Independent Reading with Purpose

As soon as my students start reading their self selected chapter books for independent reading, It is no longer possible to set book specific comprehension activities . We still want to help them think about what they were reading and to read with purpose. So I made a set of Reader Response Stems based on the same comprehension strategies that I use with them in shared/teacher directed reading sessions.

These Reader Response Stems can be used by the students for any book that they are reading. It can be matched to the strategy you are covering with the class at the time. You could used it for independent practice once you have finished teaching a specific strategy to your class and use it as an assessment tool to see if they are using that strategy fluently or whether they may need some more direct teaching on it.

The 11 strategies covered in the set include:

• making connections
• asking questions
• visualising (making mental pictures)
• inferring (predicting)
• summarising
• synthesising
• author's message
• evaluating
• setting (time and place)
• characters
• language

and suit students from ages 9 and older.
You can get your very own copy which includes both a UK and USA spelling set (simply delete the one you don't need from the PDF)
by clicking here (TPT) or here (TNB).

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Blooms - Oldie but a goodie

Hello friends,
When I first started teaching over a decade ago, one of the buzz words around at the time was Bloom's Taxonomy. I can't say I have heard it much lately but for this terms Daily 5 / Sustained Reading slot, my team decided to revisit it. We incorporated it into the Read to Self / Read to Buddy component of the reading block. First though, I'll recap on how last term went.
Our focus was as follows:

 Once we started of course, another goal came to light which was extending stamina (on-task focised reading) for a fixed period.
We monitored the Read to self (5min) as follows:

After listening to our buddies read, we discussed what it means to read fluently, and set this as the purpose for our Read to Buddy time:

Here are the anchor charts we used to give our buddy feedback (star) and feed-forward (wish or next step):

They worked a treat. Now in Term 2 we wished to extend into comprehension checkpoints, so our Bloom's Comprehension Fans were born.

First our stamina goals extended to 10 minutes Read to Self:

Next, the Read to Buddy time was split 3/2 minutes. Read to your buddy for 3min and discuss for 2minutes (up to 3 questions from the Bloom's Fans).

And the buddy still gave  feedback on fluency (out of 10) and on the ability of the reader to provide full answers.

As with last term, we will again reflect on the patterns that emerge after a fortnight of reading.

Finally:

FREE Daily 5 - Reading to self / Buddy Follow up.

used in Term 1  &

Bloom's Questions - Bookmarks or Fans

used in Term 2 are available here:
Teachers Pay Teachers - Reading at One Teachers Journey
Teachers Notebook
Help Me Learn (NZ)
And a BIG thank-you to...

Thank you for visiting. Would love to read about how you switch things up during sustained reading time in your classroom. Leave a link to your blog post below.

Body Systems #8 - Collaborating on writing

Hello Friends,

In post #7 I said I would write about  how we use our class Google Drive for collaboration and moderation. This is something I started using last term, when our school server "died'. I wanted some way that students could write on-line and access for collaboration and moderation. Enter our class Google account.

 

Now there are probably snazzier ways that people are using the internet for this purpose but as a starting point, this was perfect for me and my Y4 kiddies last year. This Year I am repeating it with my Y6's and so far so good. The only difference of course is that last year we were a digital class (12 iMacs- 1:2) and this year we are 1:3 with variable devices (iMac, windows laptops, iPads).
P.S. I still like to think that we are a digital class because its about mindset really, not the hardware you have.

  (List View)

(thumbnail view)

Anyhow...this is how we did it:
Step 1) Open a Google account for the class. Make it something generic that can move with you if you should change rooms or levels.

Step 2) Make the password something relevant to you and your students.

Step 3) Agree on a set of user etiquette with your students on the appropriate use of this shared drive.

Step 4) Create folders as required and teach your students a few basics, they'll soon figure out the rest.

Home Folders: I created a class 2013 HOME folder first and tasked each student to log in, open the Home folder and create their own Home folder inside this one. They had to name their personal folders as follows:
e.g. name_home2013, and finally assign a colour to it.
This is where they file away completed or personal work.

 

Work Folders: next I created a folder for our current theme - Who we are-Body Systems. Within that there are 3 folders - draft (red), peer review(orange) and teacher chat(green).  As students prepare to type up a paragraph from their research notes, they create a new document each time. Again the naming convention is important: e.g. name_1_intro, name_2_heart. This way its clear to see at a glance whether a student is keeping up with the pace, or needs a little extra support. 

 

Once they are happy with their paragraph, they move it to the peer review folder. They then set up appointments with other kiddies (also in that orange folder) for a peer review. I require them to have 3 collaborative sessions, before posting into the teacher chat folder.

 

As work appears here, I call students for a teacher conference about their paragraph. Following this the final work is filed into the group folder for that body system. Once the work has been used in the presentation, it is filed away in the student's Home folder.

Teacher Chat: I copy and paste the student's work below in the same document. I work with or without the student in the copy only, leaving the original work untouched. Great thing is that I can easily access this drive from anywhere, even my iPhone and edit work if we are backed up.

Notice the Peer Reviewers names below the student's paragraph.

