Color Poems, Immigrant Challenges/Contributions, & Author's Perspective!

Last week, we continued to work on our color poems in Writer's Workshop. Prior to peer conferencing, I had students circle 5 words in their poems that they weren't sure of in terms of the spelling. I also had them put a question mark next to the two phrases in their poem they thought they could make better with the help of a peer. By doing this, students had specific areas in their poems to work on with one another.

Over the past two weeks, I've taught several lessons on how to use a dictionary successfully (those darn guide words are tricky, aren't they?!) During students' color poem peer conferences, pairs used dictionaries and their Quick Word books to find the correct spellings for the words each student circled in his or her poem. (Note: Some kids needed help spelling more than 5 words. For the sake of making peer conferencing a manageable task, pairs only had to tackle 5 from each poem together. Adult help was given for the rest of the words.)

After peer conferences, students poems looked very ... COLORFUL! You can see this writer's original ideas in pencil, her own revisions adding adjectives and extending her ideas in red, and fixes made during her peer conference in blue.

Now that their poems had been taken through the writing process, I had students publish their poems in our computer lab to learn that word processingt is another way to publish writing. Students are learning typing skills during IMC time with Mrs. Barels - our awesome library media specialist. They are getting faster and faster with word processing! (Note: I encourage students to wear their headphones while typing to help eliminate distractions and extra talking. I highly recommend it!)

 

I also taught students to insert a text box and fill it with their color using the paint tool and use the 3D word art tool to type the name of their color. I plan to have students put a little flap over the name of their color so their audience will truly have to infer the color they are writing about before peeking at the answer. Students poems were proofread by an adult prior to printing (this one still needs an adult eye!) ;)

In social studies, we are continuing to use our leveled immigration readers to learn more about the reasons immigrants left their homelands, the challenges they faced, and the contributions they've made to American society. The texts below came from National Geographic. I love them because the look of the books is the same, as are the three main ideas discussed in each of the books. It's the complexity of the content that is differentiated, allowing ALL students to access information at their independent reading level. Yay!

For this lesson, I had students use a two-column note-taking technique to record important information. In one column, students listed the challenges their immigrant group had on their journey to America. In the other column, students listed the challenges their immigrant group had in America. Again, each student was given a reader that was appropriate for their independent reading level.


After students finished recording the challenges for their specific immigrant group, they met with everyone else who read about the same group of immigrants to compare information and make revisions to their notes, if needed.

 Here's a clip of some of the groups as they discuss their immigrant groups. It's a little hard to hear what they're saying but I assure you they were focused on the topic (immigrant challenges).

The next day, I showed students how to organize their information using an electronic note-taking program called Kidspiration.

Here is one student's graphic organizer on the challenges Chinese immigrants faced on their journey to America and the challenges they faced once they got here.

In a final lesson last week, students read the four pages from their reader that discussed the ways their immigrants have contributed to American society. By looking at students' graphic organizers, I could easily monitor the kind of information students were deeming important and support students who needed me the most.

Here is one student's web on how German-Jewish immigrants have contributed to American society! I could tell this student understood that German-Jewish immigrants have written books and music, made films, shared their knowledge and skills, and contributed to medicine, biology, and inventions. At the time I took this picture, he was adding in the names of specific German-Jewish immigrants and linking their names to the appropriate bubble on the web.

In reading, we are continuing on with explicit mini-lessons on determining importance. On Friday, I taught students that when reading a piece of non-fiction text, good readers should:

• Identify the the main idea
• Infer the author's opinion and perspective about the topic
• Think about their own opinion in comparison to the author's

I used an article called Can Kids Stop Kids From Smoking? (from the Comprehension Toolkit by Stephanie Harvey and Anne Goudvis). I modeled how to analyze each section of the article to pull out the main idea and thought aloud about what I believed the author's opinion was of the topic of kids smoking. I also thought aloud about my own opinion and how it compared to the author's. Finally, I revealed my own written response to pull all my thinking together. I colored coded each section of my response so my students could see each of the three sections of my response.

For guided practice, I gave students a different article called Turn It Off! The article focuses on TV Turnoff Week (which just happens to be this coming week!).

 

Students read the article and thought about the main idea, the author's opinion, and their own opinions regarding TV Turnoff Week. Students wrote their own response to the article in the My Thinking tab of their Thoughtful Logs to help me assess their ability to think about main idea and author's perspective. I left my own modeled response up on the SMARTboard as a scaffold for students while they worked independently.

