the students to connect vowel sounds to a visual (the pictures in the circle and the actual text of the vowel pattern) to a sound, to a feel in their mouths. Students that use the vowel circle correctly and constantly in class and small group have shown a marked improvement in both their spelling and their decoding skills. If you’re working in an elementary school or simply want to work on pronunciation at home, looking at the vowel circle is a good place to start. Happy Reading!
In a book club?? We asked some actual book club members what they're favorite books have been that they've read in their club. Here are 25 of their answers!
Two teachers who share the passion of literacy, teaching, and life-long learning
Whether your little one is a new reader or into their own chapter books, starting your own book club for kids is easy with these tips and tricks!
We began our book club this year with a Kate DiCamillo novel, strawberry mice, some illegal soup and a moat. Welcome to our Tale of Despereaux Book Club.
Currently, we are in our Historical Fiction Book Club Unit and students are applying the skills/strategies they learned in our Social Issues Book Club Unit to this unit. To launch the unit, we have been reading and discussing various historical fiction picture books, such as: Henry's Freedom Box by Ellen Levine and Kadir Nelson, Freedom Summer by Deborah Wiles, Freedom on the Menu:The Greensboro Sit-Ins by Carole Boston Weatherford, The Other Side by Jacqueline Woodson, and The Butterfly by Patricia Polacco. While reading these picture books, we have been thinking and talking about the time periods, historical conflicts, and how the characters' actions/choices are impacted by the groups they belong to as well as the time period. As we read these picture books, we created charts as a class like we normally do during every read aloud (see photos of charts below). Students have been applying the skills/strategies they are learning through mini-lessons and read aloud to their historical fiction book club books that their group chose to read. Each book club chose at least three books that either focus on one time period so they can become an "expert" on that time period or are reading books across different time periods and are reading them in sequence. Most book clubs this year chose the latter and have planned out how to read their books in order according to the time periods. Some of the books my book clubs are reading are: Behind the Bedroom Wall by Laura E. Williams, Stones in Water by Donna Jo Napoli , Countdown by Deborah Wiles, Number the Stars by Lois Lowry, Lily's Crossing by Patricia Reilly Giff, Elephant Run by Roland Smith, and many more. Below are photos of some of the charts we created as a class so far during this historical fiction unit: Historical Fiction Unit Chart with some Teaching Points Read Aloud Chart for Freedom on the Menu Read Aloud Chart for Freedom Summer Read Aloud Chart for The Other Side Chart that shows our thinking across Historical Fiction Read Alouds Stay tuned to hear more about our unit and see more photos of student work too! Please share any ideas you have for historical fiction units too - I always love to hear about new titles, charts, and strategies to use during this unit! :)
Ok, just because I've been gone from 'blogging land' doesn't mean we haven't been working hard in 4B. I've definitely been documenting a lot of what we've been doing! To start, it was clear to me that our old way of peer conferencing just wasn't working. Kids seemed to be goofing around, not really helping each other, and it was a waste of everyone's time. It frustrated me when most of my one-on-one conference time was spent managing unruly PEER conferences. I knew something had to change. I decided to revamp our workshop so that our peer conferences would hold both the author and the peer more accountable AND work on our 6-traits language. I introduced our 'new' method for peer conferencing using this anchor chart to document our process. After students finish drafting, they are to grab a 6-traits peer conferencing sheet and assess themselves by circling all the descriptors for each trait that they feel match their own writing. Mind you, we did a lot of whole-class practice with scoring writing based on the 6-traits criteria so students would feel comfortable doing this process on their own (and being HONEST!). Through our mini-lessons we've learned that it's possible to have high scores in some traits but lower scores in others. That's how we grow! Here you see Devin circling where he thinks his writing falls on our 6-traits rubric. (Note: The link to the 6-traits peer conferencing sheet above will bring you to an even more updated version than the one shown in this blog posting! Just FYI!) Here's another student assessing her own writing after she's drafted. This student has finished assessing her writing using our rubric. She decides on a final number score and circles it to the left of the descriptors. Then it's time to meet with a peer. (We have a peer conference sign-up sheet in our room which helps students know which other students in the room are also ready to peer conference.) Here you see this author reading his story to his peer. After he's done reading, he will explain to his peer the scores he gave himself and why. It's important for the peer to listen carefully to the author because it will soon be her turn to assign a score to this author for each trait . On the lines on the rubric, she will write to explain the scores she gives him. The peer needs to follow the following sentence stems in his/her scoring response: * I give this a writer a ___ because... * This writer needs to work on ... This process requires peers to truly work together, hold each other accountable, and it gets the kids using our 6-traits language a lot more. The second sentence stem helps the writer establish a goal for what to work on when revising! To see more of this peer conferencing