What I am Reading June 8

It is Monday, so I am linking up again for #IMWAYR.  I already am enjoying summer.  I have much more time to read when my schedule is more relaxed.

This week I read:

1. The Orphan Train by Christina Baker Kline

I enjoyed this story that linked history to the present.  As a reader, you were able to follow the parallel stories of a foster child and an elderly lady, who had been an orphan from the past who was shipped west on the orphan train. I do think they could have developed Molly's character (the foster child) more.  Molly learns about Vivian's story by helping her clean out her attic and ends up doing an oral history project on her for a school project. This book definitely made me want to incorporate more oral histories into my classroom.  Oral histories could offer a great day to give students opportunities to think like historians.

2. Asylum by Madeleine Roux

I wanted to read this book because I enjoyed Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children.  I have been very intrigued with the idea of photo text ever since I read Wright Morris' The Home Place for a class during my Master's degree.  I love the idea of juxtaposing photography with a fictional story to see how the visual and the verbal narratives interact.  Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children is a much more successful photo text than Asylum.  Asylum has an interesting concept for a plot and was an easy read, but the story is very flat with not much development of the characters.   The main character goes away to a summer college prep program for high school students.  The students are housed in an old mental asylum turned dorm.  It turns into a somewhat suspenseful mystery.

3. Shadow and Bone by Leigh Bardugo

I am almost done listening to Shadow and Bone on audio.  This book I am actually really enjoying.  I generally enjoy plots that are fantasy but use historical settings you recognize.  The setting of this story is a historical Russia that is war-torn but magic plays an important role.  An orphan girl finds out she has a long dormant power and could be the secret to saving the world.  She is swept away to the palace where she finds herself in the middle of politics.  I always enjoy fantasy stories with history, magic, and a little bit of romance. I look forward to reading the next one when I finish this one.

Any good summer reads you recommend?

Texts and Lesson Ideas for Teaching Multiple Points of View (Common Core Reading Literature Standard 6)

Point of View has always been one of my absolute favorite skills to teach.  Helping students to see events from multiple points of view is a vital skill to so many learning milestones: reading abstract plots, building empathy, understanding narrators, building a conceptual foundation to history, and my list could go on.

This summer I am doing some planning for next year for grades 5 and 7, so I decided to start searching for text and lesson ideas by standard.  Standard 6 of the Reading Literature standards focuses on point of view. As you look at the wording of the standard of each grade, you can see that the concept just builds a little each year. My goal is to work on some lesson units for my store with lesson ideas by standard for middle school.

Grade 5 RL 6 - Analyze multiple accounts of the same event or topic, noting important similarities and differences in the point of view they represent.

Grade 6 RL 6 - Explain how an author develops the point of view of the narrator or speaker in a text.

Grade 7 RL 6 - Analyze how an author develops and contrasts the points of view of different characters or narrators in a text.

Grade 8 - Analyze how differences in the points of view of the characters and the audience or reader (e.g., created through the use of dramatic irony) create such effects as suspense or humor.

Some great examples of picture books to use as a mentor text that include multiple points of view:

Voices in The Park - This is a simple story with four differ points of view on a walk in the park.

The Pain and the Great One - This is one of my favorite books to teach with because most students can relate to the idea of an annoying sibling. A brother and sister each describe one another and how they annoy each other.  This is also a great story to teach making connections.

The Day the Crayons Quit - This is a great humorous story told from the point of view of a box of crayons to explain why they have decided to quit.  I love following up this book with writing activities where students write from unique points of view.  I have a unit for this book in my TpT store for upper elementary.

Hey Little Ant - This story is told from alternating points of view between a little boy and an ant.

Teaching point of view by looking at unique points of view:

Teaching fractured fairy tales is always a fun way to teach about point of view and writing from unique perspectives. You can find many great examples of great fractured fairy tales if you search on Pinterest.

Two Bad Ants is a great book that gets kids thinking how life would be from the point of view of an ant. Getting students to write from different perspectives always produces some of my favorite writing pieces of the year.  Ask your students to write from an object's point of view or the antagonist.  Here is a lesson for using Two Bad Ants.

Some other lessons and resources from Read Write Think on point of view:

http://www.readwritethink.org/classroom-resources/lesson-plans/wolf-analyzing-point-view-23.html
http://www.readwritethink.org/parent-afterschool-resources/activities-projects/explore-point-view-fairy-30148.html
http://www.readwritethink.org/classroom-resources/lesson-plans/spend-shoes-exploring-role-265.html

Some other links I found:

Suggestions of kids and young adult novels with multiple points of view: http://thestylinglibrarian.com/2013/05/27/styling-librarian-children-books-with-multiple-points-of-view/

Suggestions of kids books on point of view: http://www.teachingkidsbooks.com/3rd-4th-grade/point-of-view

Lessons on point of view from Read Write Think for middle school students:
http://www.readwritethink.org/classroom-resources/lesson-plans/teaching-voice-with-anthony-167.html
http://www.readwritethink.org/classroom-resources/lesson-plans/story-writing-from-object-30917.html

Resources of suggestions of short stories and lesson ideas for teaching standard 6 focusing on literary elements such as irony: 

My favorite short story from this list that I would use to teach irony and point of view is The Ransom of Red Chief. After having students read this story, we always put the kidnappers on trial to see if they were really guilty.

http://www.elacommoncorelessonplans.com/literature-reading-standards/exemplars-g-9-10/short-story-guides-lessons/teaching-irony.html
http://www.brighthubeducation.com/high-school-english-lessons/41476-short-stories-to-teach-point-of-view/
http://www.brighthubeducation.com/high-school-english-lessons/40339-short-stories-to-teach-irony/

#IMWAYR End of School Year Reads

I can't believe that it has been almost two months since I blogged. Then again, I am a teacher and a graduate student who was at the end of the school year and the end of the semester, so I guess I shouldn't be that surprised.  Today is the beginning of my summer schedule (which is still busy but at least more flexible), so I am excited to have more time to relax, blog, and read for pleasure.

