Reading Response Froms and a FREEBIE

2 more days before I'm back in my little classroom with my favorites....Goodbye break! Goodbye sleeping in! Monday's gonna be rough!

While I am sad to see it go, I am also eager to begin a new year with my kiddos. I've spent the last couple of days getting some lessons together and looking at ALL we still need to cover before May 31st. Kinda crazy how much we still need to do!

I've also been adding a couple of products to my teeny tiny TpT store. I wanted to share (but am a little scared of coming off like a used car dealer!). Bare with me and I promise there will be a  fun freebie at the end!

Up first...

 

I have been using these graphic organizers and reading respomse sheets in my classroom FOREVER and had them saved in random files all over my computer. I finally took the time to compile my most used forms in one handy-dandy file a couple of months ago.

 I have come up with 20 or so forms that cover a variety of reading skills (i.e. sequencing and main idea) and reading stratagies (i.e. making connections and visualizing). These are skills and strategies that need to be reienforced over and over again and, so, I use these forms all.of. the. time.  The pack also includes several reading repsonse forms (i.e. responding from the point of view of a character.

I use these forms for whole class instruction, with small groups, as homework, etc. My kiddos are super familiar with the forms and can use them independently with very little instruction.

For my own organization in the classroom, I have organized the forms in page protectors in  a binder. (Excuse the glare!)

This makes it super easy to pull for absent students,  leave as a resources for subs, etc. Sometimes I even send my students to the binder to pull a sheet when they have finished an activity early.

Here are some examples of completed forms:

In all the pack contains 20 + activities and it's ready for you to download on TPT for just $3.00.


And now for the FREEBIE!!!

I have compiled a mini pack with several sheets that specifically target the reading strategy of visualizing. All of these sheets are included in Forms For ANY Novel pack but I have bundled these to share with you all for FREE. My kids really L-O-V-E these activities!!! I love them too!

In fact, these are such a favorite in my classroom that I devoted a whole blog post describing how I used one of these forms in detail. Read more about it  HERE. 


 Here are some examples of the sheets found in the FREE PACK.

All of the graphics from both of my products are from mycutegraphics.com. My favorite free resource! :)

Well I think that's it! I hope that you found some of this useful and that it didn't sound to sales pitchy! :)

Let me know if you decide to download! I'd love to hear what you all think. :)

Have a fabulous and restful weekend!

Too easy....Too Hard......Just Right

Happy Sunday everybody! I hope that my East Coast buddies are staying safe with Sandy looming. Thinking of you all! We are enjoying a lazy fall morning out here in California. I wanted to take a minute to share what's been going on during reading time in 5th grade.

So it's no secret that my kiddos were having some issues during read to self. We were not exactly reading during our school wide reading time...even though we all had our books out. A lot of my kids were just hanging out with an open book...not so productive. It was seriously driving me CRAZY!

 I felt like I was loosing precious minutes of instructional time while my kids did their best to fake read. It was turning into a huge problem for me and it turned out to have a two part solution.

First,  I taught my kiddos the difference between fake readers and real readers. I blogged about that part of the solution HERE.

The other part of the solution was reteaching picking the right book. I had gone over the idea at the beginning of the year but had never really taught a lesson on the whole concept so I decided to start from scratch.

I scoured blogland and pintrest...my usual first line of defense...and came up with this lesson:

I started by telling them I picked out a brand new book for read aloud and that I was really excited about it. I pulled out The Life of Benjamin Banneker  from my bag and started reading aloud with my usual enthusiasm  Then I said, "Turn to your neighbor and predict what will happen next". *Crickets* A couple of kids tried to come up with something but most just looked at me like I was crazy. Which was exactly what I wanted!

I said, "You all are supposed to be making predictions. What seems  to be the problem?" One of my superstars replied, "Well I really tried to listen but some of the words were really hard and I really couldn't understand the plot. I think that's a high school book or something."

Too which I quickly replied, "Okay, so your telling me this book is too difficult because the words are too hard and you didn't quite understand what was going on. That's okay because I picked up a couple of other books while I was at the bookstore."

Then I pulled out Don't, Danny, Don't! I read three pages and then asked them to predict. They laughed and said "Of course we know what is going to happen. That's a baby book!"

Just before I pulled out the final book I heard one of my students tell her neighbor, "This is just like Goldie Locks and the Three Bears. We Can't find the right book." That's when I knew the lesson was going in the right direction. :)

Finally a pulled out James and the Giant Peach. I read 3 pages in my best read aloud voice. My kiddos were hooked! I asked them to predict with their neighbor. There were insightful murmurs all over the room.

I was smiling. My kids were smiling. All was right in the world.

Then we had a quick discussion on why James and the Giant Peach was an appropriate book and why the others were too easy or too difficult for us.

We used that info and created this anchor chart:

(Sorry it's so out of focus!) 

I was so happy that they were able to help me fill out the chart...we even ran out of room on the chart because they had SO many ideas.

At the end of the period, the kids took turns book shopping in the classroom library. We placed the anchor chart in the library so that they were able to refer to it as they shopped. Overall, I feel like the lesson went very well and they really understood and applied the information. I just love when that happens! :)

What lessons went well for you this week? I'd love to hear about them! Leave me a comment below. :)

Real Readers

Our entire school begins the day with read to self. It can be powerful to have the whole school reading...it can also be a huge waste of time if the kiddos aren't really reading. My students started off the year doing a great job with read to self but slowly their attention started to drift. My classroom looked like it was full of readers but if you looked closely with teacher eyes, you could see a whole lotta fakers, too!

