book clubs

Book clubs! Do you use them in your ELA classroom? Here's a down-and-dirty guide to how I pulled them off in the past few weeks, with a freebie to boot. And a chance for a give-away!

All year, students have had one homework assignment: Read 20 pages of their Just Right books. I track this every day with status of the class. I know who is reading what, who is finishing books, who is abandoning books, who is forgetting their books, etc. This assignment really helps build the stamina it takes to get through book clubs - because the reading and note-taking students do for book clubs mirrors the homework they've done all year with me.

In book clubs, first you have to pick your books. We just completed a Holocaust Unit and so my students read Jacob's Rescue, The Diary of Anne Frank, Night, Behind the Bedroom Wall, and Number the Stars. In order to prepare for the discussions, which happened for about 20 minutes each day, they did their reading and note taking at home the night before. They took notes on this Book, Head, Heart (BHH) Organizer I learned about from Beers & Probst's new book - Disrupting Thinking. Then, in class, I gave daily mini-lessons related to book clubs, and then they had their conversations.

But before they had their first conversation, we used the fish bowl strategy, so I could coach one group while others watched. I think this demonstration and coaching is so important. It also turned out that one of the other Literacy Coaches was in my classroom that day, and she gave me such great feedback on Author's Craft - which turned into great mini-lessons!

Once they saw what I expected book clubs to look like, I used my observations to come up with my teaching points each day. Here's the mini-lessons I gave for book clubs this year, one a day over the course of our book clubs, which lasted two weeks:

• To participate in Book Clubs, students must come prepared. (We watched and evaluated the work of this book club group, and held a conversation about book clubs. Students also filled out a contract that broke down their due dates for chapters in their books together and also gave them more detailed instructions on preparations, which we went over.)
• Preparation for book club conversations means taking notes on the parts you want to discuss with your group.
• Accountable Talk Sentence Stems help us take a small idea and grow it bigger.
• In book club, conversations are not finished until the time runs out. (Discuss strategies to help propel book club conversation: listening to think rather than to respond, completing notes to have more ideas, etc.)
• When discussing, we pick one topic and stick with it for awhile by all sharing about it.
• When a reader wants to share a comment about the book, they should ask all to open to the page, then read the part that prompted the comment, then share the comment for all to discuss.
• Book club participants wonder, "Why did the author do that?" as they read the text. (Author's Craft - We spent a few days on this one.)
• We read books to understand the world.
• We read books to understand ourselves.

After mini-lesson, students met with their groups and discussed. I spent my time observing their work and taking anecdotal notes.

I'm currently working on a PD session about Backwards Design Planning and am in the process of rewriting my Holocaust unit with that framework, and in the next few weeks should have that up on TpT with all the documents associated with this project.

Give Away
In the mean time, if you'd like to read more from Beers & Probst and their book Disrupting Thinking: Why How We Read Matters, I have a copy to give away! Please leave a comment or question below about book clubs and I'll enter you in the drawing! You can also read more about that book (which is a book about how students should be reading more than it is a book about book clubs here and here.) Comments on all three of these blog posts will be eligible for the give-away!

Looking forward to hearing your ideas on book clubs! I'm always reminded how much better we are working together than on our own little islands :-)

I will choose a winner for the copy of Disrupting Thinking on Sunday, May 21st, be sure to leave a comment by then!

Happy Sunday!

disrupting thinking: bhh framework

I just got through the second part of Disrupting Thinking - all about their BHH framework and I'm so excited to share it with you! (Check out part one of my review here.)

But first, something I loved, something I'm taking to heart. (I'm practicing the strategy!)

I really appreciate the teacher researchers, Kyleen Beers and Bob Probst who came up with this strategy and are sharing it with all of us in their new book for a multitude of reasons, but first because they are vulnerable and funny, and it's so refreshing. As they began to share the story of how their BHH framework came to be, they talked about the first instances when they tried - and failed - at it with students. On page 62, they shared how their first lessons went with kids, and how they didn't work.

