A Year in Reading Anchor Charts

I was *really* bad at uploading pictures of anchor charts this year (sorry guys).

As a result, y'all get the mega post with all of them! I took pictures so I'd remember for next year.  We make the charts with the students, so we don't reuse them over and over again.  I'll also upload the images to the "anchor charts" page with the blog.

Most of my anchor charts use multiple colors.  The black part is the part I read during a choral review on the carpet, the colorful words (key words) are what students read.  It's too overwhelming for them to read the whole poster together, but it's too boring if I read all of it.  It's our compromise!

Also, for the most part, my anchor charts are color coded.  This strategy helped my ELL students.  

My reading ones are blue.

Metacognition and Annotating for Close Reads

RI 5.2

RI 5.3

This standard focuses on relationships between people, events, and ideas.  We modeled with Dr. King, Rosa Parks, civil rights, and the bus boycotts.  They had a lot of fun with this standard!

RI 5.5

The large poster in the middle is a copy of the graphic organizer that was in their notebooks.

RI 5.6

RI 5.8

This standard focuses on evidence, so I like the acronym.

Writing

Narrative Writing

Some of these ideas are borrowed from Being a Writer, which is one of the resources at our school site.

Expository Writing

 
Word Parts

This technically fall sunder reading, but I chose to make all my RF (Reading Foundation) standards yellow.

I made this with my RTI group.  We also used magnetic word parts to compose and decompose words.

Oreo Reader

One of our strategies was teaching kiddos to be an "oreo" reader.  Basically we spent a lot of time modeling what it means to savor the text and really examine all the parts of a tasty book.

Inferences

Enjoy! 

Sassy Hermione

I clearly love books. But more importantly, I love when my students love books.

For one of our must do activities, my students had to describe which character changed the most in their novels.

This student absolutely loved the sassy changes in Hermione Granger.  His specific evidence is when she slaps Draco Malfoy in the face and argues with Ron on a frequent basis.

Another student also loved that sassy moment from Hermione.

This activity challenged students to take their favorite portion of the book and create an eight panel graphic novel.  I like letting them be a little creative and draw, but still with a purpose.  This lends itself to having students apply their quotation skills and summarize their favorite parts.  

I love seeing how much fun they have with their must do's.

Silent Reviews

During the intervention portion of our day, we've been working on math and test review.  I decided to spend ten minutes reviewing idioms and figurative language, since many of my ELL (English Language Learners) students still struggle with these.

I display the question card on the smart board:

I give them think time (very necessary for mental processing of right and wrong answers), then ask for their responses.  Instead of shouting out, they hold up their responder cups!

All of them can respond at once without a word.  Plus it's a great formative assessment because they don't really have time to change their answers.  I then have them defend their answers to a neighbor, thus working in the justification piece where they must provide evidence.

It's a great, fun way to review concepts where they all participate without shouting.

Theme Responses

I noticed on their last written responses were a tad lacking.

So I created a fill in the blank guide for their constructed responses:

I modeled the first paragraph on the smart board so they understood the new format.

I expected a little bit of backlash from them for the length of the response I requested.  Instead, they completely surprised me.  They think this response flow sheet is the greatest thing ever.

They're treating it like madlibs and writing pages and pages.  They're going back to the text for evidence and finding the specific quotes that support their answers.

Happy reading!

Small Groups

Small group reading is my favorite part of my day because I love watching my young scholars get so excited about their novels!

I really like researching about new strategies and trying them with my small groups.  This week we used the stop and jot strategy with post-its:

I had my Number the Stars group focus in on the Nazi soldiers' midnight visit.  They recorded their thinking while reading and then used their recordings to guide their own discussions.

Homework:

I wish I had time to meet with them daily but I simply have too many groups to make that possible.  So we meet every 3 days and they have independent reading and homework in between:

I give them four or five questions to respond to and use evidence from the text to support their answers.  I love when they do such a great job with details!

They also are taking more ownership and creating charts about their novels:

Which we store in a magnetic bin at the front of the room.

I used a regular plastic bin and hot glued on magnets to make it work for my classroom.

I like how my students are so open to new ideas and strategies as well!  It's wonderful to keep learning together :)

Fun Writes!

I'm pleased to announce my newest station is available on TpT! 

In this "fun writes", I pose a series of task cards for students to write about.  These task cards are novel specific and challenge students to make connections between texts! Students can also make self to text connections, like with this question:

 Plus it's a lot of fun for students and truly challenges their thinking :)  For an added challenge, have them justify their answers with evidence from the novels!  With over thirty different fun questions , this is great for extension activities, whole group or small groups!

Snag yours here!

Novel Guides

Teacher guides for J.K. Rowling's The Goblet of Fire and The Half-Blood Prince are now available on TpT!  

Each guide contains suggested spelling or vocabulary words, pre-reading predictions, comprehension questions with suggested answers for each chapter, homework questions and post-reading extension activities!



Both guides are quite lengthy (28 and 33 pages respectively) and are quite the bargain! I've done the prep for you :)

Snag yours here!

Happy reading :)

Percy-a-pooluza!

Today was focused entirely on Greek mythology and I loved it :)

First we went to the Smith Center to see Jason and the Argonauts. It was great! It was a quasi-modern retelling and Spiderman made an appearance :) I love superhero and Star Wars references!

When we got back, we reviewed character analysis and read more of the Lightning Thief, pausing to make predictions, analyze characters, and practice all sorts of great reading skills!

Naturally, I stopped at the good parts :)

They're in the middle of chapter 10.  Percy, Annabeth & Grover just realized the Fates are on the bus.  Not only are they on the bus, but headed toward the back...

Cue dun-dun-dun music!

We also analyzed different characters with our table teams:

And recorded our thoughts:

I had them refer back to the portion of the text that justified their character analysis.  It was an easy way to review the importance of using evidence. 

We also analyzed the cover differences between the novel and graphic novel:

Happy reading!