Reading Projects

October 28, 2013:

Today's Strategy:  "Finding Important Points"

 

Description: Students are not always required to just find the Main Idea of a passage. They must also identify important details that may help them write a summary.

 

Procedure: 

 

1.  I asked my students to tell me what they have learned so far about how to write a summary.

        -I had one student start telling me the summary of a story I recently asked them to summarize.  She had a hard time telling me the important points.

        -With some clarification that I just wanted to know HOW to write a summary, not to summarize a story, I had another struggling reader tell me that a summary is when you give the details. 

 

2.  Pleased with this second definition, I elaborated on this, telling the students that when you write a summary you need to be able to identify the MOST important points of a story or article and your brain needs to figure out which details are important and which details you probably don't need to include.

 

3.  I then explained that we were going to practice doing this today.  I gave them each an article about  deadly hornets in China.  I read the article to them with little pause or explanation except to clarify some of their comments about how bees and wasps are different from hornets after they comments about how they hated wasps or telling a story about how wasps were at their house, etc.  

 

4.  I gave them each three sticky notes and asked them to write down three of the most important points in the article on each sticky note.  They did this independently, and then we shared.

 

5.  I shared first and gave my explanation for why I chose these points.  Then they shared and I asked them to explain why they chose certain points. 

 

RESULTS:

 

For the most part, the three students chose at least ONE of the important points that I did.  Two of them chose the FIRST sentence of the article, which I explained to them probably wasn't one of the most important points that they would include in a summary, but that maybe they chose it because it was the first sentence and starting point for them since this was their first time doing this. 

 

Overall, I was pleased with this activity and surprised they did as well as they did, because writing or telling a summary of an article is a rather difficult task for them. 

 

 

 

 

 

Mr. Mountain Man...

I was subbing this week in a class that has been studying the Southern States and preparing for an upcoming test. I decided to give them a fun little assignment.

So here's what happens when you give a simple challenge to a class of some pretty bright and witty third graders.

Here was the assignment:

Choose one of the Southern States and choose a character from one of these states.
Choose a creative name like "Patty Peach from Georgia" describing one of the state's attributes.
You MAY bring a prop like an orange for Florida.

So, my expectations weren't too high and I certainly didn't expect the kids to come back with a full report...just a simple idea.

Here's what one of these little genius' came back with (Mr. Mountain from West Virginia)...

Here's the Activity:

We played an improv game called "Bus Stop".
Two chairs, two players.
Each player had to 'come up' as their character.
The character in the right chair has to ask the character in the left chair the following questions:
    -What's your name?
    -Where are you from?  What's it like where you're from?
    -Where are you going?  Why?
When the character in the right chair has finished, his/her bus 'comes' and the other character moves to the right chair, and the game continues with a new character coming up. 

We had characters like Mr. Palmetto Dude, Emi Peach, Marylou Mississippi. The kids were hilarious and such good little actors and actresses. 

 

 

When you close a book...

...that's when the fun begins. 

I was once told by a wise, NOT old, but seasoned teacher that once you finish reading a book to a class, that's when the learning begins. 

At the time, I was a bit frustrated at this suggestion. My class didn't have the time to stop and reflect, I didn't have time to create a reflection activity, and quite frankly, I didn't know HOW to help my students reflect. 

While I have since improved as a teacher, as Master's Student, in a Children's Literature course, I have been blessed with OODLES, but more importantly, EFFECTIVE and, in my opinion, INVALUABLE ideas for helping students to reflect, think about, analyze, and enjoy the reading process.  These go far beyond the book reports and cereal box ideas.  In our digital age, students need more and are qualified to produce more. 

These include using/creating:

Webquests (questgarden.com, zunal.com, google sites)
Youtube videos (animoto)
Multimedia Poster (glogster.com)
Word Posters (Wordle.net)
Museumbox (Great for Social Studies)
Blogging!!!  Responding to a blog!
Creating a professionally illustrated story (storybird.com)

There are many, many, more and I have loved learning and growing as a student, reader, mother and teacher.