Free 4 All Linky #3

Hello friends,

I have linked in to the Free 4 all Linky run by All Things Upper Elementary. You can check it out (HERE).

 

5W and 1H

Hello friends,

Today, for writing, I pulled out a section from my resource

Reading Comprehension Skills and Figurative Language Posters

It's the Who, What, Why, Where, When & How questions. I printed them in greyscale for my students, reducing to 2-1 as well. We make envelopes to keep them in and made our own tool kits for buddy conferencing.

Then we got together with a buddy to share our narratives. Students read 1 paragraph at a time, while their buddy held the question prompts ready to ask expanding questions of the writer. After taking turns with this activity, the kiddies regrouped and shared the results of their expanded sentences back to their table groups. What a difference!

This was a follow up to a great little digital motivator called "I made tea." Take your students through it by clicking onto each 'greyed out' word. It will blow their minds how you can expand 1 short, dull sentence into an entire paragraph.

(Here) is the link to the digital motivator and I added some images of our tool-kits, too :)

 

 

Learner Profiles Matching Lesson extension

Hello friends,

I posted about my Learner Profile Mix n Match lesson for the start of this year in a post (HERE) earlier. I just wanted to show you our finished posters.

 

I took a photo of each students, with their backpack and Learning Journal, to represent the image in the resource. After drafting their Learner profile, they published them in these cute pencil frames from

http://allthatglittersinfirstgrade.blogspot.com

 

Remember you can get my activity forFREE from my TpT store - One Teacher's Journey - HERE.

or from my website - Help Me Learn - HERE

Enjoy! Would love to know how it went for you.

Narrative Writing Posters

Hello Friends,

We are hard at work writing our first Narratives this year. The motivational text that I used for this is
Alexander and the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day by Judith Viorst

You can preview the book on Youtube and the HBO cartoon is also there.

First, we shared the story and discussed why we may have a strong  personal connections to the events that Alexander experiences throughout his day.  We also looked at why the character kept wanting to go to Australia and why would the author keep repeating this concept as a link through the story.

For home-learning, students discussed their own unlucky, unfortunate or 'bad day' experiences with their families, that they have had over the years, and made a list in their Learning Journals, to bring to school.

In class we used these to create a time-line for our stories. We talked about how author's write from personal experiences in order to connect with their reader about  relate-able topics. Also how authors may modify the circumstances or details of these events to fit a story idea or message. My kiddies had to adapt experiences that happened over several years to a timeline that would fit 'Yesterday' - Our Very Bad Day'.

So far we have written the Orientation and half of the sequence of events. They are sounding amazing so far :)

I created this support material for Writing Narratives, both for myself - to refresh the features in my mind - and also to share with the students as they edit their draft work.

I have included descriptions and examples of the following supporting concepts:
Purpose of Narrative Text
Types of Narrative Text
Features of Narrative Text
Structure
Plan a Narrative Text
Language
Use of the Senses
Imagery
Rhetorical Questions
Vary Sentence Openers
Personal Voice

Hope you find it useful too. You can grab it from HERE or HERE

Will share the results soon :)

I Like Myself Art / Writing / Speaking Unit

Hello friends,

Over the past few weeks we have looked at some useful Model Texts to launch our student responses to text (part of our CRAFT reading centre). I blogged previously about our RACK challenge , motivated by Bob Graham's How to Heal a Broken Wing. The hearts are coming along nicely. Even though we didn't reach 100 hearts in 2 weeks, we still managed 51! recorded RACKs and many more that went unrecorded. The students asked to have a week extension on the deadline as they felt that they would really like to meet the challenge. I have another activity that I would like them to go on with after this one, so will keep you updated as that unfolds.

Our self portraits turned out great and we shared them to our school assembly this week. 4 lovely kiddies recorded their writing for the soundtrack as the class set of portraits rolled in a slideshow.

I used the Voice Memos app on my iPhone to record them, which I then emailed to my school address and dragged to edited in Garageband. Then I exported the track to my iTunes. Once I created the slideshow in iPhoto, I could simply select the track from my iTunes and exported this as a Quicktime.

A HUGE and heartfelt THANK YOU to the following for the inspiration. The Harold Caravan, I Like Myself by Karen Beaumont, and Kathy Barbro of Art Projects for Kids.

