Falling In Love with Close Reading: Chapter 2

 Hey all!  Last week I blogged about the first chapter of Falling in Love with Close Reading and this week I'm back to tell you about chapter 2 "The Essence of Understanding."

I found the first part of this chapter to be particularly relevant to my practice in the classroom.  For years, I've tried to teach my students to "write long" off of their sticky notes. Each year, I have students who master this and write beautifully off of their stickies and I also have other students who struggle to simple post something on a sticky, forget "writing long."  In the first part of this chapter, the authors write "it turned out that the issue was not whether they could cite, the challenge was how they constructed their ideas in the first place" (page 11-12).  Like I've found, they authors wrote "students have an idea, then go find evidence." But what we want is for students to "gather evidence, then develop an idea."  My goodness, I had a fellow this year who really needed a few lessons about using text as the basis for ideas rather than using his imagination!

The idea of reading through a lens is definitely going to become a part of my classroom practice next year as well.  Rather than having students read without purpose, the authors suggest teachers create a chart with their students to teach them to read through a lens.  This lens could be to gather information about
* what characters/people say/think/do
* relationships
* setting descriptions
* time period

The authors lay out a narrative a teacher might use to teach his or her students to read through the lens of studying character.  It's three and half pages of teaching that is in the style of what you might read in Fountas and Pinnell's Guiding Readers and Writers.  It really helped me envision how I might frame a mini lesson or several mini lessons to teach my students how to read through a lens.

From the narratives and anecdotes, you get the sense that the students do a lot of talking. I've always wondered if my reading block was broken at times, because my students definitely talked.  In my early years as a teacher I worried it was too much, but now I don't worry nearly as much when I see my kids leaning across the table to share funny parts of their books, or to ask a neighbor a question.  It's a part of the reading community to have talkers!

Tell me: do you have your students read through lens, or set a purpose for their reading before they begin?

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An InLinkz Link-up

Falling in love with Close Reading Book Study: Chapter 1

Hi friends!  I'm linking up with Sassy, Savvy, Simple Teaching's Summer Book Study of  Falling in Love with Close Reading. Over the next few weeks, I'll offer a review of the book, chapter by chapter.  You'll be able to check out other blogs for more perspective and hopefully get some great ideas to infuse into your literacy instruction for next year!

Photo Credit: Amazon

 Chapter One: Close Reading, A Love Story

The first thing I noticed about this book is the amount of passion the authors have for literacy.  Their love of teaching really comes through in the way they describe close reading and it's place in our schools.  If you've enjoyed The Book Whisperer or any of Lucy Calkins books (The Art of Teaching Reading especially), I think this book will really speak to you.

If you are in an area that has adopted the CCSS, then you know that close reading is written into the standards in several of the strands.  But what is close reading?  Is it just repeated reading?  (No.)  Is it teacher directed?  (Perhaps at first, but ultimately you want your students to learn to read closely, independently.)  Close reading is "an interaction," is about "making careful observations....and interpretations," and "involves rereading."  Close reading of a short segment of text should help the reader create "new ideas" about the whole text.

Knowing that close reading is a central piece of the literacy standards, what do we need to do in our instruction to teach our students how to read closely?  The authors lay out several bullets of best practices for close reading instruction.  Here are a few I thought were particularly important and that I want to remember come this fall:

Our school uses ReadyGen for our literacy program.  Close reading is a part of our morning, every morning.  (We also work on vocabulary, forming and defending opinions, reading skills such as compare/contrast, identifying theme and writing in response to reading.)

 I can't say that I achieved this level of independence last year, so I am excited to make this my goal for this year.  My students only reread when I prompted them.  They were reluctant to return to the text if it involved searching and they only really went back to text to prove someone wrong during team talk (LOL!).

And...here is the problem with scripted literacy program.  The questions are absolutely written to match a book and not the needs of your readers.  BUT, I am positive that the lessons and strategies outlined in this text will work during my guided reading time.