This was so refreshing to me because it's so teaching. You have this idea, and you want to experiment. You try it out with kids and it totally flops - we've all been there. It takes weeks and months and years to refine our craft, and so it's so nice for me to see that I'm just like them in trying new things out and seeing them fail sometimes. And I'm especially engaged by their writing, as it comes with words from the mouths of babes - responses to their first attempts at sharing these lessons with students: 

Will you be here all week? one student inquired.

Is this for a grade? another asked. 

I  love the vulnerability they show, which translates to me, a teacher thinking, "Hey, Michelle, it's okay to try new things even if they fail. That's how we get to greatness..."

And now that I've shared my heart, we can get on to the framework!

BHH is Book, Head, Heart.

You share with kids that good readers consider what's in the book, this work coming from many teacher researchers, but my faves to the likes of Fountas and Pinnell and Kelly Gallagher:

• What's this about?
• Who's telling the story?
• What does the author want me to know?

Next, you teach students to think about what's in their head, this work coming from Lousie Rosenblatt, Nancie Atwell, and Donald Graves:

• What surprised me?
• What does the author thinking I already know?
• What changed, challenged, or confirmed my thinking?
• What did I notice?

Finally, you add a third component, my favorite part! Penny Kittle, Georgia Heard and others help us look at what's in your heart:

• What did I learn about me?
• How will this help me to be better?
• What life lessons did I learn?
• What did I take to heart?
• How did it make me feel?

So part two of the book includes a few chapters that call up past work that led Beers & Probst here, strategies that fit with BHH, samples of student conversations from first, fourth, eighth, and college freshmen, a sample for you to try out on your own with a poem, misconceptions that were revealed as they did the work with students, examples of anchor charts, funny anecdotes... definitely enough to cause me to think about how I can try this out...and I did, yesterday!

The more I read from this book, the more I continue to feel that it's a great framework for helping students think through text, thinking that includes their own feelings and thinking that can make them more compassionate people, which will lead us to create even better citizens.

Do you have a copy of the book yet? If not, I have a book to give away! If you'd like to be considered for the give away, leave a comment with your thoughts and ideas about this framework, or a response to one of my favorite questions from this part of the book:

Do you think its important for students to think about how a text is changing them? Do you share with students how reading changes you?

Leave your thoughts, let's keep the conversation going!

Creating Relevance

Last week I was at the Illinois Reading Council Conference and I had so much fun. One thing that is still new to me are the Notice and Note books by Beers and Probst. These books are built around strategies for Close Reading.

The big theme of their sessions was relevance. Obviously we want to take into account student interests when we teaching, and ideally we would give all students readings that were directly related to their interests. But, we also have to instruct classic texts, books and articles that students read at various grade levels as a whole class. The Outsiders. Romeo and Juliet. The Scarlet Letter.

I get differentiation, but I also see power in one class, one book. This year, I'm only going to have one book that the whole class reads, and it's The Giver, which we are immersed in now. I've read The Giver with 6th, 7th, and 8th graders, and I say it's best interpreted by eight graders, but I digress.

Back to relevance, though - since we can't give kids readings on their interests all the time, we have to build relevance into our teaching. The strategies that Beers and Probst modeled to us last week are called Possible Sentences and Notice and Wonder. (Well, I'm naming the second one Notice and Wonder!) I used these strategies yesterday with my ELA class and they worked so flawlessly to engage kids to the text. Here's how to do it.

Possible Sentences
Create a group of words and phrases that are about the coming chapters of your book. There should be a bunch of choices. What I did is wrote sentences about the book - things that were actually going to happen, and then I broke them down into a set of names, a set of actions, and a set of descriptors (I'm sure there's a better grammar way to explain that third column!) Here's what I came up with:

Then I modeled to students how to write sentences, using words and phrases from the chart. I showed them a few I created, and then asked them to write two. Then they did a pair share. Then the pair wrote a third. Then silently they wrote two more.

After each kid had five sentences, I had them share out to me and I recorded them on the board:

Notice and Wonder
Now the cool part, I ask students to notice sentences, consider them, and then wonder about them. Here's a lot of questions we had about Jonas and his medication:

As you can see, they were concerned about the pill that Jonas takes and were wondering many things. As the class began sharing, it stemmed more questions. We were rolling!

