First Week of School: Purposeful Mentor Texts

I love a good read aloud!

The first week of school is a time to build relationships and become a class family, learn and practice routines and expectations, and hopefully have some fun in the process.  Of course you have to figure out what works well for your own classroom, but these activities help me to fulfill many purposes at once.  I wanted to take today and share what I read to the kids the first week of school.  

I love to use picture books for a specific purpose.  The kids learn that about me right away in a new school year.  Here are my favorites - Links go to Amazon, not an affiliate link.

*7 Habits of Happy Kids - 

I read one per day the first 2 weeks of school, short stories that teach about responsibility, organization, priorities, friendships, etc. and we do short activities after each.

*The Important Book -

I read this in the afternoon of the first day and they do an art project from Teaching in Room 6 that describes themselves.  They trace their arms and write characteristics inside, then I display those arms on a year long bulletin board.

*The Golden Rule - 

It's our first Mentor Sentence book, but also a good reminder to treat people the way they want to be treated.  

*Juice Box Bully - 

This book is great to help build character.  We make a class promise (Idea from Head Over Heels for Teaching) after reading the book and display it by our arms.

*Do Unto Otters - 

This book is great to read right before you brainstorm your rules for the year.  It talks about the importance of manners, and the kids easily can brainstorm how they want their classroom to look like and sound like.  

*What Do You Do With a Chance -

This book is great to read for a growth mindset message.  We read it and then do a growth mindset challenge, then we watch the Growth Mindset Yoda video.  

*The Dot - 

This book is great to get their creative juices flowing.  It's also great to talk about expectations, how we don't just do the basic, we push ourselves to do our best.  It talks about growth mindset, leaving a mark. We do the Dot project that's in the book after reading.

*What Do Teachers Do After You Leave School? -

This book is a fun one to use as a kickoff to have the kids learn more about you.

Yep, tons of books that first week of school.  A lot of great discussions come from them and I wouldn't change that for anything.  This post was getting pretty long, so I'll come back another time and write more about the other activities we do.  

Hope this helps!

Snowflake Similes

Snowflake Similes are one of my favorite winter activities.  This past week we read Snowflake Bentley, and did numerous activities with the book.

For the similes themselves, I have a half sheet template that we first brainstorm and then they create their own.  

Snowflakes are as unique as...

Snowflakes are as fragile as...

Snowflakes are as light as...

Here's the template if you need it.

After glueing on their template, the kids get to take a coffee filter and make their own snowflakes.  It's always art after the writing... Some years I have had the foam snowflakes (think Dollar Spot), but this year we resorted to the filters.  They really do make them unique.  We started fractions in math, so were able to practice that a bit as we were folding the circles getting ready to cut.  

I also love Mentor Sentences and recently realized that Jivey has Snowflake Bentley in her Volume 2 Unit 4 product.  I love that my read aloud could also be used for our mentor sentence.  

I wanted to direct you to the Snowflake Bentley website, where there is much more information, photos, his articles, interviews, gift shop, etc.  So much realia to share with our students. 

What do you do with the book?  Hope you have a great day!

A Great Gold Rush Book

Two Questions:

1) Do you teach about the Gold Rush?

2) Have you read this book?  

It's a nonfiction book that is full of interesting facts that keep the kids engaged while learning.  Last year was the first year that I brought it into my classroom, and this year I picked up a class set of the books from Scholastic.

My very smart teammate came up with this paper bag book activity for the kids, full of hidden compartments and secret flaps for kids to write on.  

It takes 4 white or brown lunch size paper bags - they are crisscrossed back and forth, always with the bottom of the bag facing up (plain front, flat side down).  Just layer them and then fold/staple to form a book.

First paper bag - bottom of bag on right side, facing up

Second bag - bottom of bag on left side, facing up

Third bag - bottom of bag on right side, facing up

Fourth bag - bottom of bag on left side, facing up

Then fold in half.  I stapled.  My friend hole punched and tied with yarn.

The pages go along with the pages in the book.  It's a lot of summarizing and adding different interesting facts to the pages.  My kids actually BEGGED to do this every day!   

Hope you had a great day!  Hopefully this helps someone.  :)

P.S. - Need some Gold Rush Resources?

Gold Rush Bundle: Famous Men of the Gold Rush Reading Passages and Mining Journal

Charlotte's Web Writing Craft

I'm just going back in time, catching up on what's been new this year.  This is the first year I am incorporating writing into novel art projects.  When we finished Charlotte's Web, the students took a piece of red paper and folded it to make a barn, the outside edges have white crayon X's on the barn doors, with the brown piece of paper for the roof.  They then used pink and gray paper to create Wilbur and Templeton, with a black sharpie to create Charlotte's Web, and a plastic black spider glued onto the web.  Their writing was pretty simple, they wrote about their favorite part of the book. 

The Idea Behind the Comprehension Notebook (Work in Progress)

I know I've been sharing a lot of behind the scenes lately.  It helps me when I write down my thoughts and to bounce ideas around.  It also helps when others give me feedback... especially if they know it's NOT going to work!! :)

For years I've used a composition book to record vocabulary and reading strategies inside.  Last year I added a section for themes (one theme per page).  We recorded the titles of our stories on the different pages, and our reasoning why we stuck it there.  This year we are switching to using novels to teach the strategies... something that I started doing this past year as well with our Read Aloud Wall.

