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!

 

Loaded with Literacy!

Last week we looked at the beautiful language and sentence fluency in All the Places to Love by Patricia MacLachlan. I decided to do a small writing project with the kids to help them adopt a more fluent writing style and to write more like Patricia MacLachlan. We noticed that all the places the characters loved in her book had to do with nature. I modeled for students how I thought of a place in nature that I love (the Horicon Marsh), followed by nouns that I see, feel, smell, hear, and taste while I'm there. After all, good writers appeal to a reader's senses!

Students then followed my model and thought of their own special place in nature and filled out their pre-writing sheet with powerful nouns.

We also used a page from All the Places to Love to help us look at different parts of speech: nouns, verbs, and adjectives.

We recorded several examples of nouns, verbs, adjectives, and similes.

 Students kept track of this new learning in their Powerful Words & Phrases tab.

Eventually we used our pre-writing sheet to fill in our drafting sheet. I gave students a general outline to encourage the sentence fluency of Patricia MacLachlan. With their new knowledge of nouns, verbs, adjectives, and similes, students could better understand the different words they were to include in their draft.

 Good writers have their pre-writing sheet right next to their draft so that they can stick to their plan!

 After students read their writing to a peer, it was time to publish. We used the computer lab to help us with this task. Fourth graders aren't the most fluent typists but the short length of this piece allowed them to get a feel for publishing using a computer without feeling too overwhelmed.

We will be putting each student's page in our own classroom book called All the Places 4B Loves. :)

Our literacy coach, Mrs. Johnson, came to help us get better with answering short answer questions. She used this anchor chart to help us learn the steps to writing a great answer!

 We looked at two different sample responses and together we evaluated whether the responses were strong or not. We looked specifically for a question stem, complete sentences, details and examples from the text, and whether the student truly answered the question.

 Then it was time for students to try out their new learning. They received a short reading about dolphins, a short-answer response sheet, and a self-assessment sheet to evaluate their answer during and after writing their response.

 The next day we had a chance to look at some of our own answers from the day before. I scanned a few samples and we discussed what each writer did well (strengths) and what the writer could do to improve (goals). In this sample, we noticed how the writer used part of the question to help her formulate the first line of her answer. Bravo!

 In this sample, we noticed this writer also used part of the question to help her start her answer. We also discovered that this writer needed to include more examples or details from the text and do some rereading of her answer as she writes to make sure it makes sense.

 This writer used great transition words to write her answer. We noticed that her topic sentence actually appeared as the last sentence in her response so we thought it would be a good idea to move it to the top of her response.

After we discussed as a class about strengths and goals, I handed back students' short-answer responses from the day before. They reread them, and then I had them write a response about their strengths and goals in their My Thoughts tab of their Thoughtful Logs.

In guided reading, we continued looking at different types of print. Students showed evidence of being able to identify the definitions of words in a different type of print. They recorded their thinking in their Thoughtful Logs.

Today we added another non-fiction text feature to our list: headings!

I photocopied a page from our social studies text book and a page from a question and answer book to help model the different headers and sub-headers we see in texts.

This anchor chart communicates my explicit teaching point for our reading lesson today. I modeled my own thinking when I got to the first header of an article about satellites. I activated my schema and made a prediction before I read on.

 After I modeled my own thinking, I gave students their own copy of the article so they could practice the strategy themselves using the next header in the article. The header read: Movers and Shakers.

During guided reading, students read a non-fiction article about Yosemite National Park and did a similar response show evidence that they understand how to think when they get to a header in a non-fiction text. Students used the header From Paris to the Parks.

During Writer's Workshop today we learned that we need to indent and start a new paragraph every time our topic changes. We looked at real published writing from a book about koalas to help us see that indenting is really something published authors do when they switch to writing about a new topic.

Then I modeled for students how to pre-write for a piece of writing that's about three different topics. I used the listing strategy to jot down several key words about each of my topics.

 Then I modeled how I took each of the key words on my pre-writing plan and expanded them as I drafted each paragraph. Each time I switched to a new topic, I was sure to indent!

 Students got a chance to practice this strategy independently. I had them glue a prompt sheet in their own notebooks, pre-write their ideas, and draft from their plan. You can see this writer showed evidence of understanding that she should indent every time she switches to writing about a new topic. This small writing assignment also helps me assess students' convention use, sentence fluency, word choice, and their ability to draft from their pre-writing plan.

 You'll notice in the above piece of writing that the student highlighted the words 'a lot' three times. Students in our room know to highlight anywhere in their writing when they know they're meeting their writing goal. For this writer, one of the goals we set for her a few weeks ago was to make sure to spell 'a lot' as two words rather than one. When I looked at this students' writing, I saw the highlighting which was a signal for me to mark in my writing binder that she met her goal. Now that she showed evidence of applying her writing goal three times successfully, I officially signed off on her goal! Way to go, girl!

Homework:
1. Reading - 15 mins., Pizza Log
2. Math - 10 mins. of facts, WKCE prep questions
3. Handwriting - pgs. 22-23
4. Social Studies - test tomorrow!
Extra: Costume in a bag! Our party will begin at 2pm.