Rick Riordan is my new favorite author. I just finished reading The Son of Neptune and absolutely loved this book. Rick Riordan's writing is drenched with sassy commentary from the characters and provokes many literal laughing out loud moments.
My boyfriend made the mistake of asking what the book was about...he got a fifteen minute synopsis of the Rick Riordan universe instead of a brief retelling. Sorry babe...but don't ask about a book if you don't want a long explanation!
My teacher guide is available here and corresponding centers will be up soon!
Lucky for me, there are sequels:
Even luckier? They were buy one, get one free at our Scholastic book fair this week!
Even though summer break is days away, I will still be reading books and prepping materials for my students next year. I love that I get time to read :)
With our standardized testing right around the corner, we've been doing test prep. Many of our students are struggling with the geometrical hierarchy of polygons, so we created some sorts and matching activities for them.
They had such a great time figuring out which polygon was being described and I loved that some of my high kids still learned new vocabulary terms (like kite). Most students are pretty good with matching the polygon to the definition, but when it comes to the classification of quadrilaterals...they get a little stumped.
But these centers really helped them understand not only the individual polygons, but how they interact with each other within the geometrical hierarchy.
I've bundled these centers and they are now available here on TpT!
(On a completely adorable side note, several of them went off on a tangent about how this hierarchy was like the Greek mythology family trees we made in small groups. Two groups got into it about who would be at the top of the tree: Zeus? Jupiter? The Titans? Kronos? They were rather reluctantly wheeled back into the math conversation. At least they're making connections!)
As I previously wrote about, the time has come when I have extra homework for my small groups. Granted, this homework is to read the novels with them, so that doesn't really feel like much work.
I just finished this great read:
I really enjoyed it. I loved the Percy Jackson series and this in no way a disappointment. I'm eager to read the next few in the series and love the way the author blends Greek and Roman mythology with a compelling story line! I also loved the subtle hints at the Percy Jackson series for fans but if you haven't read that series, you are still able to love this one.
While reading, I took diligent notes on vocabulary words and comprehension questions. I turned these into a teacher's guide, which you can snag here on TpT. I've included everything I will use to do this novel with my own small group. Coming in at just over 50 pages, this may be my longest teacher guide yet (except for Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire since that book is a few hundred pages longer then this novel).
I also included a free preview of my product, which you can also download here
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Happy reading!
(On a side note, I can't wait to start The Son of Neptune!)
We are almost done with The Lightning Thief as a grade level, which means my small groups will be starting The Sea of Monsters in January! I'm so excited to get to continue discussing Greek mythology and watching my students fall in love with Percy's adventures.
We just got some of these great books at our school:
I'm using them as rewards for students who turn in their reading logs :) They get to check them out for the week!
I've also posted chronological order sorts for the Sea of Monsters and The Titan's Curse on my TpT store! My students love the other chronological order sorts and will need to finish the novels before playing these ones :)
Snag yours here!
On more than one occasion this year, I've had my students pinky-promise not to read ahead on novels or see the movie before we're done with the book.
Since we're doing The Lightning Thief as a read aloud, many students have promised not to see the movie (or its sequel) until we are done.
We will be viewing the movie in May (after standardized testing) so students can compare & contrast the film adaptation with the book. I love how excited they are about Greek mythology!
I also just started Catching Fire with a group and they also pinky promised not to see the movie until we're done (hopefully by winter break). I love how excited they are about reading :)
I just finished making a 35 page character sort for Rick Riordian's Percy Jackson series. I made this sort for all 5 novels with an "I don't know yet" category for students who haven't completed all of the books.
It's available here on TpT! A must have for any fan of Camp Half-Blood :)
Happy reading!
I love small group reading :)
I feel like I'm a literacy specialist since so much of my day is spent with literacy:
9-9:40: phonics, whole group reading
9:40-10:40: small group reading
10:40-11:25: writing
11:25-11:55: science
12:30-1:05: intervention/extension block (fluency, comprehension and vocabulary)
1:05-2:05: small group reading
Here are some snapshots of our centers:
Blogging:
My students are using kidblog to respond to one another online:
Snapshot of our afternoon blog:
They're doing such a great job!
Reader's theater:
They're doing a Greek mythology passage this week :) I love that they picked one that aligns to our grade level read aloud, The Lightning Thief. We're also going on a field trip next week to see a performance of Jason and the Argonauts
Our new centers, based on the novels they just finished:
All are available on TpT!
We're also doing our weekly affixes:
On Tuesdays I challenge them to find non-examples of this week's affixes. Today, it was words that appeared to start with un- or re- and end with -s or -es that were non-examples of these affixes. They did a good job at coming up with ideas.
Since both of my groups (AM and PM) finished Hatchet, I had them compare their anchor charts:
They did a good job with picking out the same big ideas from the novel and analyzing how Brian developed over time.
Since I don't have enough books for both groups, one is reading The River while the other is reading Brian's Winter with the idea they'll switch when they're done.
We also looked at how the cover illustrations had changed over time:
They were highly amused by the early 90's version :)
My students are so excited about our books and that's just awesome.
When I first entered my classroom five years ago, the place was a disorganized mess.
One of the few things I kept from the previous inhabitant was a rain gutter.
I reinstalled it underneath my smartboard to highlight books of interest:
These books aren't able to be checked out because we are using them in small groups or during independent reading time.
Here is our collection of alternative fairy tales, which we used in writing:
These books are AMAZING for teaching perspective and point of view. I snagged them on Amazon and my students adore them!
Here are our Greek mythology books:
My students are absolutely loving this unit!
