Random Acts of Kindness Week Freebies

This is Random Acts of Kindness Week.  Check out http://www.randomactsofkindness.org for ideas.  I don't know about you, but it feels like my classroom needs more kindness.  Sometimes kids are just not very kind.  I am working on my own responses and reinforcement because I know I get frustrated sometimes when my students are unkind or rude.  I want to have us make a 100 Acts of Kindness Wall for Valentines and the 100th Day of School.  We just might try to do it by end of February instead of by Friday. We brainstormed ideas for random acts of kindness in our journal writing today.

Today we listed to Somebody Loves You Mr. Hatch on Storyline Online.

 

I first heard about this book from Laura Candler.  You can download her Heartfelt Causes and Effects for free.  We discussed Cause and Effect in the Story.  Then my students had to choose a theme for the book and explain why it was the theme. We are also working on writing (typing) paragraphs with evidence and following directions.  We discussed how the theme could be friendship, acceptance, love, and compassion.

I found a ton of great kindness freebies on TpT.  I pinned a bunch of stuff on my Teaching Character and Leadership Pinboard. How do you encourage kindness in your classroom?

Resources to Teach Nonfiction Text Structure and the Olympics

My plan today was to share some resources I found to teach the Olympics.  I saw several people had some great posts about teaching nonfiction text structures, so I thought I would share on both.

We have been reading biographies and practicing nonfiction reading skills.  I now plan on covering Nonfiction Text Structures. In order to introduce Nonfiction Text Structures, I will first have my students watch this video from Learnzillion.  If you have not checked out Learnzillion, it is a great free website with Common Core aligned video lessons.

We will complete an overview lesson on all of the text structures, and then individual lessons from Erin's Interactive Informational Reading Notebook.  We have been focusing lately on compare and contrast, so we will start with this text structure.

She has great exemplar paragraphs in her writing notebook as well.  Teaching with a Mountain View had a great post on how she used Erin's resources.

Comprehension Connection had a great post today with mentor text suggestions for each text structure. I am excited to use the handout she mentions from Ms. Jordan Reads as a quick reference for my students.

Jivey had a great post today on using Text Structures.

I will also pull additional passages from www.readworks.org for additional practice with each text structure if need be. 

I had already decided that this week and next week we would talk about the Olympics.  We started on Friday by watching Time Warp Trip: My Big Fat Greek Olympics.  You can watch it in 3 parts on Youtube. Then, my students had to read about a country and an individual from that country. We had to cancel a field trip at the last minute, so I made this handout at the last minute. You can get a free copy here.  I also printed out different flags for them to color that I found online.

Today my students read "The Olympics: Then and Now" on www.raz-kids.com.  It is a multi-level reader, so it made for a perfect read since I had to take a sick day today. 

Teaching Star Students shared a list of website links for having students research the Olympics.

The resource I am the most excited about is Ashleigh's Olympic Close Reading pack.  It is one of the best resources I have EVER purchased.  She put so much time into it.  Every passage is written at three levels with three different question sets for 3 different close reads.  We will be using her pack to practice close reading, discuss the Olympics, and practice recognizing text structure. 

I also purchased Erin's Data Pack to practice map and graphic skills.

What resources are you using to cover the Olympics in your classroom?

Workshop Wednesday: Figurative Language

I am linking up for a quick post for Workshop Wednesday with Jivey.  I found a bunch of Christmas related figurative language resources, and we covered some of them back in December.  We are going to do some more figurative language starting next week.

Lovin Lit has some great resources.  Her Reading Literature Notebook has some great lessons on Figurative Language.

She has her Close Reading Stories for Figurative Language.  We are going to use these this month.

I was also thinking of doing a round of Lit Circles with novels in verse.  I bought Heartbeat and Inside Out and Back Again on Amazon this weekend.  They just came today, so I am going to try and read them this weekend.

 

I like the idea of covering another novel and poetry at the same time.  I think it would really allow us to cover so many skills at once.  Have you used novels in verse in your classroom?

On a side note, I put up my Effort Rubric Posters today.  I love them!   I am excited to get my students doing more reflection on the quality and effort of their work.  You can get them as a freebie from my post from yesterday.

Tried It Tuesday: Effort Rubric Posters (Freebie)

I am linking up with Holly for Tried It Tuesday.

Lately, I have taken a much more hands-off approach to teaching.  I am encouraging more student ownership through study guides, which require my students to do more research and more decision-making.  I now want them to start really evaluating their effort.  I want to encourage a growth mindset in my students instead of a fixed mindset by praising effort more than intellect. I created a rubric to grade their units when we finish a study guide.  You can get a free copy of the rubric for a unit of study here.

I decided I wanted to make some Effort Rubric Posters to place in the classroom with a self-reflection form.  At the end of a unit or project, they will have to self-reflect and decide where they should be on the rubric.  You can get a free copy of the posters HERE.

How do you encourage effort and self-reflection?

Fun Resources for Teaching a Biography Unit

This week and next we are finishing up our biography unit.  All of my students finished reading their biographies by today.  This week they are working on the performance tasks from their biography study guide.  You can get a copy of the biography study guide here, if interested.  They have to create a product to represent the person's accomplishments and what they can learn from the person.  They also had to answer some essential questions.

