Making Good Choices

During the month of January, I needed to do middle-of-year running records on my 60 students. Yes, this is time-consuming. I needed a way for students to be able to work independently so I could get my assessments completed.

 

 

I designed a choice chart as a culminating activity for our nonfiction unit. All students must complete the activity in the middle and then choose 2 other ones.  The activity in the middle uses leveled Social Studies readers, so that activity matches each student's reading level.  The other activities are based on multiple learning styles. I included activities with drawing, singing, writing, reading, poetry, vocabulary, text structure, main idea, and technology. There is a little something for everyone!

 

 

Students could work with small groups, partners, or independently.

 

 

 

 

 

As students completed their activities they posted the name of the activity on the Parking Lot.

Invisible Reading Strategy

Invisible ink will hook any reluctant writer! Teach like a pirate and teach your students to record their thoughts without stress or judgment. My students are in the midst of the Lucy Calkins unit Navigating Nonfiction. I amped up the lesson about mentally recording main idea and details on your hand by calling it The Invisible Strategy!

 

 

Not only did the lesson reinforce main idea and supporting details, but I was able to extend the lesson and teach Common Core vocabulary.  Sometimes the main idea isn't called the main idea!

Students added the graphic reminder to their reading notebooks.

 

During independent reading the students practiced using the strategy.

The Invisible Strategy was a memorable introduction to the formal reading strategy of Boxes and Bullets and helped them grasp it more easily.

 

 

The students' understanding of main idea transformed from invisible to concrete!

Pirate Construction Zone

My literacy blocks will be transitioning from the unit Book Clubs: Books in a Series to the unit Navigating Nonfiction. To prepare students and to pique their interest, I turned the nonfiction section of my classroom library into a construction zone. 

 

I think my decorating design meets the criteria for the Teaser Hook and the Real World Hook from the book Teach Like a Pirate. Students know that something new is coming, they just aren't exactly sure.  Their brains are activating their prior knowledge of nonfiction while at the same time they are thinking about construction signs they see in the community.  They are wondering how the two will possibly fit together for our next reading unit.

 

Know Your Students, Know Your Books

I scored a tremendous treasure at the used book store, The Last Word. I bought 68 books for my classroom library and paid $100.  I added up the original publisher's price and the books would've cost $478! So I am going to celebrate this incredible deal with you by explaining why I bought these specific books.

Teachers not only match their students to books using reading levels, we match them up by interest. My students love the funny Dan Gutman series, My Weird School.

I found 12 of them for only $1 each!

I was excited to find a book to use for teaching. I am familiar with Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes, but I did not know that the author, Eleanor Coerr, had written a picture version of the story for younger readers. I look forward to developing a lesson incorporating these two books.

I bought this book because it was a lower level historical fiction book. These can be hard to find.

I have a few students in my class who have low self-esteem. They realize their reading levels are low and are sometimes embarrassed by it. I chose this book because it is about a boy who always strikes out in baseball and how he overcomes his embarrassment. I think books are a great way for students to connect with characters who have similar problems or obstacles.

I bought 10 of these books this summer and I was stoked to find they had 6 more in stock!

I have a VERY talkative class this year, so this book was an obvious choice!

This series is written by the same author as The Bailey School Kids. My students like the Goosebumps books in our classroom library, but those books have too high of a level for some of my readers. These ghostly books are a lower level and less scary (in my opinion).

Girls and science...

There are lots of football and baseball books in my classroom library, but the boys said they would like to read more basketball books.

I love this graphic novel series. I mentioned it in class one day and my students never heard of Babymouse...no excuse now!

A book about the Titanic AND a dog?! Perfect for my third graders. These two topics were at the top of several interest lists.

I was reorganizing the classroom library this year and I noticed that I was on the weak side of literature with male lead characters. I picked up these 3 books because they looked fun and exciting for boys.

More books for my boys.

Yes, I know there are girls that may enjoy reading them, too. 

More male lead characters. The Hank Zipzer books are written by Henry Winkler.

Dogs, penguins, and sharks are the top animals my students enjoy reading about. They were also yelling Marco Polo on the swings during recess the other day, so that was a bonus interest match.

I can never resist legends from other cultures. I found a Cuban, a Japanese, and two Native American books.

This book is stunning. I have never heard of it before, but now I cannot wait to use it in a lesson. It will be perfect for a genre discussion because students might think it is nonfiction, or realistic fiction, or even poetry. This book will be great to launch a genre discussion. The vocabulary is high level and colorful, so it can also be used in a writing lesson.

