Close Reading... Have You Tried It?

I'm going to start this article off by saying that if you are a teacher that uses Close Reads in your class, please leave a comment with any tips/tricks/ideas that you have that work in your class! Thank you in advance!

This is the first year that I'm really going to try to do Close Reads in my class. Last year, I did 10 minute reads (read the same short passage everyday for 10 minutes with a different focus). I loved this repeated reading strategy to help with fluency, basic text structure and vocabulary understanding, but I found that I wanted to go deeper into my students' thinking.  We already have a lot of programs that help with fluency, but comprehension and independent thought are very tough.

Enter Close Reading... repeated reading of a text over a period of time to derive meaning from the text.  I took a training on this over the summer, and feel finally ready to dive in to it.

I'm going to start with this lesson that I found on the good ol' Interwebs, using Oreos to help kids understand why we read something more than once:

http://whoswhoandnew.blogspot.com/2014/12/close-reading-with-oreos.html


Here are some anchor charts that were shown at my district training. I will use some, but definitely not all, of them, but here they are if they can help you!

Forehead Math

Forehead Math!

Maybe it looks like a game you might have played in college (eh hem?) :-) ... but this is actually a fantastic game that helps kids practice their basic math facts and basic algebra skills.

The game is simple:

3 players (4 can also work for 3 addends)

Materials: A deck of cards.

1. Take the face cards out of a deck of cards.

2. Shuffle the remaining cards. One person is the dealer, the other two are the guessers.

3.  The dealer secretly gives a card to each guesser.  The guesser may NOT look at their own card, and has to hold or stick it on to their forehead, face out.

4.  The dealer adds up the two guessers' cards, and tells them the answer.  Each guesser looks at the other guesser's card, and has to guess the value of their own personal card.  The only clues they have are the other person's card, and the answer that the dealer gave them. The first guesser to guess correctly, wins! The winner takes both the cards as their points.

5.  Players then shift the role of the dealer to the next person.  At the end of the game, the person with the most cards wins.

This game is hilarious and incredibly fun. Try it in your class today!

Plant Categorization

Science is one of my favorite subjects to teach, because it most lends itself to get kids thinking about, and interacting with, the world around them.

I have a wonderful student teacher this year, and when we were thinking about our plant categorization lesson, she instantly thought... let's take them outside!  The goal was to take them around our campus, and have them observe and examine the plants we have to place them in to categories (flowers, no flowers, deciduous, etc.).

She typed up informational pages ahead of time that gave kids enough clues about each plant that they were looking at. She hung those up near the plants she wanted them to categorize.  They read the description, looked at the plant, and then chose what category the plant went in.

Because we live in the desert, any category that we didn't have a plant for in real life, she simply printed an extra page with a picture of a plant on it with its description.  Super fun!  The kids got to move around, debate with each other (sometimes very heatedly!), and learn a lot of plant names!

Here is what a plant station might look like:

Kids with their clipboards and papers, categorizing the plant on a graphic organizer:

 A plant we don't have in the desert:

Block Printing #1, Collagraphs, & 21st Century Grant

My school is a Title I school. We won this AMAZING grant (half a million $ over 5 years!) that provides funds to pay teachers and other volunteers to lead kids in before and after school clubs, to help bridge the gap between parents that can afford to give their kids a variety of experiences, and those that cannot.  

Here is a link with more info on the grant if you think your school could qualify: 21st Century Grant

I decided to lead an Art Club and a computer coding club. Our kids are lucky to get PE and Music classes taught by separate knowledgable teachers, but don't have Art classes yet, so I thought that my club would be a great opportunity for them.

The grant also provides the funds for clubs to get amazing supplies... which as someone who loves art, had me salivating instantly. Think of all the materials and supplies that we could get to do some really cool stuff!!!!!

This summer in our summer camp, I did some block printing with kids on styrofoam in grades 1-6. 

The kids etched a drawing into a piece of styrofoam, and used it to print.  I loved this, because kids could roll their own ink, and print with multiple hues simply by cutting out shapes from their styrofoam image.

This year in Art Club, my 4-6 graders are starting with a collagraph poster.  They chose a quote that they liked, and drew/cut the letters out of foam.  They then glued them on to cardboard to make a stamp.  You can use a mirror to have kids check their image to make sure their letters are arranged correctly.  

Then, you have the kids roll printing ink on them, and stamp on to paper.  We haven't finished them yet for stamping, but I will post the pictures when they are all done!

Keep Calm and Mine On! (All the kids are MineCraft OBSESSED)

Reach for the Stars!

Most of my ideas I steal- I mean borrow- from other teachers.  Here are the pages that I used to help me with these projects: 

http://thomaselementaryart.blogspot.com/2014/03/3rd-grade-collagraph-quote-prints.html

http://calvertcanvas.blogspot.com/2012/05/cardboard-collagraph-quotes.html