It's Monday! What Are You Reading?

I'm linking up with It's Monday! What Are You Reading? Currently, I'm reading books to get a suitable selection for my fourth graders to read as a book club related to Civil Rights. We will be completing project work focusing on the following essential question: How can conflict create change? I thought the kids would be able to really dig deep, thinking about this question through the lens of historical fiction while they are studying the Civil Rights Movement in social studies. I've read Glory Be, which is a keeper for our book club. Now I'm reading The Lions of Little Rock, and I'm loving it!

What are you reading? Do you have any suggestions for our book club? If so, leave them below as a comment.

When a Good Book Grabs You #SOL16

You know that moment.  I have this book. It's a rather big book. I've heard it's good. I love the author, Pam Munoz Ryan. I heard her speak two years ago and fell in love with her even more. This book has been on my "to read" list for quite a while. I haven't picked it up, until yesterday.

We have a group doing book club, so we met on Wednesday during advisory time to decide on what book or books we were going to read over the next couple of weeks. The students voted on four books, so we will have four groups going. Two out of the four I have read. Our list is Escape from Mr. Lemoncello's Library (read and loved), Savvy (read and loved), Peak (haven't read but plan to read with my boys), Echo (haven't read but plan to read with my girls).

I have a copy of Echo in my classroom library, which I pulled when we were voting.

Yesterday, my kiddos were working on poetry and Echo was sitting on my table. No one needed me at that moment, so I opened the book - just to take a look, mind you. Well, that was that. I read the first few pages - the opener.  I WAS HOOKED! I continued through the first chapter and had to stop because it was the end of the day. BUMMER! We had to pack up and head to carpool.

I don't know that I can wait until after spring break to read this with my kiddos. Ryan really grabbed me from the very beginning. I already want to see what happens next.

I will try to wait, but really.....I think I will read it now and reread it with the girls:)

Somewhere Safe with Someone Good #SOL16

I am currently reading Somewhere Safe with Someone Good by Jan Karon. I have read all the books in the Mitford Series and love them. They are very sweet. The story always makes me wish we lived in simpler times. It's full of rich characters and interesting plot-lines. The characters are caring, kind, and thoughtful, living in a small town where everyone knows each other - which is sometimes good, sometime bad. I am looking forward to bedtime, so I can snuggle up and escape for a little while.

Story Elements and Theme

We are departmentalized beginning in fourth grade, so each of us teaches our own homeroom reading - except in the beginning of the year. Because I am the fourth grade language arts teacher, I cover the summer reading in this class, and when we're done, the other homeroom teacher will take over for her kiddos. So, today I wanted to share what we've covered the first two weeks of school.

I had my incoming fourth graders read Because of Winn-Dixie by Kate DiCamillo as one of their required books over the summer. I don't require specific books or even genres throughout the year, but by having everyone read the same book, this allows me to teach story elements easily because we can use the events and characters of one book that everyone already knows.

We began by discussing characters in the story. My kiddos named the characters and gave descriptions which included both internal and external traits.

After discussing the characters in the story, we defined internal vs external conflict. We then went through each character and gave examples of each type of conflict for our main characters.

We discussed setting, defined it and then the kiddos gave their ideas of setting from the story.

From there we focused on plot - looking at the events that take place in the story and creating a plot diagram. This was new for them and they really caught on quickly.

Following the plot discussion, we focused topics the author develops in the story. A few that the students came up with were loneliness, friendship, family and love.

During our second week of school, we defined and discussed what a theme is in a story and how the students can use events in the story to show support for these themes in the story. I wanted the students to move from a general topic they think is in the story to develop the idea into a theme. We focused on the topic of friendship.

My read aloud for the second week was You and Me by Susan Verde.  After reading the book, the students took the topic of friendship and generated a theme statement: You can find friendship in unexpected places and at unexpected times.

We then discussed what it means to have a friend, how do you make friends, how do you keep friends, and what makes a good friend. Finally, students created "Friend Wanted" ads where they stated reasons to support the statement: I make a good friend because...

Here are a few:

How do you teach your students about topics and theme in reading?

Circus Mirandus by Cassie Beasley Book Trailer

I have fallen behind in my book trailer creations, so I got back to it this morning.

During the later part of the school year, I read all kinds of book buzz about Circus Mirandus by Cassie Beasley. I ordered my copy from Amazon and read it in June. It was wonderful! It was one of those books I just couldn't put down and finished in two days. I think this will be added to my read alouds for the year!

Monday Made It! - July 27th

I'm joining Fourth Grade Frolics for Monday Made It again this week. I've been on vacation this last week, so my creations are computer generated.