My current copy of this book is torn and taped. I HAD to buy a new one.

Who can resist Seymour Simon?

The Usborne Discovery books all contain internet links throughout the text so that students can do further research. I think this book will be a useful addition to our classroom since students can now bring their own technology devices to school. 

Fractured fairy tales are always a hit!

I have never read this historical fiction tale.

I consider this book to fall into the category of complex text due to the author's style of writing and organization. It also has some serious themes in it. I plan on using it for a lesson on point of view.

Nonfiction Treasure

I love The Last Word bookstore in Charlotte, NC. It has a wonderful selection of used children's books. They even take the time to organize them into categories. I was in there browsing a couple of weeks ago and I came across a beautiful stack of hardback nonfiction books about animals. Wait until you read what a fantastic find these were...

hardback

 

never read--the spines creak when you open them

 

crisp pages with bright photographs

 

each book is actually 2 complete books about 2 animals

 

each book is a Level O--perfect for 3rd grade

 

$1.50 per book

 

teacher discount makes them only $1.35 per book

 

$1.35 per book

 

$1.35 for an unused, hardback, nonfiction book

 

$1.35 for what is actually 2 books in one

 

$13.50 for 10 books about 26 animals

 

 

Each book begins with a quick fact box.

 

The table of contents is a list of questions about the animal. I do wish the questions began with capital letters though.

 

There is a student-friendly glossary at the end of each book.

Cut It Out!

This school year I will have two new teachers on my third grade team. They are veteran teachers, but they have not taught third grade. One important strategy I think they should use is being creative with the use of our Social Studies textbooks. We are lucky because our Social Studies textbooks are consumable. This means students can write in them, highlight, circle, underline, and most importantly...they can CUT THEM APART!

 

After reading a chapter in the Social Studies textbook, students may not be able to identify the three regions of North Carolina. They may not be able to describe characteristics of each region. If the students create a brochure of North Carolina by cutting out graphics and textboxes, they take ownership for their learning.

 

Students read about the topic, talked about the topic, wrote about the topic, drew illustrations about the topic. Some designed Thinking Maps. Others used boxes and bullets to state the main idea and supporting details. They read their brochures to each other. They took them home and read it to family members. They created an authentic product which helped them retain their knowledge.

 

A textbook does not have to be boring. You can make it fit into your Balanced Literacy framework.

 

Students who may not be confident artists can cut out photos and maps instead of being pressured to draw illustrations.

Students can be creative and display the information they learn in whatever style they choose.

 

Reluctant writers may decide to use bulleted phrases instead of paragraphs.

Students show that they can summarize text instead of copying directly from the textbook. This is a great opportunity for conferencing during Reading Workshop or Writing Workshop.

 

The box contains the main idea and the bullets list supporting details. What a great link between a nonfiction reading strategy and writing!

Biography Boxes and Bullets

During the Lucy Calkins' unit Navigating Through Nonfiction, students learned how to organize the main idea and supporting details by using the boxes and bullets method.  Students are going to be revisiting main idea as they read biographies, so I wanted to create an anchor chart specific to the genre.

 

I have some old Social Studies big books from a retired series that I often use when I need authentic text examples. You can't hang a big book on the wall and it can bulky to use without an easel.

 

So...

 

Anchor Chart!

 

Book Hunt

I have been preparing for our next book club, biography/narrative nonfiction, and since this is my school's first year using a balanced literacy framework, finding enough books at specific levels has been a challenge. 

My first step in the hunt for books was to know which levels I needed for the clubs. I know that for nonfiction it is acceptable to go down as much as 2 levels, but I am not sure how this transfers to narrative nonfiction (if you have an answer to this please share in the comments section).

My next step was to check in our school Media Center and see which Guided Reading sets matched my genre and levels.

 

Then I looked on my book shelves to see if I had multiple copies of books that matched my search criteria.

I also looked through the ancillary materials that are part of my Social Studies textbook program. Time for Kids and the Harcourt leveled readers each provided me with a set of books--yay!

Finally, I used the website Reading A-Z since I was not having much luck finding lower level books. Reading A-Z has something called multilevel books which are wonderful because you could have three different groups reading the same book that is three different levels.

 

Now I have an idex card labeled with each Fountas and Pinnell level. I recorded the books I have for each level. Now I can see how many sets I have and how many more I need.