process, watch a clip of us practicing this stage! Our focus lately has been on the trait of organization. We've been looking thoroughly at different beginnings and endings of both student and published writing. Here is our anchor chart documenting what we noticed! In other Writer's Workshop news, these are a few additional anchor charts we have in our room to help keep our writing organized. This anchor chart reminds us of powerful words to use to spice up 'said'! In reading we have been working hard on purposeful talk.This is so very important to the social construction of knowledge in any classroom! It's essential to teach students purposeful talk behaviors before even considering literature discussion groups (LDGs). The majority of kids talk like...well, KIDS! So, if we expect kids to talk like mature young people about different texts they read, we need to explicitly teach them how! Talking about Text by Maria Nichols is a great place to start if you're interesting in learning more about purposeful talk behaviors. I taught each of the behaviors individually through two separate mini-lessons - one day to explain 'hearing all voices' in a concrete way (without text), and a second day to practice 'hearing all voices' using text. Then I taught 'saying something meaningful' in a concrete way without using text, and the next day we practiced 'saying something meaningful' using text , and so on. Eventually all of the purposeful talk behaviors kind of blended together and kids started to discover that we often need to use all of these things at the same time in order to truly talk purposefully about anything! We did a lot of practicing, and I've been taping students in this process. Here is a clip of students practicing their behaviors while they talk about their families. (We had read a few books about different kinds of families to foster a safe environment to celebrate the fact that we all have different kinds of families!) We also had students practice their purposeful talk behaviors while discussing their best or worst memory in school (which helped warm up their brains for a timed writing activity we did during writer's workshop). Here is a clip! As a class, we watched these video clips to analyze our body language and other purposeful talk behaviors. I think taping and analyzing is a very effective way for students to learn how they should look and sound in an LDG. 'Keeping the lines of thinking alive' is a tough concept for many youngsters. Sometimes what happens is that students take turns talking, but they don't really build on what the person before them said. In other words, they don't really DISCUSS, they just share and listen. We applauded the first group in this clip because they had good body language and were respectful as listeners, but we discovered their conversation needed to be more 'alive' by asking questions and making connections to each other's ideas and thoughts. Mrs. Pierce and I taped ourselves doing a weak LDG and a strong LDG. As we watched each example, we used dots and lines to 'map out' our conversations (see chart below). In the weak LDG, we discovered Mrs. Pierce and I shared a lot of individual thoughts. The thought started, and then it stopped. There was really no discussion about anything we said; and Mrs. Pierce wasn't even looking at me during part of our time together! How rude! ;) In the strong LDG example, we mapped out a lot of dots and lines that were connected because we took each other's ideas and built on them. We truly discussed the text to dig deeper. We introduced several conversational moves for students to use to help get their voice heard in a conversation. Students also have these conversational moves on a bookmark that they keep in their LDG books. After we learned the respectful ways to speak and act when discussing with others, it was time to teach our kids how to flag their thinking. This is a crucial step to holding a successful literature discussion group because it allows the kids to track their important thoughts while reading so they have ideas for discussion the next day. Here are the 'codes' we use to track our thinking on post-its. We encourage students to use one of our codes to categorize the kind of thought they have and then write a few words to trigger their thought. This helps them when they get into a discussion group; they'll actually have pinpointed ideas to discuss! Students kept a chart in their Thoughtful Logs with all of our codes on it for easy reference. Here's a clip of our students as they practice flagging their thinking for the first time. The next day, students put all their new learning to the test. We put them in small groups to discuss the text "Slower Than the Rest" which is a short realistic fiction story out of Cynthia Rylant's book Every Living Thing. On another day, we used a high-interest two-page non-fiction text about leeches to continue practicing flagging our thoughts. Here's a clip of our kids flagging their thinking just after we modeled it during our mini-lesson. Below are some pictures of the kids' flagged thoughts. In addition to purposeful talk, we've also been studying the historical fiction genre. We've read several mentor texts, including Dakota Dugout by Ann Turner and Dandelions by Eve Bunting. Our first round of literature discussion books are all within the historical fiction genre. Here are a few of our historical fiction LDGs hard at work: Dear Levi: Letters from the Overland Trail Scraps of Time: Abby Takes a Stand The River and the Trace (I think I put my finger over the microphone at minute 2:00!) Oftentimes, historical fiction books will have a flashback in them. One group's book, called A Scrap of Time: Abby Takes a Stand by Patricia McKissick, has a flashback that occurs towards the beginning of the story. I photocopied some of the pages to try to explain this technique during a whole class mini-lesson. In the first section of the book, three grandkids are spending time with their grandma