Bookopoly

For my final bulletin board of the year, I wanted to do something a little different.

So I decided we are making a bookopoly board.

Based off of the classic Monopoly game, I had students create game pieces about their novels.  On the front, they had to list their novel, author and one intriguing quote from the novel.  I was very impressed with some of the quotes they picked because they did a great job at capturing the essence of the book or inspiring reluctant readers to give the book a try.

(Hostile Hospital)

(The Strange Case of Origami Yoda)

(Tiger Rising)

Instead of "go to jail" which has a negative connotation, players are instead invited to go to the library to select a new book.

The chance cards encourage readers to take a chance with a new book while community chest tells them that reading is a wealth of knowledge.

Water works addresses that books sometimes make readers emotional and that's perfectly alright.  The electric company touches on the fact books challenge our preconceived notions.

They had lots of fun making their pieces!

Final picture:

Echoing Green

For our intervention block this week, we've been working on reading strategies.  We went over how to record our thinking and that we read poems more than once.  

They did an awesome job finding the shifts in mood in the poem Echoing Green.  Last year our amazing coaches (M & G, love you both!) did a close read lesson with us with this poem.  Based on what they did with us, I had my students color the "happy" words in one color and the "sad" words in another color.  I was really impressed that collaboratively figured out that the poem is happy in the beginning and shifts to sadness toward the end.

I modeled on the smart board.

Their think sheet.

Kagan strategy of "pair up and share" to get them movin' and talking :)

Tomorrow we'll re-read the stanzas and talk about the theme.  Next week they'll create a written response about the poem.

They just get so excited about reading!

Stop and Jot

I've had several trainings on Close Reading and having students annotate while reading.  While there is lots of different research, I'm going to zoom in on the importance of annotating.  Basically the goal is to get students to practice metacognition, or thinking about what they're reading while reading.  I want my students to move beyond simply reading the words and into thinking critically about what they read.  I want them to interact with the text.  One strategy is to "stop and jot".

Here's our "stop and jot" anchor chart:

(day 1)

(day 2)

You may notice it's not filled in all the way...that's on purpose!  Instead of teaching them all the symbols at once, they learn 1-2 at a time and immediately practice the annotating within text.  I have them work independently and then collaboratively with a partner!

We've been using this lesson idea in our intervention block.  Using this text, we gave students a different purpose for reading each day.  We stressed the importance of re-reading and I think they've done an awesome job with the lessons!


One of their tasks was to come up with alternative titles:

In doing so, they had to think about the main idea and justify their answer choice.

After day 1:

Students' example after day 3:

I had each student use a different colored pencil so there would be student accountability.

I think they're finally understanding that often times, you need to read the same text multiple times :)