Prior to that one, we wondered about the other Possible Sentences:

Genius Strategy
These Possible Sentences were created by kids but used the language from the teacher who has already read the book. When you use this strategy, you create an easy way for students to predict using language you give them (so great for ELs) and then you invest them into the story by wondering together.

The engagement yesterday was awesome after this strategy. I highly recommend it!

Other Applications
Think of all the other readings we do in other content areas! When Beers and Probst modeled this strategy, they did so with a NF article about child labor laws in an African (African? Can't exactly remember where...) country. They didn't read the article with us, just did this pre-reading work, and it really stimulated our interest in the topic. I can see this being HIGHLY successful in any content area!

Have you tried these strategies? Have you taught with Notice and Note? Keep the conversation going in the comments below!

week 4 in review

Four weeks of school have flown by already, it's crazy how fast it goes! Here are some of the things I was thinking this week as time continued to keep movin' on by...

I'm so thankful for my new area rug for the kids to read. It takes a lot of feedback to get them to read without disturbing others, but how cool is this view from my conferring table at the present moment? :-)

Our school is putting forward 9 focus areas across the building. One of them is note-taking, so this was one of my demos of Cornell Notes. I had a video playing and was taking notes as students watched me. Then, I had them share out about what they noticed I did. Then they tried on their own. It's working so well! They are finally getting that copying notes from a teacher involves no thinking. They have to do their own notes!

We also worked on getting vulnerable in one of my classes. I asked students to share their notes to fill in things they may have missed, but they wouldn't even move close to one another. So then I said, "Slide your notebooks together, look at one another's work. Talk about it. Trust me, I know it's hard, especially when you're unsure that you even did it right in the first place. I know I'm asking you to do hard things, but just trust me, and go with it." And for the kiddos who still wouldn't move their notebooks together, I did it for them :-)

These girls at the basketball game, I love it. This was after a crazy rant by me to my ELA class a few hours earlier. I super love teaching, but when you are teaching kids what behaviors are okay and what are not, you usually come off to them like you're yelling all the time. I'm not actually yelling, just talking in a stern voice about what is and what is not acceptable. So, after that tough class, it was nice to unwind with these kiddos at the game...until the fire alarm got bumped!

I'm super strict about assignment notebooks with my 6th grade homeroom. I am training them to be organized and create to do lists to make sure they get their work done and stay out of the Working Lunch classroom. And it's working. All by stickers, and these puffy emoji stickers for a week of writing all their homework down! Who doesn't love stickers?!

My classroom is coming along much slower this year because I'm waiting on all the work of the kids to decorate it! I finally finished up the Nerdy Birdies - It's a great book that I read to my homeroom on the first day. Then I had a few kids do blackline masters of a few different birds, copied them, had the kids color them, put them up, labeled them, along with the quote driving my school year:

A bird is safe in it's nest but that is not what wings are made for.  

-Amit Ray

Here are a few close ups:

One more thing on this - A week ago I got some super cute buletin board birds in the mail, except I didn't remember ordering them. I was thinking that I was getting a little irresponsible with my online shopping, so I went looking for the online orders. Couldn't find it. So I posed on facebook and found out my bff sent them :-)

And last, ASU once again named most innovative, and I totally feel it's true in education, with the amazing instruction I got with Reading and Writing Workshop and a social constructivist philosophy with heavy influences from Paulo Freire. So thankful I'm the teacher I am today because of Arizona State. Now we just need to win some football!

How was your week?

written conversations

I'm at the Illinois Writing Project, friends! It's a 2 and a half week course all about Writing with a focus on teacher leadership the second week. Every day, we get this blissful Writing Workshop time to compose anything we want! Today, I'm sharing Written Conversations with you, a strategy we used earlier this morning!

What are Written Conversations?
They are just that - a silent activity where two participants each write a note (in our case, in response to a story we read). Then, when both finish, they pass their note to the other, then respond to their partner's thoughts.

How can you use them?