Here is one student's response. You can see she was able to pull out the main idea, identify the author's perspective about the topic, and think critically about her own opinion. When I conference with her, I will applaud her ability to do these three tasks as a reader of non-fiction. My teaching point will be to stress the importance of rereading her writing to make sure it makes sense from beginning to end. :)

Lastly, Casey was person of the week this week. He brought in his dog, Trevor, for us to enjoy! It was a wonderful way to end the week!

 

Main Ideas, Poetry, & Responding to Historical Fiction

In reading we have been learning more about determining importance. In a previous lesson, students learned to put a red sticker next to piece of information that made them think, "Stop! This is important, essential information!" and a green sticker next to a piece information that made them think, "This is just a little detail that I can let go of..."

In this lesson, we continued on in our article called 'Doctor Bugs' from a National Geographic magazine (March, 2008). Rather than placing a single red and green sticker next to two spots in the text, I modeled how to use my pink and green highlighters to code every sentence. I did a think aloud to explain to kids why I made a sentence pink or green. It helped students see that everything we read in a text is either important/essential information or just little extra details.

 

After color-coding a section of my article, we looked specifically at where all my pink highlighting (important information) appeared in the text. I wanted kids to know that important information isn't just in the first sentence of a paragraph - it's hidden throughout the texts we read! It's our job as readers to really think carefully so we don't miss the important information. One student noticed that a lot of my green sentences started with the word "I" - in other words, many of the sentences I coded as an 'extra little detail' were the author's opinion or personal experience with the bugs he was writing about. We decided together that even though the author's personal experience and opinion give him credibility that he's seen them first-hand, an author's opinion and personal experience isn't essential and important to remember. We also discussed how important a header is to helping you decide what is important about a text! Students had a similar chart to this one in their Thoughtful Logs

For guided practice, I handed out this same text to the kids and had them code the last section on the page called, 'Bugs with Horns'. Students used their green and red markers to identify important and unimportant information.

Listen in to my conversation with one of my kiddos as he practices coding important and unimportant information.

Like we did in the mini-lesson, students tallied where they found important information while reading the 'Bugs with Horns' section of the article.

My hope was that students would code the text similarly to one another even though they worked independently. As I walked around to assess their progress, I was pleased to see most students highlighted both the entire second and third paragraphs green. Those paragraphs were mainly about the author's personal experience and opinion about the stagflies, which students learned were not important.. The kids discovered there was important information in the fourth and fifth paragraphs, with just one sentence in the fifth paragraph that wasn't important!

In a lesson earlier this week, we made the connection that important information can help us find the main idea of a text. You can see in this student's Thoughtful Log, I modeled for students how to find the main idea of two books we had read previously in the day. (I forgot to take a picture of my SMARTboard slide!) Then I had students read an article on fossils for independent practice. Students wrote in their Thoughtful Logs what they thought the main idea of the article was.

I always try to find ways kids to use technology during our reading block, so today I had students head to the computer lab to use a main idea website. On the website, there are several short stories for students to read, followed by a drop down menu of three choices for a main idea for the reading.


To keep kids honest and to slow down their often 'click-happy' fingers, I had students record what they believed the main idea was for each of the short readings before clicking the 'submit' button.


After writing down the main idea and clicking 'submit', the computer would tell students' whether they got the main idea right or not. Students recorded their progress by circling Yes or No next to each story title on the worksheet I created to coincide with the activity. This was a quick way to assess who understood main idea and who will need more support in guided reading.


Here's a short clip of this student as she reads the text, records what she believes the main idea is, submits her answer, then records whether she got it right!

In writing, we started a new genre - poetry! April just happens to be Poetry Month, too. I used Dr. Seuss' My Many Colored Days to help teach the following objectives (that I put on an anchor chart but forgot to take a picture of!):

1. Poetry is compact writing expressing intense emotion.
2. Poetry provides opportunities for word play.

 

I made a chart for students' Thoughtful Logs that they glued in their Genre Learning tab. As I read through each page of the book, we analyzed what emotions were represented by each color in the book. I had also copied a few phrases from the book to show how Dr. Seuss played with the size, font, and shape of his words as they related to the poem. Students recorded and glued their learning in their Thoughtful Logs.

 

At the very end of the lesson, I had students apply their learning in their own writing by asking them to respond to the following prompt: "Today has been a _________ day because ..." Students matched their emotions from the day to a color or colors. Some students even played with the size, font, and shape of the words in their responses. You'll notice the student below wrote the word 'great' in the shape of a smile!