The authors suggest using a ritual to teach students to read closely.  In this structure, the students reading through a lens, use the lenses to look for patterns and use the patterns to develop a new understanding of the text.  The next chapters gives more details about the lenses a student might select, so be sure to check back in next Sunday!  And also be sure to enter the giveaway!

Tell me, what does close reading look like in your classroom?

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An InLinkz Link-up

Five For Friday: School's Out!

1.) NYC Schools are finally finished!  This was a long and emotional year for me.  I really adored my kids this year.  There were lots of tears as my graduates were dismissed for the last time. :-(  I know they will be amazing in middle school, but I'm going to miss them so much.  I really enjoyed this year with them.

I forgot to take a last day picture!  And the kids wanted to keep the countdown numbers as mementos, ha!

2.) My kiddo "graduated" from kindergarten!  His school had a cute carnival for the kindergartners to receive their certificates and celebrate their big achievement.

 How is this possible?!

3.) My kids made a list of things they want to do this summer.  Take a look:

Sounds  like a great summer, right?  (We are not going to the Bahamas though...sorry kids.)

4.) We are doing this though (in fifteen days!):

#surprisetriptodisney

5.)  I am ready for some rest before we head out to Disney.  We hit the park today and I will see my trainer this evening, but beyond that, I'm camping out on the couch and I might take a little nap!

Hope you all are having a great summer so far! Be sure to head over to Doodlebug's Teaching Blog to read more Five for Friday posts!

I don't blog every day, or even every week, but you can check me out on Instagram, my favorite social media!  http://instagram.com/misskinbk

Currently: June

June, June, June!

"Today is June" - in case you don't read 5 year old :-)

This is the note my kindergartener left on the fridge today.  He and I finish school on June 26th.  It's within reach, friends.  We will make it to the end of June in one piece!

Here is my Currently:

Listening:  Do you have a Roku?  Did you know you can stream YouTube directly to the TV?  My kids are totally obsessed with Kid Snippets.  My husband giggles at it also :-)

Loving:  With the warmer weather (finally!), I favor a nice unsweetened Black Tea Lemonade in the afternoon.  The venti has only 70 calories, if you care about that kind of thing, and is much more reasonable than any of the lattes at Starbucks.

Thinking:   We have 42 days left until we surprise our kids with a Disney trip!  We booked our stay last June, so this has really been a long time coming.

Wanting:  More sleep, like whoa.  5:30 am feels earlier every single day and I've been hitting the snooze button like it's my job.  I know I should go to bed earlier, but....I don't wanna.  It also doesn't help that I've been in the gym 5-6 days a week.  All the exercise is leaving me tired and I'm definitely not getting enough rest.

Needing: New capris.  I have one pair from loft that I like and still fit, but I need some free time to go shopping.  It's funny...if these capris were for my children, I'd have gotten them last week, but because they are for me, I'll probably go the entire summer rotating two pairs of shorts and a pair of capris

Summer Bucket List:  1.) Disney & Universal Studios (SO excited for the new Harry Potter rides!)
2.) Outdoor swimming!!!!!  I'm so ready to get out of the gym pool.
3.) My little gal starts Ballet this week!

Be sure to link up with Farley for this month's currently!

What are you most looking forward to this summer?

Using Transitions In Writing {Freebie!}

Hey all! And happy Teacher Appreciation Week!  My kiddos are working on their final performance task of the year (I hope!) and I realized I never shared this little transitions packet I made.

Please don't mind my empty word wall - I took the words down for testing!

When I first introduced transitions, my students were familiar with sequential transitions such as first, next, additionally, finally, but not so familiar with transitions such as "on the other hand." With this little packet, I introduced some more complex transitions and students practiced adding them to sentences.

