Book Clubs- Week 1

 

We started book clubs this week!  I was so looking forward to doing something a little different to end the school year with my great group of thirdies.  They have become more and more independent- so instead of our guided reading groups I decided to tackle book clubs. 

Well, in short, we are LOVING it!  I redid all my groups based on our spring MAP reading data       ( we took the test last week).  I have 5 groups of 4 students each.  This seems to be the perfect number for our book discussions. 

  We have three rotations of 20 minutes each.  Each group meets 2 days a week. The other two days they are involved in centers. One rotation is dedicated to responding to the text and the other rotation is dedicated to reading the required text for their next meeting. 

So far, so good! I absolutely love the way my groups are working together.  One student is the facilitator (each will get a turn) for the meetings.  I dubbed them the team leader.  All five of them have done a fabulous job this week. 

If you want to know more about how I do my reading group rotations go to my previous post. 

I can’t wait to see what next week brings! 

Post-it Freebie

We have been reviewing fact and opinion. This week in guided reading groups, I had my students look for facts and opinions in their leveled readers. They marked some examples with my fact and opinion post-it strips. Then we wrapped up our session with a share-out. Click on the above picture to get a copy of my fact & opinion post-it strips. If you have never printed your own post-its before it is simple! Follow these steps:

1. Print the document normally on your printer.

2. Lay a clean white sheet of paper over the printed document and lay a 3 by 3 post-it over each printed area.

3. Feed the paper through your printer upside down and top first (this works for most printers).

4. I have never had a jam! (knock on wood!!)

Don't forget to cut the post-its into strips!! Have fun!

Chopsticks!

 

  This week we are reading How My Family Lives in America by Susan Kuklin.  This story is part of a cultural unit in our reading series.  At one of my centers students are learning how to use chopsticks.  I have a printout that shows a diagram of how to hold the sticks and the steps in using them successfully.  Students are practicing by picking up left over candy hearts from our candy converstation activities in February.   Then they have to fill out a graphic organizer comparing and contrasting chopsticks and forks.  On the back they are writing the steps of how to use chopsticks. 

 

You can snag your copy of the step-by-step chart by clicking on this link to Family Education.   If you would like your own copy of my graphic organizer and writing page click here.  

Enjoy!

Book versus Movie

 

I love to read a good book!  It seems like more than ever great books are being made into even greater movies!  It is nice to take a break every now and then and reward your kiddos with some down time.  When we finish a great classic, I love to watch the film if time permits.  So that I don’t feel entirely guilty, I like to have something for them to do.  Here is a great little graphic organizer that I came up with.  We will be using this one on Friday when we watch Stone Fox. I can’t wait to finish the book tomorrow.  Only 3 more chapters to go! 

If you would like your own copy head on over to my TPT store for your free copy!  Enjoy!!

Melissa

Give Me LIBERTY!

Last week we did a unit on US Symbols in conjunction with our Reading story: The Story of The Statue of Liberty by Betsy and Giulio Maestro. This is one of the activities we completed. The students made their own Statue of Liberty. Then they wrote one opinion and one fact about the statue.
If you are interested in having your students complete this fun activity click on the photo to go to my TPT store. It is $2.00 but will be on sale during the Leap Year Sale on Wednesday! Have a look!

Live Scoring

We have been practicing our constructed response questions to get ready for our upcoming spring testing session. A great way to do this in your class is with Live Scoring! We did a live scoring session when we were wrapping up our unit on Fractions. The students were placed in groups of 4. They were given a large sheet of chart paper, a question and one marker. The students then worked together to answer each part of the question. When they collectively thought they had a score of “2” (which is the best they can get)- they called me over to check their answer. If they had a “2” we celebrated and I marked their paper. If something was missing, then they were given a different colored marker so they could make corrections or add to their answer.

Why do they have to change their color? Each time the group thinks they have answered the question and you check their response, they should get a new marker color if they have corrections to make. This is an important step in live scoring because it helps the students see what they had to do in addition to their original answer to get a perfect score. All to often students give a minimal answer and think they are finished. This really shows them how close (or far away) their answer is to being perfect (or DISTINGUISHED).

Here is a group’s finished answer.

This group had to change their answer to Part C so you can see that they changed from their original color of purple to orange to make the changes. This gave them the “2” that they were looking for.

I hope you will consider doing a live scoring session in your classroom, too! I would love to hear about it!

Candy Converstations

I can’t wait for Valentine’s Day! I have so many fun and engaging activities planned for my thirdies!! For Math we are going to do my Candy ConverSTATIONS. I love it because there is a little of everything included: measurement, estimation, fractions, subtraction, graphing and more! Plus the kiddos get to eat their manipulatives when they are finished. Yay!!

All you need is a bag of conversation hearts and your ready to go! I use Valentine’s Day cupcake baking cups to hold a generous amount of hearts for each child.

Click on the below picture to get your copy of my Candy Conversation Heart graph. If you want my complete set of “Converstations” go to my TPT store. It’s on sale for $2.50 until Vday!!

Love ya!

Melissa