Social studies is another excellent subject where students can grow as readers! You may remember a previous blog post about students using a Slaves' Stories website to infer important information about African immigrants' journeys coming to America. I used the book Now Let Me Fly by Delores Johnson to continue what students had learned from the website but to also extend what life was like for these immigrants once they were in America. In the book, many of the children get split from their mother and their lives take them in different directions within the U.S. Here is the anchor chart I started.

Students had a similar chart in the Genre Learning tab of their Thoughtful Logs since the text was historical fiction.

Students wrote down some of my modeled facts and thinking but recorded their own facts and thoughts independently once I got to the bottom of my anchor chart. You can see this student started with writing down my own thoughts but went on to record her own as I continued with the book.

In other fun news not related to literacy, Jaelyn was person of the week last week, and she brought in her cat, Candy, for us to meet! Candy was such a sweet but very nervous cat!

We also had four students get a black-out on their Genre Tic-Tac-Toe board for the month of March. Students who read 100 pages in each of the 9 genres listed on our Tic-Tac-Toe board earned a pizza party for lunch. Congrats to these eager readers!

Slaves' Stories: Inferring Important Information

In Social Studies, we have been learning about immigrants. Today we specifically focused on African immigrants and how many of them were forced against their own will to come to America and were sold as slaves.

To incorporate technology, I had students visit a Slaves' Stories website that features historical fiction stories of four African immigrants. Yesterday I modeled how to infer important information from one of the slave's stories, and today students practiced inferring important information themselves while reading the other three slave stories. They recorded their inferences as evidence of their ability to infer important information from a text.

 

Here are some of their inferences:

Determining Importance Using Stickers!

Let me start by saying that when it comes to creating anchor charts, I'm totally O.C.D. The explicit wording of my teaching point, the color, size, style, and consistency of my letters, the spacing and organization, you name it... Because let's be real, if I personally don't love looking at it, I'm not going to love teaching with it, and if I don't love teaching with it, I'm not going to be able to engage my kiddos, which means we all end up having a crummy Reader's Workshop, and that's no fun for anyone. My point is that a lot goes into planning a reading mini-lesson, and by attempt number six of creating today's anchor chart, I decided I needed to walk away from the big paper and head to the big screen. Our typical "let's-all-sit-closely-on-the-carpet-and-gather-around-our-easel-for-our-reading" mini-lesson ritual was one I needed to let go of today. "Walk away, Miss Bongers, walk away..."

What ended up happening was for the better though because the kids ended up loving this lesson! I created the following slide to kick off today's reading mini-lesson on determining importance. Computers are wonderful for easy manipulating of fonts, colors, sizes, and locations of things. Nothing is permanent (unlike markers and paper) and on a day like today, I needed that flexibility. Also, put in your long term memory that KIDS LOVE STICKERS. Use them if you can! Red on a stoplight means STOP; green on a stoplight means GO. Kids' schema for these colors became important for practicing today's strategy on determining what about my text was important and essential versus the interesting, little details.

I scanned a section from a National Geographic magazine article called 'Doctor Bugs' (March, 2008). I first modeled the strategy by reading the first two paragraphs. I placed a red sticker next to the sentences where my inner voice said, "STOP! This information is IMPORTANT!" and a green sticker next to information where my inner voice said, "That's neat information, but I can let it GO." The first six stickers on the text below are what I modeled for students.

I also recorded my important and unimportant information on a T-chart. I had students glue a similar T-chart into their Thoughtful Logs to anchor our learning from today. The information above the wavy lines is what we recorded from my own modeling. (P.S. - I know I'm missing an apostrophe in "author's favorite insect". I'll ask the kids tomorrow if they notice any errors in my notes. A teachable moment, if you will. Overall, it's the co-construction of knowledge that's the most important. Even though I'm O.C.D., I've learned to let go of my handwriting being perfect when we record information together.)

For guided practice, I handed out the same piece of text and gave kids one red sticker and one green sticker. Their task was to read the rest of the text and place their red sticker next to a very important piece of information and a green sticker next to a detail they determined was more neat and interesting than important. Then they added their thinking to their T-charts in their Thoughtful Logs.

When guided practice was over, students shared out with their thinking. We added the bottom three stickers to the text based on what they shared and added their thinking to our T-chart (the information under the wavy lines!) I was excited because many of the kids put their stickers in the same places, meaning they agreed in what was important about this text and what wasn't!

Here is one student's Thoughtful Log:

Tomorrow we will build off of this lesson to discuss where important information exists in a text. In other words, sometimes important information is in the first sentence of a paragraph, and sometimes it's in the middle. People's opinions (like the fact that the author of this article once got stung by an ant) are not as important to remember, but they help to make the writing come alive. Stay tuned!