• Get to know someone! Introduce yourself ask a question to your partner, then respond.
• Build background knowledge: Share a topic, kids write what they know and then respond to one another.
• Response to Literature: Students write letters about their Just Right books, short stories, brief articles and teacher or a partnered peer responds
• Exit Slip (?): Maybe kids could write about something they learned at the end of a unit, then have a written conversation, and then teachers could collect?
• Staff Development: Share a teaching strategy by way of a short article and then have paired teachers engage in written response to one another about the article

What other ideas do you have for implementation?

After participating in this activity, we spent a good 30 minutes debriefing. (Think Share Time!) There was so much to learn! The ideas here represent the ideas of the participants of my group - so thank you to all my colleagues who shared! 

Side note: It was during this time that I thought I should get everyone's twitter handle so I could give credit where it's due! Unfortunately, for this activity, I wasn't tracking who said what! But appreciations to my class for sharing their ideas that are now shared here!

Benefits of Written Conversation

1. Honors 2 Voices: Many times, when we have a Turn and Talk, the conversation will go off on one person's response to the article. In this case, both partners started their response, so two conversations of different content were going simultaneously!
2. Focused Listening: In verbal conversation, we tend to listen long enough to then start figuring out our response. In Written Conversation, you can really hear what your partner has to say and then begin composing your response.
3. Less Daunting: When students are paired, everyone participates more often and the teacher doesn't have to respond to everyone. As a teacher who used to do this about Just Right books with ever kid in my class, I can tell you that this was a big undertaking. I would spend an hour - 1:15 minutes PER DAY responding to my kids letters about books. While it paved the way for exceptional, deep thinking, it was time consuming to say the least!
4. Awareness of Audience: Getting kids to think about audience for their writing is so abstract. When kids write for one another, they can really begin to understand what that means. I for example, was making jokes in some of my letters, while another participant might be more serious. If kids changed partners for this activity, they would definitely begin to see how audience plays a role in writing.
5. Special Record: You walk away with a record of your conversation, so make sure they're in a special notebook!

Teacher Tips for Implementation

1. Remind students to respond to what their partner says, not carry on the conversation they originally started in their own notebook. Asking students to include a question at the end (like us bloggers do) can help guide this!
2. If needed, remind kids that the conversation is about the content, not the grammar. No need to worry about conventions, just as long as your message is clear.
3. Teacher should float during this time to look onto conversations and perhaps, make some notes for debrief.
4. Want to do a shortened version? Have kids write on post-it's and then pass them!
5. Tech version? Could we use Twitter here somehow?

How have you used Written Conversation?

Do you have a great idea to Rev Up Writing? Share it with The Reading Crew!

lightbulb moment

So there I was, working on comprehension with one of my little fourth grade kiddos. We're working on reciprocal teaching / thinking processes - this week predicting, but then we'll move on to summarizing, questioning (and one more strategy that is slipping my mind right now).

I'm trying to get her to understand that Reading is Thinking. Let me say that again, Reading. Is. Thinking. When I taught middle school kids, I swear, this was the broken record saying always on repeat in my classroom, on my anchor charts, and peppered in my conversations with kiddos.

We began this awesome book from the Leveled Literacy Intervention (LLI) System - Hodja and the Robber. It's a classic tale from Turkey, and the main character, Hodja, isn't that smart. It's a super funny book and every kid I've read it with loves it!

So my little kiddo looked at the cover and then I asked her to read the brief excerpt on the back of the book. She read it to me, and I asked her what it said. She looked at me as if to say, "I'm not really sure," so I asked her, "Did you want to read it again?" She said yes, and then read with the understanding that should would summarize it to me afterwards, and then did beautifully. After she summarized, I asked her to predict what she thought would happen in the book.

She told me that she thought a robber would go into the house. We next talked about how a prediction is not what the text says explicitly, and since the excerpt on the back said a robber would go into the house, she cannot make that prediction. Then she told me she thought the robber would feed the donkey...a great prediction that was based on evidence of another part of the excerpt!

We begin reading. I remind her, "Reading is thinking." I continue by telling her I'm going to stop her along the way and ask her to retell or predict, so make sure that she is thinking about her reading. Or, if she forgot to, she can simply tell me she needs to reread.... "After all, good readers who forget to think about the text go back and reread!" I also told her that there will be some Tiger Tickets in her future for good thinking about her reading!

