I Love Novels!

What is your favorite subject to teach?  Mine would have to be reading... or maybe Social Studies. I love seeing the characters through my students' eyes.  I also love to have history come alive...  

Okay - Reading... 

Growing up I was always the kid with her nose in a book.  I wasn't outgoing, I was the kid whose report cards said needed to speak up.  I know, me.  :)  Making friends was hard when you were beyond shy, and when you lived next-door to the popular girl and just wanted to be accepted... yeah. :( Back then I easily made friends with the characters in my books though and didn't have to have awkward conversations with them.

There are so many good books out there, and mostly the kids don't know what they like to read when they get into my classroom.  Every year I try to introduce multiple genres to my students.  I do it as part of the 40 Book Challenge.  We start the year with a Book Tasting (courtesy of Joanne from Head Over Heels for Teaching).  Usually I decorate the classroom, this year it was a lot simpler.  I wore a chef hat on screen and used a wisk as a prop. I shared her slides and we used our anthology as the resource since most didn't have many chapter books at home with varying genres.  But it got them talking... and the conversation hasn't stopped all year.  

Books - I like to use novels to teach our reading strategies and standards.  There is something so satisfying to see that character development and the entire story unfold.  Like I said 3 paragraphs ago, I like to see the characters through my students' eyes.  They root for them, they care about them... and they grow as readers.  

Here's what we've read so far this year:

*Frindle - we focus on the meanings of words, multiple meaning words, context clues, roots, and suffixes.

*Wonder - focus on character development and empathy

*Blood on the River - focus on SS's explorer unit and beginnings of colonial times

*Long Walk to Water - focus on compare/contrast

*Hatchet - focus on character development

*Tuck Everlasting - focus on figurative language

*Woods Runner - focus on SS's American Revolution and compare/contrast author study with Hatchet

*Holes (current) - focus on comparing and character development

You can see my full list of 5th grade novels here.  There is no way that we can cover all of those this year, but we are trying. It's so hard to pick and choose between the books, they are like my babies...

Every novel we always start out making a SCAT chart.  I know, not the best Acronym, but they don't really care (and neither do I).  

Setting

Character

Action

Theme

Usually we read at least 1 or 2 chapters of the book per day, we discuss, and kids fill in their chart. We do an activity with it that is focusing on our weekly or unit skill, we work on vocabulary, and we do a comprehension check with it.  Here's how it goes in a normal year - when each kid has a book in the classroom... 

First trimester - We do everything together

Second trimester - I read one chapter, we discuss, they read one chapter, and discuss with small groups.

Third trimester - Book Clubs

Gradual release...  

This year  since they don't have copies of the novel at home I am reading everything to them.  It's all been virtual, so I haven't had to read everything from behind a mask... but that will be starting soon.  Any tips to share? I'm going back and forth with prerecording myself without a mask and just sharing the video... not sure.

I'm still using these Novel Notes, they are free in my TPT store.  Hope they can help you too!