Read Aloud Prep for Narrative Nonfiction

As I prepared for my read aloud during the new unit featuring narrative nonfiction, I came across a book I bought at a Scholastic warehouse sale--Rosa by Nikki Giovanni. Great author, Caldecott Honor Book, Coretta Scott King Award Winner, complex text (Fountas and Pinnell Level T)--seemed like a great pick to me!

I read the book and created my jottings to share with students based on my teaching points in the unit. These jottings were written on blue sticky notes. Then I read it again and created green sticky note tabs to mark relationships in the book because my students have been struggling with sequential events, cause/effect, and inferencing.

This book is informative and interesting. I never knew that the buses had a separate entrance in the back, that Rosa was actually sitting in the neutral area of the bus, or that people across the country sent shoes and jackets to the boycotters since they had to walk everywhere.

 

Rumplestiltskin may be an unfamiliar tale to some of my students so I may need to do a quick retell.

Nonfiction Jotting Success

We finished our study of nonfiction in December, but I was preparing for a presentation and I really want to share this student reflection. A student wrote this Stop and Jot in her Reading Notebook during a read aloud I did from a level O book about amphibians and reptiles. Incredible thoughts from a third grader who reads at a level K. It was complex text and she rose to the challenge!

Reading Notebooks

I've been wanting to use Reading Notebooks for years, but I wasn't able to figure out how to organize them or what to include in them.  I wanted a way to keep my students' responses in one place, but I wasn't for certain how to use Reading Notebooks for an exact purpose. 

This summer I received training in the Balanced Literacy framework from Teachers College Reading and Writing Project. I spent time on Pinterest and reading other teaching blogs. I compiled my ideas and combined them all together into a template that meets my teaching needs. This is the Reading Notebook I have designed for my students to use.  They actively use it and so far so good!

 

I organized it into 3 sections: Independent, Read Aloud, Minilesson. Students put their jottings on sticky notes in the Independent section after they finish a book. They put the book title at the top of the page and then the jottings underneath. During Read Alouds students can stop and jot, stop and sketch, make predictions, and record other responses. In the minilesson section I can have students draw Thinking Maps to display information about the book, they can glue templates for activities, or they can write responses or questions.

 

This library pocket is on the inside back over. Partners can write notes to each other about their books. They can also put questions in there. I also use this pocket as a way to differentiate between the two literacy blocks that I teach.  My inclusion block does not have this pocket in their Reading Notebooks.

 

This pocket is on the inside front cover.  If students see a book they want to read but someone else has it they can write it down and put it in the pocket. The student's reading level is also written on the pocket.

 

As the culminating lesson of Unit 1 "Building a Reading Life" in Lucy Calkins' Reading Workshop, students decorated their Reading Notebooks to reflect their new reading lives. They used clip art, photos from home, and old Scholastic book order forms!

 

They listed their favorite book topics.

 

 

fluency tips

 

student self-assessment and goals foldable in the independent section of the notebook

 

 

empathy and envision reminders in the minilesson section

 

high five retelling in the minilesson section

 

envisioning jotting in the read aloud section

 

well, the spelling needs work, but these are jottings in the minilesson section after learning how to revise a mental movie after reflecting on characters' actions

 

 

I used a story wheel during one of my read aloud lessons and afterwards these students sat in front of the anchor chart and recorded one of their own in the Reading Notebooks in the read aloud section. I got the story wheel lesson from the Better Lesson website (click here to visit this extremely resourceful site).

 

 

During our character study students added a list of character traits to the minilesson section.  They also added the template for a biopoem--a more rigorous way of describing a character.

 

I will add more details and photos from our Reading Notebooks as the year progresses.

 

You Are Special

During the first week of school I used the book You Are Special by Max Lucado for a read aloud lesson during Reading Workshop.  After discussing what made each of them special, student discussed in groups what attributes a special student should have and what attributes a special teacher should have.  Then we worked together as a class and created word clouds on Wordle.  We posted them near our meeting area to remind us how we should be special students and teachers.