Good evening, friends! I just completed compiling my materials for a unit I did with my students last February. Can you say BEE-hind!! I am happy to say that this activity unit includes one of my best sellers on TPT “Let’s Make the Statue of Liberty”. You can learn more about that craftivity by going to this post
http://lifesateach.blogspot.com/2012/02/give-me-liberty.html
If you want to check out the whole unit go to TPT.
HAVE A GREAT NIGHT!!
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!
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!
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!
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