in her attic. They find an old menu and ask their grandma why she saved it. Chapters 1 through 12 flash back to 1960, where 'grandma' is just 10-years-old, living in Nashville, Tennessee at the time of a lot of civil rights protests. The menu is from a restaurant where a lot of sit-ins took place. Through the flashback a reader learns all about life during the 1960s. In the final section of the book, a reader finds him/herself back in the present - in grandma's attic, where the three grandkids ask their grandma some questions about her life during the sixties. There was also another flashback in the story Dakota Dugout by Ann Turner. We also read The Wreck of the Zephyr by Chris VanAllsburg as an example of a flashback in a fantasy book! In other reading news, here is a picture of the anchor chart that stored all the non-fiction text features we've learned. In social studies, we've been studying the economy of the five U.S. regions. Students have been reading small sections of non-fiction leveled readers to summarize a product or industry that is important to each region's economy. Students are typing up their summaries and we're calling those summaries 'articles' as they each create a magazine of our economy. Through this project, students have learned to: * Summarize main ideas * Center and left-justify their cursor * Use the tab key to indent * Change font size, color, and style * Bold, underline, and italicize * Safe image searches * Copy and paste * Cite their picture resources Here is the inside of one student's magazine. Next week we will be using this site to create magazine covers! Lastly, we had a chance to meet with our second-grade buddies earlier this month. We split the buddies up into two groups and one group stayed with Mrs. Adams to play holiday bingo. The other group was with me in the computer lab. Buddies used this site to play a variety of math and English games. One of the most popular games to play was called 'Story Plant' where students could click on different leaves to create the beginning to a unique story. Depending on what leaves were clicked, you would get a different combination of characters, settings, problems, etc. The computer generates a beginning to a story that the kids can print off and finish during writer's workshop! Have a wonderful weekend!
It's another snowy day in Michigan, which I really don't mind if I don't have anywhere far to go. I just wish I could move my computer desk right in front of the fireplace! I'm linking up a few days late for Workshop Wednesday by Ideas by Jivey. Better late than never, right? I was inspired by Jivey's Workshop Wednesday this week which is all about using historical fiction. I'm getting ready to start our first book club of the year using The Hidden Girl. It's an autobiography written by Lola Rein Kaufman, a Jewish Holocaust survivor. It's a fascinating and moving story, which makes for great book club discussions. After reading Jivey's post I was motivated to try something new. I got to school extra early Friday morning and dug out one of my favorite historical fiction books, Rose Blanche by Roberto Innocenti. I love this book, because it requires a great deal of inferring. The illustrations are beautiful and add a tremendous amount of meaning to the text. I created a packet to go with the story along with a PowerPoint slide show of a few of the illustrations that I wanted the students to be able to look at closely. This is one of the pictures we looked at in the PowerPoint. It's not the best picture, but you get the idea. I loved the discussion that we had throughout the book! It was interesting to hear who already had a lot of prior knowledge about the topic (one student brought up Jewish ghettos, wow!) and those who didn't have much at all (one student responded to another with, What's the Holocaust?). But they totally figured out everything in the book! They figured out it was about the Nazis in World War II, the Holocaust, the Jews in concentrations camps...all of it! And by the end of the discussion, everyone had some prior knowledge about the subject. This is the class anchor chart we started together. I'm hoping this activity will have really piqued their interest on the topic, so they will be raring to dive into The Hidden Girl next week! If you would like to try this inferring lesson with your students, you can find it at my TPT Store. You can also check out my book club unit based on The Hidden Girl by Lola Rein Kaufman. Make sure you check out other ways of using historical fiction in your classroom by stopping by Workshop Wednesday at Idea's by Jivey! Subscribe to the Forever in Fifth Grade Newsletter for the latest info on freebies, classroom tips, and special sales!
Your complete guide to the essential library for boys and young men. Start your learning process here and build a great library.
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Published in London in 1884, Edwin Abbot’s amusing short novel Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions is a biting cri...
If you’re looking for some fun and flirty romance, here are your best bets for chick lit and rom-com books for 2020! These are all new release books in the romance genre that are coming out in 2020. This list is mostly based on others’ recommendations and early reviews for books that are not released ...
This is my sixth post in my eight post series about implementing book clubs into your classroom. Last week, I wrote about accountability with book clubs, which you can read more about HERE. Today, I am writing specifically about student-led conversations in book clubs. Let’s first identify some characteristics of student-led conversations with book clubs: 1. […]
Puzzle-solving genius kids form a pint-size crime-fighting Mod Squad in this month's Backseat Book Club pick. Trenton Lee Stewart, author of The Mysterious Benedict Society, takes questions from young readers about the book's twists, turns and creative conundrums.