She began, read the first page, and summarized beautifully. Then she predicted that the wife will get mad at Hodja because he didn't  want to feed the donkey anymore. I prompted her to write that prediction down, and check the former one we had written, but decided we needed to read on to determine the outcome of the first prediction.

As we make our way to the next page, my kiddo begins reading again. And then she's smiling. I know it's because the story was unfolding exactly as she predicted: the wife did, in fact, get upset with Hodja and they were having an argument. So there's my kiddo, reading, and I know what she's thinking because she's smiling, and I'm overcome with pride in her work.

Afterwards, I tell her that I'm so proud of her, because I knew that she was thinking about her prediction, and because she's doing exactly what this intervention is all about. And I'm so happy that I have just a little bit of tears in my eyes. So So happy.

Am I a goof? I mean, that's not the word I need here to convey what I'm thinking....I'm not sure what to call it, but I am 100% serious when I tell you that the glistening in my eyes was real. Because I am looking at this kiddo and, just like Yetta Goodman says when she talks about being a Kidwatcher, I'm seeing everything that she can do:

• She reads with beautiful fluency: Her intonation is impeccable, her prosody is perfect, and her speed is spectacular.
• She's easily motivated by great books, like the one we read today.
• She's got great handwriting and has really nailed the way we take notes about predictions in her notebook.
• She's totally open to feedback - feedback that praises her hard work and also feedback that clears up misconceptions within her learning.
• She speaks two languages, so when I told her, "Hasta manaña," she replied with, "Igualmente!"

I just love those moments when the lightbulb turns on. Has that happened to you lately? Please share!

One last thing before I go...

Don't forget that I'm hosting the On Your Mark book study this Thursday! If you bought the book, be sure to link up your post with reflections on the Introduction and Chapters 1 and 2 later this week!

day 17: embarrassment or entertainment?

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Today in one of our common plans, I was working with a team of teachers on planning their summarizing unit. Jill planned the whole thing - with teaching points, articles, and assessment, too, but we thought it would be a good idea to actually take the assessment (read the article and write a summary) so we would be more informed as we wrote the rubric.

So we did - and there I was, making a graphic organizer of the info in the text. Then I finished and started to do something else. Jill asks me, "Are you doing another one?" And I said, "Oh, no...I'm just replying to an email while I'm waiting." She's like, "You know, you didn't write a summary, right?" Little People In My Head (LPIMH): Duh.

So there I was, being a good student using my notes to write my article. I'm all proud because I'm writing every detail from the text down, and someone looks over and is all, "That's too long." Everyone else looks over, too...and I'm sure I'm blushing. LPIMH are reminding me of what a summary actually is, and that, I am most certainly NOT doing a good job. I'm feeling so embarrassed that I didn't think this through because both of our admins are in the meeting with us, too...but actually only kinda embarassed.

The thing is that I've built such a super close relationship with this team - they are part of the group that eats together with me every day and we share a Pinterest board and we joke around and challenge each other and listen to one another, too. There's a solid foundation of trust there, and so me (the literacy coach) doing a summary wrong is totally okay under these circumstances. We got a lot done at our meeting, and we highly entertained, too.

So now it goes down in history as a Slice instead of an embarrassing moment I never want to think about :-)

But did they *really* read that book? (How to know when you don't have something like Accelerated Reader to tell you)

I've gotten a lot of questions from teachers wanting to make the move away from Accelerated Reader to an independent reading program where students read and respond to text in more authentic ways. (To read about my issues with AR, click here.) I've convinced you to make the move, but now you're wondering how you're really going to know if kids are reading. You will, I promise. Here's how and some non-negotiables for making it happen...

Dedicate time to independent reading in class
If you want kids to read independently for homework, you have to dedicate time in class to let them read. You giving up your class time sends a message that you value independent reading and as such, you will dedicate time in class to it.

