Connect With My Class for World Read Aloud Day

Wednesday, March 4th is World Read Aloud Day, a day to celebrate the importance of sharing stories and reading around the world.

This day also happens to fall during Read Across America Week and that's exactly what my 4th grade classroom would like to do!

We are looking for other classrooms around the country -- and around the world -- who would would like to connect with us some time during the week of March 2-6, 2015 to share a read aloud.  Any grade is fine.

If you are interested, please fill out this short form and I will be in touch!  (Once we settle on a time/day, we can figure out the details of how we can make this work -- Skype, FaceTime, Google Hangout, etc.)

For more information about World Read Aloud Day, you can visit the LitWorld website where you can also find classroom kits and ideas for participating.

Hoping to read with you soon!

A Peek at My Week {8-31-14}

Thanks for stopping by this week's edition of A Peek at My Week, my weekly linky party where we can all share our plans for the upcoming week.

So here we go...

Tuesday is the first day of school!  Back in June, this day seemed so far away.  I am super excited for this year!  We will spend much of this week building community,  learning routines and expectations, and of course, reading a lot.

The first read aloud I am going to share is a book I read over the summer that I absolutely loved, The Brilliant Fall of Gianna Z by Kate Messner.  I usually begin with The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane, but I am saving that one for the Global Read Aloud in October.

The beginning of the year is a great time for goal setting.  However, in years past, students have set these really ambitious goals then they get filed away and forgotten about.  This year, I am going to have my students write out their goals on this form and we are going to slide the paper into the front cover of their 8-pocket plastic folder.  This way, the goals will be front and center all the time, for both students and parents. :)  You can grab this form for FREE by clicking on the picture..

Font:  KG Fonts

Graphics:  Creative Clips

To begin our writing year, students will write "Five Things I Want My Teacher to Know About Me."  This will help me get to know them personally and as writers.  We will also set up our Writer's Notebooks using my Writer's Notebook Divider Pages and my Writer's Notebook Reference Pages.

In math, we will be working on getting those math facts fluent again and practicing some helpful mental math strategies.  I am excited to teach math again this year.  (I never thought I would hear myself say that... :).

An InLinkz Link-up

I hope you enjoy this long weekend and have an amazing week!  Don't forget to stop back for Positive Thinking Thursday.

A Peek at My Week {6-08-14}

It's my last week!!!  Wahoo!!!  Sorry this post is late.  (Thanks to Ana at Mrs. Bentin's Blackboard for the text message and reminder that I hadn't posted this week's linky yet.  I guess that even though there's one week left, my brain has already left the building.  :)  So please link up your plans for the week.  I'm guessing most of you have "home" plans because you are already on break and that is good too!

Being the last week of school, there are a lot of end-of-the-year loose ends to tie up.  We will have our awards assembly, AR goal ice cream party, a talent show and field day.  Thankfully, there is something going on almost every day to help keep us busy.

In the classroom, we will be finishing up our read aloud of this wonderful book.

Love this book and the beautiful story of August.  I also love how the story end on the last day of school, about the same exact day we will read this part and end our story this year.

We've done quite a few readers theater scripts this year to work on fluency.  This week, I'm going to have the students work in groups and write their own script.  It should be interesting to see what they come up with.

Today, I found this fun pin on Pinterest.  I love this project (anything that incorporates writing and art is awesome!) and will find somewhere to work this into our schedule.  Students write about their year then decorate their hand print and the border.  I think it would make a great memory of our year.

I'm working on making Goodbye Bags for the kids.  I went to Walmart and the dollar store this morning and loaded up on lots of fun things.  When I get it all together, I will post about it.

I was thinking of continuing the A Peek at My Week linky party throughout the summer, linking up to share our fun summertime plans, but I was wondering what you think.  Do you want to see A Peek at My Week continue?  Please leave me your thoughts in a comment below.  (Also, my Thursday linky party, Positive Thinking Thursday, will continue throughout the summer.  Thanks to all of you who encouraged me to do so!)

An InLinkz Link-up

Laughing and Learning with Elvis

No, this is not a blog post about Elvis the singer.  {Sorry!}  It's just a quick post to let you know about the most hilarious book that I have read in a long, long time, Elvis and the Underdogs by Jenny Lee.

I first heard about this book from the (also very hilarious) Alison at Rockin' and Lovin' Learnin'.  She raved about how funny her kids thought the book was and even had them write book recommendations for her blog post.  I was sold!

If you are a fan of the book Wonder, you will also love Elvis.  Here's the review from Amazon:

From Jenny Lee, writer on the Disney Channel show Shake It Up!, the number-one-rated kids' show in the country, this feel-good middle-grade novel is about a sickly boy whose life is turned upside down when he gets a therapy dog . . . who can talk!Benji Wendell Barnsworth is a small ten-year-old boy with a big personality. Born premature, Benji is sickly, accident-prone, and at the hospital so often he even has his own punch card. So when Benji wakes up one day from a particularly bad spell, his doctors take the radical step of suggesting he get a therapy dog. But when a massive crate arrives at Benji's house, out walks a two-hundred-pound Newfoundland who can talk! And boy, is he bossy.