I was trying to figure out what to do to combat this when I came across these amazing pins....

<Click on the images to go to the original site> 

Love this chart from Ginger over at Ginger Snaps. 

I taught a quick lesson on the difference between real readers and fake readers. Then we barinstormed as a class and came up with a chart (Opps! I forgot to take a picture of the chart that we came up with)

Next, I printed out some Real Reader tickets. Of course I forgot to take pictures of those and the the doc is on my computer at school but they weren't anything fancy. I did fancy them up a bit by printing the Real Reader tickets on my favorite astrobrights paper.
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When I saw my kiddos practicing the traits of Real Readers, I rewarded them with a little ticket. We put the tickets in a basket and did a drawing at the end of the week. I picked 5 tickets and the winners were able to choose a brand new book.

Since we all want to walk away with a little somethin' somethin', I also created these cute little bookmarks as door prizes for ALL of the students who had earned a Real Reader ticket during the week. Hopefully these little bookmarks will also serve as a little reminder to the kiddos, too!    
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We used this system for two weeks. This is our first week without using the tickets and I still see improved reading habits! Here's to hoping these real readers are here to stay!

What do you do to teach/improve reading habits?

Book Clubs & Edmodo

Hi all! Happy Saturday!

I wanted to share s fun little resource that kids L-O-V-E. It's called Edmodo. Have you heard of it????

I actually first heard about Edmodo at a technology conference over the summer. It is basically like Facebook but can be used for communicating with your students online. If you check out the image below you can REALLY see the similarities to fb!

It is a secure site, password protected and nobody else sees the info posted so there is a lot less to worry about than some other sites. To be honest, I don't remember all of the security details because the conference was in July but I do know that it was approved for our school and we are kinda strict about all that stuff!

Anyway, our 7th grade teachers have been using Edmodo with great success. They even post assignments online and the students turn them in via Edmodo. Since it's just like Facebook, you can use it to facilitate peer to peer discussions as well....

Which brings me to the book club. Our teeny tiny school is filled with some reluctant readers. We are using this fun Edmodo site to get them excited about reading. The 6th grade teacher and myself are hosting an all girls book club for 6th, 7th and 8th graders.

The sixth grade teacher picked our first book Ninth Ward by Jewell Parker. It tells the story of a 12-year-old girl during Hurricane Katrina. Our shipment hasn't come in yet, but I really can't wait to start reading it next week!

And the best part: the girls are super excited, too! We weren't sure how much interest this book club would generate since it requires the girls to do a lot of extra reading outside of school. They also have to post and discuss each chapter in addition to their normal nightly homework for school but so far the response has been great! 

We've already had more than half of the middle school girls at our school join our  group on Edmodo. They've  all commented on the authors introduction which was posted on our Edmodo page and watched a video clip from youtube.

The girls are already using strategies (predicting, building their schema), searching out their own info (several have commented on googling the events of Hurricane Katrina) and chit chatting about the books with their peers. 

I can't wait to see where it goes from here! I am all for any tool that has our students excited about  reading and discussing books --even on this three day weekend! Love, love, love! 

Have you used Edmodo? What are some other online resources to get kids involved? Please share! I'd love to know more! 

PS I am sooo close to 50 followers! To all of my followers:thank you, thank you, thank you! I am loving the blog world! If you don't already follow my blog I would love it if you would! :) 

Have a great weekend! 

Visualize...The Movie in your Mind

Happy Monday! 

My Monday ran pretty smoothly and I am actually home before 5:00. I cannot complain. :) I had an impromptu observation this morning but our reading lesson went well (read on to find out more about the lesson). Here's to hoping the rest of the week runs just as smoothly!

One of my goals for the school year is to do a better job teaching and modeling reading strategies. I have found so many great ideas out here in blog land and now that I am really getting into the school year we are jumping in head first. I am trying to find some ways to incorporate the strategies into our daily routines and our school's curriculum as much as possible so that my students don't miss the connection between our mini lessons and the real world. 

Today my class worked on visualizing while reading. We used our class novel, Socks by Beverly Cleary,  to help us practice this skill. We discussed that visualizing is like seeing the events of the book as a movie in your mind.

The lesson began as I read the first 4 pages of Socks aloud  while the students had their heads down. During this time their only job was to visualize the setting, characters and events in those first 4 pages.  Then they turned to their neighbor and shared what they visualized as I read. 

Next, I passed out the same 4 pages and had the students read the passage silently. Any time they found a particular word or phrase that helped them to make that movie in their mind, they would highlight it. My kids were all kinds of happy about this...some got a little highlight happy! 

After they had highlighted the page I asked them questions like, "What does Debbie look like?" They would give their answer and I would respond, "How do you know?" It was their job to go back into the text and find the proof in the text. "I know that her arms are red because on page 11 it says that...."This helped them to make the connection between the words on the page and the things they visualized in their minds.

Then for the fun part. The kids illustrated the scene and provided at least three quotes from the book that helped them to visualize the scene from the story. Overall I think that this lil project really helped them to cement the concept of visualizing in their minds. We still need some more work before they have  automaticity with this reading skill but I think that they are off to a good start! 

How was your Monday? Leave me a comment and let me know. :)