How much time? In the beginning of the year when you're teaching students the routines of independent reading, you will give them time every day for (at least) the first month. Your first month of school you will be teaching them how to "live the readerly life." You will have mini-lessons about what good readers do, how to select books that are Just Right, and how to use the classroom library. You can find mini-lessons on this in Lucy Calkin's curriculum (her first unit is a month of lessons on this topic) or in this book by Fountas and Pinnell:

I know it says it's for grades 3-6, but I have used the mini-lessons for seventh and eighth grade, too. You can find them in chapter 9, page 142.

In the beginning of the school year, kids will read in class and at home. Homework every night in my middle school reading class? Read 20 pages and do strategy work or response prompts in your Reader's Notebook. Always. Every day of your middle school life. This is always the homework and rarely did I assign anything else.

After kids get the habits of independent reading, you change your class time to one day a week of independent reading at school. Keep it the same - the day doesn't matter, but the consistency does. Kids will come to expect the time to read in class. They will know that on Friday, there will be class time to get a new book or talk to a peer or teacher about reading. They will plan for it, just like you will.

More to come: Middle school schedule with direct teaching and independent reading.

Status of the Class
Kids who are not reading can't talk about their books with their teachers. This is why Status of the Class (read about what that is here - it's a non-negotiable for Reading Workshop) is so very important! During Status of the Class I call out to each student to ask what page they are on. I take status every. day. of. my. school. life. The kids know this. They know I'm going to ask them what page they're on.

The first thing you'll notice when doing Status is that some kids will abandon a lot of books. They'll tell you, "I lost that book. I don't know what to read next," or "I didn't like it, it was boring." As I hear Status reports from kids like this, I might be wondering, "Was the book a future book? Was the book boring? What interests does the child have? I need to match them with a great book!"

Comments like these are bound to happen and when they do, I naturally begin to pay closer attention to that child each day that I call them for Status. I continue tracking their Status on the calendar and may also note some other observations. Additionally, I will want to talk to that child 1:1 as soon as possible to help them get matched with a better book.

Please know: There will be LOTS of kids who will *really* be reading along in their books (and some reporting that they are, when in all actuality, they are not)! You won't be red-flagging all kids.

That being said, the teacher will, sooner or later, become suspicious about some kids - wondering if they really are reading all those pages...and so you'll ask them, "How's that book going?"  You can tell right away if the child is reading the book or not (and if they are real-reading or fake-reading!) A child who is genuinely reading the book will have answers to all your questions. They won't just say, "It's cool." (RED FLAG!) They'll be able to elaborate about it. And if they can't, you'll know that it's a fake reading-situation. At that point, you'd sit down with the child for a conference about the book. (More to come on that later.)

So, conversations that stem from Status of the Class will help you know whether or not students are reading. Please know, it takes time to see patterns. You're going to have to trust me on this though - If you do Status of the Class every day without fail, you will see patterns. You will know who is reading and who is not!


Response to Books
Daily homework in my class was strategies and responses written in a Reader's Notebook. So, when I taught kids that good readers predict, then they read their Just Right book for homework and wrote down predictions from their book. The next week, when we moved on to questioning, the kids then wrote questions about their JR book in their notebook.

When students finished their books, they then had to write about them. We did this with class blogs at edublogs. (If I did this again, I'd use Blogger!) Anyways, the routine in my class was: read a book, write a blog, check out a new book. I knew who was where in the process because of Status of the Class.

Teachers have emailed me to ask, "Michelle, how do you know they're really reading and writing their own response and not just looking up a review online to write their blog?"

In most cases, you will know. I've had countless kids copy and paste reviews from Amazon or any other site the reviews books. How did I know? Because middle school kids don't write super complex sentences with vocabulary they don't understand, punctuated and spelled perfectly! When kids are really writing blogs every week, you'll know what kind of writer they are and so when they submit a blog and you read it and wonder if someone else wrote it, you're right! So then it's a conversation about plagiarism.

Here's the thing: Reading Workshop is messy. When you teach with this kind of philosophy, you are telling kids, "I trust you. I will guide you, but I also trust you to make good decisions." It's a process and you will learn as you go, but it's so much better than relying on a computer program that asks low-level, multiple-choice questions to know whether or not kids are reading! Kids should be reading because real-life people in the real world read for fun and to learn things, not because of some silly questions and some points and prizes from a reading program.