From Fancy Meeting You Here by Julie Tieu to Plot Twist by Erin La Rosa, here are the best romance books coming out in November 2023.
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Social Emotional Book Club list. The behavior basics book club was created to help teach students the basics of behavior through childhood classic books. The behavior basics book club can be set up in your classroom and utilized as a valuable resource to teach students various behaviors and how to be successful in the classroom. Proudly display your behavior basics book club books in your classroom so that you can grab it in a second when a refresher lesson is needed on any given day! I have chosen a childhood favorite book to align with each lesson in my behavior basics curriculum. These books provide a fun alternative to direct instruction to teach the basics of behavior. These books provide critical thinking and hands on activities for extension activities in your classroom! Want to see a detailed description of what is included? And a Video???? Read more on my BLOG! To access a list of all books included (with clickable links!) click HERE! Included in each lesson in this bundle: -Reading lesson plans -Anchor chart activities (b&w and color) -Reading response (writing and illustrated responses) -Directed Drawing Activities -Labels for easy organization *****What Books are Included?****** Unit 1: Classroom Rules Back to School Rules by Laurie B. Friedman Lacey Walker, Nonstop Talker by Christianne C. Jones Follow the Line by Laura Ljunakvist The Most Magnificent Thing by Ashley Spires The Worst Day of My Life Ever by Julia Cook Flying Frogs and Walking Fish by Steve Jenkins & Robin Page Teamwork Isn’t My Thing, and… by Julia Cook Just a Mess by Mercery Mayer Pigsty by Mark Teague Too Much Glue by Jason Lefebvre If You Give a Mouse an IPhone byAnn Droyd My Day Was Ruined by Brayn Smith Miss Nelson is Missing by Harry Allard Unit 2: School Rules How Do Dinosaurs Eat Their Food? by Jane Yolen Potty Animals by Hope Vestergaard A Line Can Be by Laura Ljungkvist The Recess Queen by Alexis O’Neil & Laura Huliska-Beith The Best Book to Read by Debbie Bertram & Susan Bloom Howard B…learns about Sportsmanship by Howard Binkow Franklins School Play by Paulette Bourgeois Manners in Public by Carrie Finn This is the Way We Go to School by Edith Baer T Rex Crashes your Birthday Party by Jill Esbaum Miss Mingo and the Fire Drill by Jamie Harper The Crow and the Earthquake by Merci Martin & Wanda Bishop I’m Not Scared, I’m Prepared by Julia Cook Tornadoes by Gail Gibbons Unit 3: Student Behaviors When Miles Got Mad by Samantha Kurtzman-Counter Hands Are Not for Hitting by Martine Agassi No Means No! by Jayneen Sanders When Sophie Gets Angry- Really, Really Angry… by Molly Bang Froggy Get’s Dressed by Jonathan London Waiting by Kevin Henkes Gregory, the Terrible Eater by Mitchell Sharmat The Juice Box Bully by Bob Sornson & Maria Dismondy The Way I Feel by Janan Cain What if Everybody Did That by Colleen M. Madden The Girl Who Never Made Mistakes by Mark Pett & Gary Rubinstein The Monster Who Lost His Mean by Tiffany Strelitz Haber Lying Up a Storm by Julia Cook The Way I Act by Steve Metzger But It’s Not My Fault by Julia Cook I Can’t Believe You Said That! by Julia Cook Personal Space Camp by Julia Cook Here Comes Destructosaurus by Aaron Reynolds Ricky Sticky Fingers by Julia Cook Should I Share My Ice Cream? Mo Willems Unit 4: Social Skills Say Hello by Rachel Isadora Interrupting Chicken by David Ezra Stein The Worst Best Friend by Alexis O’Neil Decibella by Julia Cook The Conversation Train by Joel Shaul My Mouth is a Volcano by Julia Cook I Just Want to Do It My Way by Julia Cook Sorry, I forgot to Ask! by Julia Cook Knock Knock, Who’s there? by Tad Hills Enemy Pie by Derek Munson Be Polite and Kind by Cheri J. Meiners Those Shoes by Maribeth Boelts Can I Play Too? By Mo Willems *****Pair this book club with my Behavior Basics Curriculum!****** ***PAIR THIS CURRICULUM WITH DATA TOOLS WITH MYBehavior Basics Data Bundle**** Looking for a COMPLETE Behavior program? Check out my Behavior Basics- The BIG BUNDLE**** *****Stay up to date and keep in touch****** BLOG! Facebook Instagram Pinterest Email me: [email protected]
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Sometimes we all do weird things that make us unique and fun. Some of these unusual habits relate to our hobbies.
The not-so-secret feud between Eleanor Roosevelt and her cousin Alice.