Today is Monday, so I am going to link up with Teach Mentor Texts and Unleashing Readers for #IMWAYR.

I just finished Cress by audio book. Now, I just reserved Fairest at the library.

I have to see I have enjoyed this series by Marissa Meyer.  I have listened to all three as audio books.  As a teacher who has taught elementary grades, I have always enjoyed fractured fairy tales.  The idea of fractured fairy tales for a little older audience set in a science fiction setting is unique spin on an old story.  I also enjoyed seeing how they interweave all the stories. All three of these books are pretty clean too compared to many young adult/teen books, so you easily could read them with younger students.

I finally finished The Wednesday Wars as the read aloud I was doing with my students on Friday.

This is a great book.  It is a coming of age story set on Long Island that has some great examples of figurative language and good use of humor.  I would use this as a read aloud again or even as a literature circle novel. I could see doing a set of literature circles all focusing on the 1960's using The Wednesday Wars, Deadend in Norvelt, and Paperboy. All three of these books are from this era with young teenage boys as the protagonist.  Each story has a unique setting and interesting characters but deals with different issues from the time.

I just put in my request for some summer reads from the library.  What are you reading?

Why We Need to Be Prepared in Order to Be Flexible in the Classroom

Did you have a good Monday?  I had a good Monday.  We always want to have good days, but it is even better when a Monday is a good day because...well, it is Monday.

I am generally a very organized person, and I try to be very prepared.  When I am organized and prepared, I feel better.  I feel calm and confident, ready to tackle what may come my way.  When I am less prepared, I am stressed and more likely to frazzle.  (Is frazzle a word?)  As a full-time teacher and doctoral student, I do not need to add extra reasons to my life to be stressed.

This weekend on Saturday, I remembered at 3pm I needed to go to the library this weekend.  Of course, the library would be closed on Easter.  So that meant I needed to go on Saturday right then before they closed.  I made it to the libraries (plural) because you know the stacks of books I wanted existed across two locations to get everything I wanted.  (Note: For next year to be more prepared I am going to make lists of all the books I want for specific activities and then I can just request all those books be delivered to the library I want ahead of time. So next year I will be more prepared.)

Anyway, I got all the books I wanted.  I decided to take them all up to school on Saturday so I wouldn't have to deal with them Monday morning.  Then today, I got to work about 15 minutes earlier than I needed to. You sometimes forget what a difference 10-15 minutes can make.  I got a lot done this morning and was confidently ready to go. Now, I often try to have everything copied by Friday for the next week anyway.  However, just getting to work a few minutes early on a Monday still just allowed me to have a few minutes of quiet to set the right intention for the day.

The rest of the day continued in the same fashion.  I accomplished a lot.  My students accomplished a lot.  I was able to get several big assignments graded. I gave my students important feedback they needed.  We started a group project this week that the students were enjoying.  Often as teachers if we take the time to be prepared...to feel confident...then our students feed off of that.  If we have a good day, they usually have a good day.  If we start out frazzled, then they are more likely to be less productive that day. We set the tone in our classroom.

Tonight at my Implementation and Evaluation of Curriculum class, we also were discussing a study that looked at differences between effective and less effective teachers for improving student performance.  One of the factors that made the biggest difference was the instructional planning of the teacher.  How well do you plan?  How prepared are you?  I often have said some of the best classroom moments I have experienced is when I was inspired by my students' ideas and questions, and we had an impromptu discussion or impromptu activity. However, I feel confident to be flexible...to be inspired...when I am prepared...when I have planned well.

How prepared are you?  How confident did you feel today?  How well did you plan your day?  Does it make a difference in how you set the tone for your classroom?

Fun Activities to Review the Moon Phases

Well, I hope you are experiencing some warm weather where you are.  The month of March was so incredibly busy for me it just flew by.

This week I decided to go back and do some review activities in Science with my 7th graders.  We had finished up a unit not long ago on the moon and space.  Even after the test, some of my students were still confused on rotation versus revolution, the moon phases, how the moon interacts with the tides, and the different eclipses.

We began by watching Flocabulary's Confessions of a Planet.  They were equally intrigued and mock horrified with the video.  It was a good way to begin the discussion, though.

I first had us complete some foldables from this Space Interactive Notebook file I had bought last year.  We compared and contrasted revolution and rotation.  Then, we labeled the different moon phases and put them in the correct order.

We used these two websites to help us look up the moon phases and review:
http://www.moonconnection.com/moon_phases.phtml
http://www.astronomyknowhow.com/moon-phase.htm

Today we did the activity where you make the moon phases out of Oreos.  Edible labs are always better! I know this is an activity often done with younger students, but I found this great set of lab directions as a freebie from Addie Williams.

It has a great set of procedures and really good questions for them to answer at the end.  It took the activity from just being an activity to truly being more of a lab.

Overall, it was a good week in Science and we got to have some fun reviewing and reteaching. How is your week going?