Right now I have a bunch of post it notes stuck inside the book.  The first section will have genres, one per page.  I picked up Blair Turner's Genre Add On Cards and printed them off tiny like to add to the corner of the pages.  We will do the same thing like themes last year and add titles and reasoning.

With the strategy section I have my own graphic organizers (again printed multi pages per sheet) to add to the description pages.  These worked great last year as a ready reference when kids were tasked to write their own examples.

Behind these 3 sections (Themes, Genres, and Strategies), I have spaced out post it notes every 5 pages for each novel that we tackle throughout the year.  5 pages, 10 sides... plenty of room to have a single strategy per side, to which we can add examples as we go through the books.  Last year I had the strategy posters on the Read Aloud wall that my class added to, this time they will also be in their notebooks.  We will be able to tie up the strategy practice using those Reading Exit Slips to show comprehension with a quick assessment. 

 

Like I mentioned yesterday, the vocabulary and comparing chapters have been taken out of the notebook and will be kept in file folders for each specific novel. 

It feels really good to have a plan going into summer.  

Anything else you can think of that I need to remember?  Thanks! 

Folders for Novel Notes (Work in Progress)

This past week I spent a lot of time texting with my teammates, trying to figure out how we were going to change up our ELA block for this coming year.  The goal this coming year is to use novels more (instead of just for a class read aloud).  I'm so looking forward to it!  Now in addition to using interactive notebooks for our strategy practice, my class will be creating Novel Note Folders.  

I figure the front of the folder will be for the Title, Author, and student names.

Inside the folder will have 3 binder papers stapled to each side.  On the left will have our running list of vocabulary words to define.  On the right will have a grid to compare/contrast the chapters in many different areas, and tucked under will have chapter summaries.  The folder would be completed at the beginning and end of the different chapters/sections.

This way I can save my composition notebook pages for all the strategy mini lessons, and finding examples from the novels.  I'll show you that notebook in another post.    

The back would be a good place to have a character chart to compare and contrast the many main characters that are found in the novels.  

I don't know if it would help anyone, but I typed up (5 per page) of the strip to be glued on top of the binder paper.  It magically matches up to the binder paper lines...  

That's what I have so far... Anyone used folders for Novel Notes before?  How did it work out?  Any tips? 

Read Aloud Wall

The other day I saw this post over at Teaching in Room 6 and I thought WOW!  I mean my kids do activities with our Read Aloud on a biweekly basis, but to actually see a bulletin board dedicated to the Read Aloud... that blew my mind away.  :)  

I already had some strategy sheets up from my Ninja pack to help my kids create the templates in their notebooks (since my kids still get a kick with ninjas and after the first copy I don't copy it), but I decided to focus the wall sheets for our activities with the read aloud.  We just started Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler so we haven't gotten very far yet, but the kids have the same strategies going on in their Reading Log.  A quick post it with one of the kids' examples, and it's so easy to add to the board. 

Thanks Stephanie for the idea to broadcast out what our read aloud is by posting it loud and clear on the wall.  

Hope you have had a wonderful day!

I'm Addicted to Reading

I love reading in my classroom.  I know I've talked about that before - I adore my Read Aloud time.  During this past year we read 12 books whole class, and I already bought a few more class sets for next year.  I am an official Scholastic Bonus Point/Dollar Book Addict!  In class I carve out time every day after lunch for us to settle down together and read for 15-20 minutes.  It's only enough time for a chapter or two, but enough to get the kids wanting more.  Many of them will continue on with the books during silent reading time.  

This past year I got smart.  I have always read every single page of every single book, but this year I found that website "Audible".  So many of our class read alouds were on there, read by the authors.  Having the authors read the characters the way that they imagined them to be, with different voices, etc... it was amazing!  I downloaded the books onto my iPod and then it was easy to plug into my speakers.  Many of the downloads were cheaper than getting a CD on Amazon.  During the chapters, I was able to sit back, relax, and enjoy the books with my students.  It felt really good to sit for a change...

 I am teaming up with Educents again with some instant downloads for you! It includes activities for so many of your favorite stories you will be reading this next year (and even a few downloads you can use with any book)! 

My products included will surely be loved by your students!  Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing and The Chocolate Touch are both books that I read with my kiddos.  Last summer I wanted to create critical thinking questions for my kiddos, so I made up 48 Activity Cards using Marzano's Dimensions of Thinking prompts for each book.  When we were reading the books, I put the cards into our ELA Workshop/Daily 5 rotation, and the kids responded to them in their journals.  

      

There is also a chapter summary grid included in both of them (just like my Read Aloud Mini Packs), that the kids responded on.  I LOVED those chapter summary sentence grids this past year.  It was a easy graphic organizer that kept the kids responsible and paying attention to what we read together.  I already have them copied for all my read alouds for this coming year!  

This bundle contains other great stories too!  

       

For a limited time it is $19.99 from Educents which is about 78% off!  

18 instant downloads with over 700 pages of materials perfect to accompany your reading list!

You can also take peek at some of the other products included in the bundle at any of the links below!

An InLinkz Link-up

Have a Great Day!