I was researching for resources on teaching biographies and made a live binder of the links I found.  There are links to book lists, graphic organizer freebies from TpT, lessons from Readwritethink.org, and activities from TpT. You can view the love binder below.

Teaching Biographies

I love using the ReadWriteThink Interactive Tools as a great way to use the computer to fill out graphic organizers. We are going to be doing some comparing and contrasting using the ReadWriteThink Venn Diagram.

We are going to use the biographies we read to write a biography essay.  I decided to start using Lovin Lit's Interactive Writing Notebook and her Interactive Research Papers.

We covered Expository paragraphs today, and later in the week we are going to start the mini-biography.  After we do the mini-biography, we will do the biography essay.  I am excited to share pictures when we get done.

Mentor Texts for the American Revolution and Letting Your Students Take Ownership

I am a little late, but I thought I would link up Collaboration Cuties' Must Read Mentor Text linky for Social Studies.  I am glad they and Jivey are recommending some books for the American Revolution.  Most of my students are studying the American Revolution right now.

Mentor Texts

A couple texts we are reading the next couple week are:

Colonial Voices: Hear Them Speak

This book describes different points of view of different every day citizens around Boston leading up to the Boston Tea Party.  It is a great text to get students to discuss the events of the Boston Tea Party, but also how it affected different people.  After each person, we discuss if they were a Loyalist or Patriot and how we know from the details the person gave. After reading the book, I would have students write from the point of view a citizen in Boston or even write a skit from a patriot and a loyalist debating the events.

Let It Begin Here: Lexington and Concord

This book describes the events of Paul Revere's midnight ride and the events that got the Revolution started.  It is a great introductory text to the American Revolution.

George vs. George

This is a great book to explain the differences between the American and the British points of view.  This book will give your students an overview of the major concepts surrounding the Revolution.  This would be a good text to photocopy a short portion to do a close read.

A New Approach to Teaching Social Studies

I have been taking a little different approach in Social Studies and some other areas lately.  Instead of just teaching the material to my students or assigning them material to read, I have been giving them more ownership.  I have been creating study guides with essential questions and performance tasks.

This idea came about during a graduate school meeting in December. Every few weeks, some of the students and professors in my graduate program get together to discuss research ideas for gifted students. In our December Saturday morning, my advisor said something so simple and yet profound it jumpstarted a whole new approach to teaching for me. He said, "Students should always work harder than the teacher." They are the ones who should be learning and growing and struggling as part of that process.  He emphasized that in a blended learning environment like the one I work in, where the kids have access to technology, what the kids really need in order to learn are to be given good questions.

By giving them a set of essential questions to research and answer without me really teaching them much of the material they take ownership of their learning and also practice reading with a purpose.  They have to be move from passive learning to very active learning. I have given them access to different resources, and it is their job to research the essential questions and answer them.  Then, they have been completing different performance tasks to demonstrate their understanding.  We just finished studying the Causes of the American Revolution.  My students made dioramas, made posters, and made Power Point presentations to show they understood events like the Boston Massacre and the Boston Tea Party.  Some of the students work on the study guides by themselves and some work with a partner. At the end of the unit, we are discussing it all together. This is part of why we are reading the mentor texts to discuss what they have already researched.  Now though, they are very familiar with the events in the stories as I read them.

Here is an example of the Causes of the American Revolution Study Guide I gave my students.  

It has been fun the last few weeks to watch them.  They actually are very excited to do Social Studies at the end of the day, and they often have been asking to get started on it during Language Arts. How do you encourage student ownership?

Word Mapping for Vocabulary Instruction

Well, I really do want to get back to blogging more than once a week.  The last week I really got back in the routine of being full-time teacher and part-time doctoral student.  I had a cold this past week as well, so it took all my energy to work and do homework in the evenings. Overall though, I felt I had a very successful week. I was very productive.  I spent at least an hour each night on my own homework and studying.  I am trying to build consistent habits and avoid procrastination. I got my lessons plans done Thursday night and many of my copies done on Friday for next week.  I absolutely love www.planbook.com.  I played around for the first time with actually tagging the standards in my plans. I love it!  They have pre-made drop-down menus of standards for each state, the Common Core Standards, the Next Generation Science Standards, and even the NAGC programming standards.  I really want to get more familiar with the gifted standards since I am getting my PhD in Gifted Education.

I made myself a weekly checklist so I can keep my tasks for the week straight. I really want to be more proactive.  I find it much easier to concentrate on graduate school in the evenings the more prepared and organized I feel at work. You can get a copy here of the Word document if interested.

I have been doing guided reading the last few weeks since coming back from Christmas. We have been focusing on biographies, as a way to discuss what makes people successful.  I felt biographies were a great unit for a new year as you think about goals and reflect on what makes other people successful. Since I hadn't taught guided reading in a couple years, I am always looking for helpful strategies to really guide my students as readers.  In my reading for grad school this week, someone gave me an interesting article to read about vocabulary instruction.  The article mentioned a really interesting way to teach word-mapping.  I am excited to try it out this week.  You can see the example from the article below. I love how they used the vocabulary to make connections about the person they were studying.  I can see so many uses for this strategy.  Often just introducing the words before reading seems very flat to me with older students.  Word-mapping gives the vocabulary more context and utilizes higher-order thinking skills.

How do you teach vocabulary as part of your literacy instruction?  How do you teach vocabulary in a way that is relevant and helps them make connections?