Here are a few close-ups. Of particular interest is the detail that students  put into decorating their names.

A Picture Book for Valentine's Day and Classroom Kindness

A Lovely picture book suited to all ages with its poignant message is "How to heal a broken wing" written by Bob Graham.

You can read more about it and the author HERE

Here is a link to the YouTube read-aloud video - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZRyWcwd4y8s

We used this book as a 'Reading-To' and reviewed our inference skills while making connections for text-to-self and text-to-world.

Our action (reader response) took the form of a Valentines Day challenge, fitting in with our Unit of Inquiry for ...
How We Organise Ourselves - Leadership.

Our central idea is: Leadership means living a life of integrity and of inspiring others,
with  lines of inquiry as follows:
Living a life of integrity everywhere.
Leader’s acceptance of others, allows others to accept the leader.
Leadership involves serving others with commitment and sacrifice.

And now for the challenge.

As a class we discussed what Random acts of kindness were and where we have actioned these in the past.
We have now set ourselves the challenge of completing 100 Random Acts of Classroom Kindness over the next 2 weeks.  When students complete an act, they collect a heart to fill out the information on and it's then posted up on our wall.

A HUGE thank you to MyCuteGraphics for the gorgeous Valentine's Day images :)

Here is our wall so far...

...and by the end of the first week...

Well done to my amazing students for posting such awesome RACK's on our topic wall   :) :)

Check in to see how we go by the end of next week. So how do you go about encouraging leadership in your students?

The resources and ideas for this activity are available in my Back 2 School Bundle - First 2 Weeks, that you might also like to preview HERE

Love to see your comments below.

Class Novel - Each Little Bird That Sings plus a Free Reading Activity

With the new term about to start, I have been scouring the public libraries and teacher blogs in search of mentor texts in the form of cool picture books and novels to share-read with my year 6 students this year. I came across a mention for Each Little Bird That Sings by Deborah Wiles and I am in love !!!

This story reminds that life is full of twists and turns. And the biggest one of all is learning what it takes to handle them.
Please read about this gem of a novel HERE & HERE:

As I read it, I quickly saw how well it lent itself to a novel study, and when you read about how the author came about writing this book, well, there was a genuine Author's Purpose, right there.

It will also underline the message to your students that good writing comes from the heart - your own life experiences - because these are the things that you can breathe life into so that your audience relates to your message.

This novel also lends itself to a great Novel Study.

Here is a link to the 18 page Reader Response Journal that I made for my students. It includes:

3x ‘pre-reading’ activities - prediction, vocabulary, author bio
6x ‘reading response' activities - author craft, main character, support characters, text-to-self comparison,  setting analysis,
8x ‘reading application & synthesis' activities - flat/round character, family tree, writing draft & publish for text-to-world, Venn diagram, title hymn.

You will notice that the activities are NOT boring comprehension question-answer worksheets. Instead they are reader RESPONSE style that promotes higher order thinking skills like, analysis, application and synthesis.  

Of course, you can manipulate the order of the activities by moving the pages in the PDF document or even select specific activities as you need them. However if you would like to make them up into booklets, the following assembly instructions have been included. 

Journal Assembly instructions:
Print pgs. 1-18 (on 2 per page setting),
Separate out the first printed sheet (front and back covers), Fold each page in half, printed side facing out, and stack in numbered order,
Slip into cover and staple all the pages together, down the left-hand side, creating a spine
Optional - tape the spine to cover the staples, or slip a coloured paper cover over the spine before stapling, for students to decorate.

My Novel Study for Each Little Birds That Sings is available from my TPT store - One Teacher's Journey - HERE

Now for the Reading FREEBIE 

I have also made this 'Retell the Main Ideas' activity. It can be as long as there are chapters in your book so best to use as a stand-alone activity that you can use for any novel that you are reading with your class. It also works brilliantly for students read-to-self novels as an independent follow up (great for developing those summarising skills for both picture and word smart kiddies). You can get this one absolutely FREE from my TPT store - One Teacher's Journey - HERE

Thank you for stopping by. I would love some comments on what you think of this novel and any other class novels that you would recommend for 9-12 year olds.