Week 7

This week in whole group reading, we were working on main idea, supporting details, alternative perspectives and inferencing.

We used the passage "we were here, too" (grab it for free here) and the kids did a great job.

First, we made a list of people we associate with the American Revolution:

 I was really proud of my students for acknowledging that slaves were important.

They read the passage with their table teams:

They also were working on their metacognition and recording their thoughts and predictions on paper:

They did a really great job with this activity :)

They were also shocked to learn that George Washington had slaves, but we talked about the historical context and how he treated his slaves.  I think I blew their minds with that fact though!

They are also working on fluency passages in small groups as a station/center:

One person watches the timer (the passage is to be read for one minute).

One person reads.

The other listens and provides meaningful feedback in the form of buddy coaching.

They have made some great growth on their words per minute (WPM) for their Aimsweb RCBM probes!

Also in stations, they were working on sorting different scenarios into survival elements:

(The groups that did this are reading Hatchet and Hunger Games, so survival is one of the themes of their novels)

Students then analyzed my sort and added suggestions on how to improve it or add cards to sort.

I like that they help me improve my centers and then have more input, thus more investment :)

(As a side note, you can see one of my polka dot rugs and my polka dot center bucket in these images...I love polka dotted things!)