 

 I have a marking code that I use as follows. This document also sits inside our drive for reference. The student then pastes a 3rd copy beneath mine and makes the edits suggested. This way there is a very clear trail of evidence to show progress. They can use this to talk to when sharing their learning at parent evenings

Here are our rules for using the drive:

 And here are the process steps that we had for reference:

Once all the editing is completed, then comes the fun part of creating a presentation, the brain can switch fully into creative mode as it no longer needs to worry about elements of handwriting, accurate copying, spelling, etc.

I'll post about the presentation options next term when we get to that, lots of hard work researching, writing and editing first -  haha :D

Would love to hear about how you use Google Drive with your kiddies.
'Til next time :)

Audio Conferencing for Writing

Recently I began to use an app on my iPhone called Voice Memos.

My kiddies were in full blown inquiry mode and beavering away over their paragraphs for an information report. Each paragraph was drafted on a separate inquiry sheet and handed in for conferencing. They needed to follow this writing cycle;

1. research and take notes on the sub-topic
2. draft your  paragraph
3. discuss your paragraph with your research buddy and edit
4. conference with T
5. type into class Google docs account then drag into T folder for typo check
6a. research next paragraph, or
6b. retrieve T checked paragraph from Google Docs for publishing into presentation mode.

Then...in the middle of all this frenzy....I got sick. Oh no!
My trusty iPhone to the rescue.

I took their stack of draft work home and read them into voice memos. I gave oral feedback as I went and saved each one by name and subheading under the 'custom' option. I then shared each one by email to my work email account.

Mine would have been called e.g. Matt P2 causes. At first it comes up with the time of the recording and you need to re-name under custom .

 

Once they arrived into my in-box, I could save each attachment into a folder on my desktop as they were already correctly labeled. They come through in m4a format.

I uploaded this folder to the school server where the kiddies could access their feedback and went home to crawl back into bed, under a pile of tissues.

Under my wonderful relief teacher's supervision, they took their paragraphs, red pens and headphones to the computers to listen to their feedback and make edits.

The joy was being at home in bed and seeing their work begin to appear in the Google Docs account in real time, as they began typing up their edited paragraphs. I could then correct their typos for them from home, as soon as they were done, so that they could move onto their next step.

Now some of you reading this will be quite skeptical, I'm sure. From my point of view, here are the benefits for the students, as I see them:

1. students receive their conference privately through their headphones
2. they can pause, rewind, re-listen to the feedback while editing and even come back and listen again if  they were asked to go away and add more detail, to ensure they were on the right track.
3. the conferences can be recorded after classes are finished and multiple students can work through their feedback at the same time, the next day (depending on the number of devices you have in your room).
4. this also avoids students leaving you after a conference and immediately forgetting what they had to edit, despite the notations you made on their work :)
5. students make their own corrections, not you, that way they own it and there is a higher chance of it crossing over into their typing / publishing.
6. they listen to an informative feedback model and will hopefully develop the skills to provide feedback in a similar way, when buddy editing.
7. the inherent stress of being with the person while they critique your work, is also removed
8. it slots easily into Daily 5 with an authentic 'listening to reading' model

Would love to hear what you think so please leave a comment. Have you used anything like this in your class? How has it worked for you? Please comment below :)

Tracking That Daily Independent Reading

At the moment I am introducing the Read to Self & Read to a Buddy. We all do this together as a whole class, all at the same time. But eventually I'd like to move it to the independent realm. With this in mind, I developed the following tracking sheet. Its good for 2 weeks if you read 5 days a week. Ignore the last two rows in each table if, like me, you read 4 days a week. (my 5th day is specialist day - Music, PE, Spanish etc).

The Read to Self has a Stamina column where the student can reflect on whether they 'got lost' in their book for the full 5min (tick all 5 boxes)
For Read to Buddy, I have found my students have continued with their own chapter book for this session so, instead of recording the book title again, I want them to reflect instead on the feedback that their 'coach' gave them (remember 2 stars and a wish?)
At the end of 2 weeks, students can write a reflection about how they went over the fortnight. Honesty in the recording needs to be emphasised for this data to be meaningful /useful to them at reflection time. Here is the Fortnightly reflection sheet.

If you would like to use these in your classroom, you can download these here at my TpT store.
Please let me know how you get on by leaving me  a comment below.

Daily 5 Listening Centre Follow up

Expanding the Listening Centre in my Daily 5 programme is my next job at the start of the new term. For the last couple of years, my students have enjoyed listening to the entertaining stories of Canadian author - Robert Munsch. You can explore his website for yourself here. Click on the BLUE BOOK. This will bring up 'Quick find' on the right beneath the book images. Choose a story with the up/down arrows. Then click GO. A media player will pop up. You will fall in love with these stories.

Later I added the ever expanding site - Studyladder - to this activity. In the Literacy section of this site, there is a reading section. The digital books are leveled and students can choose to turn the speaker on. The stories are followed by comprehension activities, both on-line and printable. You will need to open an account for Studyladder in your area. I use the New Zealand site at: http://www.studyladder.co.nz/

To follow up the listening activity, and to encourage listening with purpose, I created the following reading activity pack. You can preview and grab your copy from my TPT store HERE

A UK and US spelling version are both included!