If you are looking for a fall-off-your-seat-laughing, heartwarming story of courage, perseverance and friendship, this is it!  Elvis and the Underdogs would make a great read aloud, and it can also be used to teach literary devices such as point-of-view (the story is told in 1st person) and inferring.  Each chapter begins with a really cute illustration that could be used to infer what will happen:

I can't wait to get back from spring break to share this heartwarming and hilarious story with my 4th graders.  I'm linking up today with the very talented Amanda at Teaching Maddeness to share this must-read chapter book.  I hope you will check it out!

Happy Reading!

A Peek at My Week {3-23-14}

Welcome to another edition of A Peek at My Week, my weekly linky party where you can share what you've got going on this week!

This is our last week before Spring Break and also the last week of the quarter.  That means that it is MAJOR catch up/finish up time.  I will be working on report cards this week so I don't have to do them over break.

For our read aloud in class, we have been reading The Lemonade Wars by Jacqueline Davies.  I managed to pick up 25 copies of this book from Scholastic Book Clubs earlier this year when they were $1 each so each student has one to hold in their hand and follow along during read aloud time.

If you haven't read this book, I would highly recommend it.  The students are loving it!  It shows how math is used in the real world (the students love trying to figure out the math before the author reveals the answer in the book), is great for teaching point of view and has some amazing "golden lines" that can be lifted for writing.  We will be finishing up this week.  

I'm trying to figure out what we should read next, after we return from break.  I'm thinking about The Fairy Tale Detectives by Michael Buckley.  I read this to my class last year in 4th quarter while we were learning about tall tales, fractured fairy tales, and mythology.  It was a great read aloud!

Also this week, students will begin drafting their biography research projects.  I was going to try to have those all finished up before break, but I don't want to rush the important drafting and revising stages.  My goal is to have all drafting done this week.  I will collect the drafts for break (so they don't get lost or tossed).  Then we will revise and publish the week we come back.

Finally on Friday, we will be having a Pancake Snack to as we look at some old slides (yes, slides!!) of lumber jacking in Wisconsin history.  We have parents coming in to make pancakes with lots of fun toppings to enjoy while we look at the slides.  We are starting to get into the more modern history of our state (if you call the 1800s modern) and the kids are learning some pretty cool things.  Did you know that Wisconsin is called the Badger State because the lead miners that came to Wisconsin in the 1800s with the lead rush were too busy to build houses so they dug holes in the sides of hills and just lived there (sometimes with their families -- not my idea of comfort!) when they weren't at mining lead?  The kids thought this was pretty fascinating!

An InLinkz Link-up

Wishing you a great week!

Spark Student Motivation -- Student Read Alouds

Happy Saturday!!  The weather behaved and I actually worked five whole days this week.  I'm happy to be back into the swing of things and I think my kids are too.

Today I'm linking up with the oh-so-talented Joanne from Head Over Heels for Teaching for Spark Student Motivation Saturday.  I really think that Joanne should change the name of this linky party to "Spark Teacher Motivation" because there are so many great ideas shared that really get me moving!  Just from reading Joanne's post, I can feel her energy and enthusiasm for teaching.  (I want to be like her when I grow up!  :)

So today I'd like to share an idea that came to me before break.  I had called my students to the reading rug to listen to the day's read aloud.  Right then, another teacher walked in and needed to have a brief conversation with me.  With the students waiting on the rug, one of my students got up, picked up a picture book from the table, and read it to the class.  She did such a great job, that the Student Read Aloud was born!

I simply hung up a monthly calendar and any student who wanted to sign up to read a short story to the class could. This was completely optional -- I didn't want to force anyone to do this.

To prepare, students would pick out a short story from our classroom or school library.  They would practice it for several days, then read it to the class on their chosen day.  In return for their reading, they would receive $20 in Collegiate Cash (our classroom economy money) and a Read Aloud Rockstar tag for their Book Genre Challenge necklace.

However, what they really received was improved FLUENCY and READING SKILLS, along with CONFIDENCE from speaking in front of a crowd.

It's a win/win all around!

Head on over to Head Over Heels for Teaching to find some more motivation for your students (or yourself!).  But before you go, I hope you will join me tomorrow for my weekly linky party, A Peek at My Week.

Weird Writing Tips

As I was cruising around Amazon the other day, I came across this book...

The My Weird School series is always a popular one with my 4th graders so I jumped at the chance to see what author Dan Gutman had to say about writing.  I mean, I can use all the help I can get to get my kiddos to write, so why not enlist the help of one of their favorite authors, right?

 

Needless to say,  My Weird Writing Tips does not disappoint!  It is written in the same humorous and engaging manner as the series.  My students are sure to connect with this author's message.  (You know how it goes...you can talk for days on end about why we need to write using paragraphs, but the instant somebody famous says it, all of a sudden the students are all ears...)

 

From reading this book, students will learn...

 

* How to keep a writer's notebook.  Ideas are everywhere!

* Tips for writing a story (with my favorite lesson...the title should come LAST, not first!)

* Why revising is the most important part of writing.

* Why you need to break up your writing with paragraphs and periods.  (Amen!!)

* Grammar tips from parts of speech to homophones to when to use can vs. may

 

I also love all of the little cartoons with writing inspirations that are included.  (Although I'm sure these are mostly for the teachers, not the students.)

 

I am considering making this book one of my early read alouds, as I am introducing Writer's Workshop.  (And know that I did not receive any compensation for this review...I just love this book and wanted to share this resource with you!!  :v)

 

What other mentor texts about teaching writing have you found?  I'd love to hear from you!