Does this give a little more insight to how teachers would manage independent reading without AR? What questions do you still have? You know how sometimes, when you know a topic really well, you think you're explaining it well, but in all actuality, you're not? That's how I feel sometimes...this moment included!

I hope this illuminates how we can create independent readers without the carrot-and-stick method that is Accelerated Reader!

Have a great weekend!

Loving Literacy Blog Hop: Stop #12: The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane

Welcome to...

Welcome to BigTime Literacy! I'm Michelle and this is my first year as a Literacy Coach, but my 11th year teaching and loving literacy. I'm going to share a great book with you - one in which the character learns what it really means to love another.

But before I get to that, here's a little bit about me...

I actually never knew I was to be a reading specialist or a literacy coach - I was not a fan of reading until I became a teacher. I went back for a Master's in Language and Literacy because I'd have students - as sixth graders - who couldn't read. I had no idea what to do!

Through my coursework, I began reading so much great literature. I'm not sure how I stumbled on The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane, but I remember I read it in one sitting (on a raft in my mom's pool in Arizona) one afternoon. To say I fell in love was an understatement. It's a beautiful story of how a china rabbit learns what love really means. He happens to get lost from his owner, and then over the course of his life, bounces around from family to family. Only then does he learn to appreciate what he had.
  

My product is a unit based on this novel. It can be used with third-sixth grade students, as a read aloud and together as a whole class, as a shared reading, or in smaller book clubs. The whole unit focuses on the character development of Edward Tulane and answers the guiding question, "How does Edward Tulane change as his journey progresses?"

Prior to getting started, you will have to give a few mini-lessons on character traits (review meanings) and making inferences. Perhaps the class as a whole will work on the beginning the novel together, and then gradually release responsibility to individual students. Students also need to be shown how to cite evidence from the text to back up their claims about the character traits they select. Details of Edward Tulane's transformation will be recorded on a chart and at the end of the book, students will write a response to literature to answer the guiding question.

The unit includes notes about character development, chapter summaries, and suggested vocabulary. The freebie version includes these notes for chapters 1-5. You will be able to purchase these notes for all chapters if you'd like to! (Please note: I don't have vocab suggestions for all chapters...but most!)

One last little goodie - a stationary page to use for writing those responses. Gotta make the writing cute when you publish!

You can find this product in my Teachers Pay Teachers store at this link. It's free for the weekend! Additionally, if you'd like to purchase the notes for the entire book, you can find those here.

So that's that. A story of one china's rabbit journey to know what love feels like...right in time for Valentine's Day!

Make sure to follow me on Bloglovin' for literacy ideas, TpT products, news, and ramblings of yours truly!

Our hop doesn't end here! Cruise on over to Teacher's Take Out to see what Stacy has for you!

Have a fabulous weekend!

Get Closer....

A few days ago I started reading this:

And last night I went to see this:

As I sat in the movie theater, crying as Katniss addressed Rue's family, snickering as she made the dummy of Seneca Crane, in awe of her beautiful wedding-turned-Mockingjay gown, and anticipating the last movie as the cameras went to an up-close of her face in the last shot, I was sitting there thinking how I wanted to reread the books, and be close with them again.

Until I began reading Falling in Love with Close Reading (Lehman & Roberts, 2014) (2014 copyright date?), I didn't know I was thinking about Close Reading in the wrong way. How I had been thinking of it was like this: teacher asks kids a question about a text, and then ask them to go look for evidence - read closely - to find that evidence.

(Please don't judge me...I feel like I should know more about this since I am, after all, a Literacy Coach.)

But I digress...

Here's what I've learned since beginning this great read - in order to get kids independent with close reading they have to do the close reading the other way. Instead of being prompted with a question, kids need to be taught how to begin looking closely at their own text for their own purposes. For example, after watching Catching Fire, I want to go back to the part where Katniss makes that dummy of Seneca Crane, reread that part, and look for her personality - find places in the text where she gets that attitude about her, which causes her to do the little bow for the suits sitting up on the balcony watching her.