In this download, you'll find an anchor chart:

 Transition word sort (we completed this activity on the SMARTboard):

 A blank word wall for students to put in their notebooks:

 A printable transition word wall (I open this file every time we are writing essays):

 Quarter size transition word walls (some students taped these on their desks; also great for writing folders or writing notebooks):

 Sentence completion practice (there's an answer key as well!)

Full page class model sheet to show off exemplary student work:

To grab this download, click HERE.

And I'm sure you've heard that TpT is having a Teacher Appreciation Day Sale May 6th to May 7th.  My entire store, including all bundles, will be 20% off.  Don't forget to use code TPTXO for an additional 10% off your purchase.  And be sure to leave feedback for prior purchases to get credits to use during the sale!

Photo credit to 3 AM Teacher

Converting Measurements {Freebie}

I can't tell you how envious I am of you all that end in May.  That's next week!  While I am not jealous that you all go back in August, I am super jealous that some of you are in the end of year count down already!

We go until the end of June.  As in, the very last week of June.  Ugh. And next week we are finishing up our State tests.  We have the State Math Test on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.  Joy of all joys!  A test on a Friday!  #sarcasm

For each concept that will be covered on the test, (focus is on decimals and fractions), I've done a quickie skills review and then lots of practice with multistep problems.  Here is some of the work we've done with converting measurements:

 The arrows under 10m and 1000km are a little confusing in retrospect, but this was created with the students, so they (hopefully!) heard me while I thought aloud about these numbers.  While solving this problem, I reviewed different ways to divide by powers of ten.  Whenever I see my students using long division with powers of ten, I remind them that "this is a move the decimal situation."  They know what I mean :-)  Also, you might notice that the chart is incomplete - they solved 15 yards = inches independently.

 Here is a student sample of the same page.  {This foldable was created with Lovin Lit's Interactive Notebook Templates.}  You can grab a pdf of the student page HERE.

After the quickie review, we solved more rigorous problems such as "Mary follows a recipe for punch that uses 2 1/2 cups of juice.  She plans to make 20 batches of punch.  How many gallons of juice will she need to buy?"  Not easy, right?  Determining the correct course of action is the hardest part!  I am pretty sure this is a good example of a problem that requires perseverance on the part of the problem solver.  It's also a good example of a problem that my students might see on their State Test next week.

If you are also working on converting measurements, you might want to check out Kim Miller's Measurement Conversion Fans.(TpT link)  I gave these to my students to cut and color for their homework.

If you need a set of task cards for this topic, I just uploaded a set to my store.  This set of task cards 20 cards with a mix of skills based problems and real world problems.  Conversions require students to use their understanding of place value, decimal concepts and interpretation of remainders.

Of course, if you own my Math Task Card Bundle, you'll need to download again to get the new cards!

State Testing, More State Testing, and an Interactive Math Notebook Freebie

Hooray!  My kids took three days of state tests last week and I am sure I speak for them when I say we are so glad it's over.  I tried really hard to keep things light in the classroom, but they know that this test matters (in NYC these tests are used to determine promotion) and they really took it seriously.

I really emphasized coding text and justifying answers to eliminate incorrect choices and I am so proud of my kids that they did this on the test.  The downside to that is that the passages were so long and the questions so complex that many students did not finish the test in time.  I am a real believer that close reading should not be a timed activity, so I'm pretty upset that even my best readers (as in level Y readers) had to push hard to just barely beat the clock.


And now we are 10 school days away from the State Math Test  - and we have SO many skills to cover.  We spent last Friday reviewing subtracting mixed numbers.  This is such a tricky concept for some kids - especially if they do not understand how borrowing really works.  I showed my class how to subtract mixed numbers with regrouping and then how to use improper fractions.  Students used an interactive notebook page to create a model and a reference sheet for themselves.

 

If you'd like a copy of this interactive notebook page, you can grab it from Google Docs right HERE.

Also, be sure to check out my Facebook Page for a new Facebook Freebie - Sticky Mats for Reading Comprehension for Older Kids!

Here is a link to the full product on TpT as well!

Have a great week!