My first Monday Made It! is a morning check-in for my kiddos for their reading. I used to have a calendar for each student, and in the morning, I would call out each child's name and they would tell me the title of the book they were reading and what page they were on. I like checking in with everyone, but honestly, it takes some time.  This year, I'm changing it up just a little bit. I created this form that I will post on the whiteboard, located next to the attendance board. When students move their number for attendance each day, they will write their name, title of the book and page number. I'll keep these in my notebook, so I'll be able to do a quick check from day to day and keep an eye on their reading life to use in individual conferences. This will leave time in our first period for our read aloud and a mini lesson.

My second Monday Made It! is a handout for my kiddos to keep for the year and refer to regularly. I have a large one printed and posted on my classroom wall, too. I try very hard to teach my students about a Growth Mindset. I think it's really important for them to know that I want them to take risks in their learning. Yes, they may fall/fail, but it this is an important part of learning! I will be there to help them and move from "I can't do it" to "I can't do it, YET".

My third Monday Made It! are my team's welcome letters for our fourth and fifth graders. We're departmentalized beginning in fourth grade, and our team teaches both fourth and fifth grade. Our welcome letter for our fourth graders is a way to hopefully reduce their anxiety about moving up to fourth grade and having four different teachers for their core classes. For our fifth graders, our welcome letter is really a welcome back and we're excited to teach you again this year. We'll send these out the week before school starts.

My fourth Monday Made It! is something for the first week of school. Our first full day of school this year is on a Tuesday. Our parents' night is Thursday of that same week. I like to have some type of writing up for the parents to see. In order to do this in two days, it has to be a pretty quick activity, so I created a newsletter for the kids to write articles about themselves.

My fifth and final Monday Made It! for the week is cards that will have my students' log in information for different websites such as Google Drive, our school website, Typing Pal, etc. I'm just waiting on their log in info from our IT guy and then I'll finish them up and laminate them. I'll attach these to the first page in their agendas because they take their agendas to every class and home every night. I'm hoping this will alleviate the nightly emails of "Johnny can't log in to Google Drive for his homework".

That's all for this week! What did you make this week?

Global Read Aloud 2015

This year's Global Read Aloud promises to be another great experience! Pernille Ripp is the fabulous creator of this experience. If you want to connect with classrooms around the world, go here to sign up.

We're going to read Fish in a Tree by Linda Mullaly Hunt. Here is a trailer for the book:

The schedule for the read aloud is:

Week 1:  Chapter 1 – 8

Week 2: Chapter 9 – 17

Week 3: Chapter 18 – 24

Week 4: Chapter 25 – 33

Week 5: Chapter 34 – 42

Week 6: Chapter 43 – end

During the month of October, you can connect with other classrooms reading the same book as you through Twitter, Skype, Kidblog, Edmodo and more. The Twitter group for this book is #GRAFIAT.

Join us, won't you? You won't regret it!

Writing About Reading - Round 2

A couple of weeks ago I participated in an online book group that read Cynthia Lord's A Handful of Stars. (If you haven't read it yet, pick it up immediately! It is an awesome book.) We were interested in our writing about our reading. We all have our students write about their reading, so we thought we'd practice what we have them do. It's not an easy task!

During the first book club, we all put our notes in a shared Google Doc. It was great being able to read everyone's thoughts. Many people took pictures of their notebooks and uploaded them into the document. It was great to see how differently everyone jots while reading. The other thing that I really enjoyed was reading everyone's notes and comments and being able to reply to other's comments. I found my thinking became much deeper and taken in new directions after reading the thoughts of others.

For the second round of book club, we broke up into groups of 3 to 4 and chose different books. My groups is reading Gordon Korman's Masterminds. Although we're only on chapter 10, this book is excellent! It really grabs you from the very beginning. We started with a shared Google Doc but someone from our last group introduced Padlet to us. If you have used it before, it's super easy to use and would be great for all kinds of things students can do in the classroom. So, most of us decided to try Padlet for taking notes this time. What I found so far is that by each of creating our own Padlet, we've lost the conversation feeling we had in the first book club. We're posting in our own Padlet page and then putting a link in the Google Doc. There is an option to share a Padlet page with others, so I'm hoping my group with either be willing to post together on one Padlet page or go back to the Google Doc. We'll see. I'm definitely still enjoying it, but I can tell my thinking isn't moving as much as it did the first time.

If you haven't tried Padlet, I would highly recommend it. It's super easy to use and would be very easy for the kids to pick up on and use.