Close reading should look more like this:

First, we have to show students how to choose a lens for what they are looking for. For example, they could choose to look through the lens of what people/characters think/say/do.

The next step, then, is to collect evidence on on a character, making notes about what a particular character thinks/says/does. As I used to tell my middle school students, we read with a pencil in hand, and our Reader's Notebooks close by. As students read, they jot down the things the text says about the character - their actions, their words, their thoughts.

The next step is to look at all the notes they have  created - notes which came right from the text. With all that evidence they collect, they can then look for patterns about that character. These patterns will make it easy to form a hypothesis about the character.

This is what reading closely is. It's falling in love with the characters in our books. Following them so closely, watching their every choice and move. It's reading this way because the character is so loved, and we want to be closer to them.

This is why it's important to pick super engaging texts to model this with. The texts we pick have to be about dynamic characters who have to make hard choices. The texts we pick shouldn't be too hard or too boring or too long or too....well anything that would cause students to disengage.

We also don't have to make children do repeated readings of the whole text. We can have them do a first draft reading to get the gist of the text - it's pretty hard to analyze a text when we don't have a vision of the whole thing in our heads. But then, we can ask students to go back and look closely at a small part.

I'm only in the beginning chapters of this book, but I'm already revising my thinking on Close Reading. I'm sure as I read on and try these strategies with students, my ideas will continue to evolve. But, it's easy to think about close reading  after watching such a great movie - following a character like Katniss that you admire so much.

How is close reading going for you? Any tips, tricks, or experiences you could share?

Well now I head to the pool, my book in hand. I'm in Arizona for Friendsgiving and have one  more day: grabbing some sunshine for a few hours and then sportin school colors down in Tempe for the ASU - U of A game. Big game....if we win we'll have home field advantage for the PAC12 Championship! Plus, we definitely want to beat the Cats anyways for bragging rights!

Hope you're enjoying your Thanksgiving weekend!

The Gift of Reading Stop #12: Somebody-Wanted-But-So-Then

Welcome to BigTime Literacy! You have arrived at  

 

At each blog stop, you will be gathering Reading gifts and freebies.  In each post you will find a picture of a snowman with a letter on it. Collect all of the letters to solve the mystery quote to enter the giveaway. Record all of the letters on your recording sheet and follow each blog along the way so that you can enter the amazing giveaway at the end!

The hop is set up as a loop, so you may start anywhere along the hop, but if you would like to start at the beginning you may go to A Day In The Life of A Title I Teacher's blog.  This is also where you will go after you finish the hop to enter the giveaway!!

For this Gift of Reading, you will find a great read aloud to use around the holidays and a reading strategy for summarizing narrative text. Let's get to it!

Read Aloud

Going home is a great story to read close to the holidays. In this story, a migrant farm working family makes their way home to Mexico for Christmas. The children in the family don't understand why they have to go each year or why their parents love their little Mexican town of La Perla at first, but then they see that it is home to their parents. The children come to understand that their parents went to the United States for opportunities - opportunities for the children and for themselves.

Reading Strategy

Somebody - Wanted - But - So - Then is a great reading strategy to use to summarize narrative text in a quick way.

In the example of our mentor text, the strategy might come out like this:

"Mama and Papa wanted their children to have opportunities for their future, but in Mexico, there weren't many. So, the family moved to the United States. Then they visit "home" for the holidays and the children see how much their parents sacrificed to give them opportunities in their future."

Freebie!

Now that you've learned about my strategies, head over to my TpT store to download my freebie! In the document, you'll find a review of the story, a poster for Somebody-Wanted-But-So-Then, and exit slip, and a running record you can do to assess your students' reading.

And now the big reveal....my secret letter is:

Enjoy the coming holiday season with your students, family, and friends! I hope that you have found a great read-aloud and a new strategy that will help with your instruction! Make sure to follow BigTime Literacy so you can learn all about what is happening in my corner of the world. Next up on this blog: Academic Parent Teacher Teams!

Don't stop now! Hop on over to Read With Me ABC to pick up another amazing reading gift! Happy Holidays! 

If you get lost along the way download the Hop Map here to easily pick back up where you left off! 

Happy Friday!