Books, books, and more books...

I was feeling very overwhelmed looking at my classroom library this year! Ugh! I know you all know the feeling. Last year, my library was organized by guided reading level.  Since my school now has a book room with books categorized by guided reading level, I really wanted my students to be able to choose books by interest and genre this year. I began my search for book bin labels but was highly unsuccessful. Yes, there are so many cute and high quality book bin labels out there, but they all seemed to be made for lower grades.  I just didn't have enough books in those categories.  Most of my books were 4th, 5th, and 6th grade level chapter books.  I decided that I just had to give in and make my own.

Yesterday, I organized all my books by genre so that I could visualize how many books I had in each category. I put post it notes on the baskets as temporary labels, so I knew which labels I had to make. Today, I made the labels! You can get them HERE!

Those are just some examples of the labels.  There are also several other chapter book labels (humor, action/adventure, realistic fiction, etc.) and reference labels. I ordered these fabulous self-adhesive pockets to slide my labels in after I print them.  The labels are 3 x 5 index card size and fit right in these pockets. They should stick on any box or basket!

I'm pretty excited about these and hope some other teachers who teach intermediate grades find them useful also. Students always need to be able to easily access literature!

-h

Enhancing Literacy with Online Social Interaction

I did a lot of work this year with integrated social interaction and technology with literacy.  We  know that our students today are intrigued by technology and even more so, socializing through technology.  I decided to try to incorporate the two in order to increase my students' interest in self-selected reading.  My students really took to it and did a great job with their discussions!

I  created five online discussion groups on Edmodo (I posted about edmodo and some of the ways that I use it in my classroom several months ago).  These discussion groups were heterogeneous in order to expose lower students to higher vocabulary and literature.  Heterogeneous grouping can be very beneficial with literature discussion.  I posted a discussion topic each week.  These topics were general so that they could be applied to any book. In my district, we had a weekly reading skill that we focused on; therefore, my discussion questions for their self-selected reading books (on their level) were skills based.  Each student was required to respond to the discussion topic at least once and respond to at least two of their peers' posts.  

This tied in with our curriculum, integrated writing, and improved interest since it involved technology and socializing!  Check out some of my students' posts and responses:

Online literature discussion is a great way to get students excited about reading and integrate writing and technology.  There are other websites that you can use for something like this.  I suggest Edmodo because it is user friendly, manageable, and safe for students. My students absolutely loved this, and I am definitely going to continue it next year!

-h

Role Playing on Edmodo to teach Historical Fiction

Hi, we've decided to venture off with our own blogs! Please go to teachitivity.blogspot.com to find a revised version of this post. See you there. 

I recently had the honor of writing a blog post for Edmodo's blog. I had my students increase their historical fiction reading and writing skills by role playing on Edmodo. They developed historical fiction characters from the Great Depression and created a social networking world that would resemble what Facebook would look like in the 1930s.  It was extremely successful and a great example of how social networking can be effectively used to teach literacy. I would love for you to check out my blog post on Edmodo's Blog and try it out with whatever subject you are teaching. This approach also made it easy for my students to self-assess themselves and for me to differentiate literacy instruction.  See pictures below for more information.

EXAMPLE
This a snapshot of my 5th graders writing unbelievable posts from the perspective of someone living during the Great Depression. They were able to use social networking to show character traits, character relationships, and historical relevance:

GROUPS

Instead of groups, I made families:

BADGES

These are the badges I created. Many of the are just cheesy names that relate to each category from the rubric. The others are badges to encourage strong work ethic skills. The students would meet with me or send me a message when they felt that they deserved a specific badge. They would show me posts to explain why they earn a specific badge. The kids eagerly worked for badges and it ensured me that they were practicing on certain reading and writing skills.

RUBRIC/ASSESSMENT
This is the first page of the rubric my students used to self assess themselves throughout the unit. The rubric includes setting, nonfiction skills, character traits, vocabulary, and technology skills. I used the rubric to guide my mini lessons and strategy groups. Again, the badges helped the students focus on the  reading and writing skills being assessed in this unit.

EXTENSION
Here's how some of my students extended their learning by writing fake newsletters, scrapbooks, or calendars to make their posts more authentic. 

Todaysmeet: temporary chatroom for students

Hi, we've decided to venture off with our own blogs! Please go to teachitivity.blogspot.com to find my new posts. See you there. 

An amazing friend and teacher introduced me to Todaysmeet a couple months back. It is a temporary chatroom that you can set up in about 5 seconds and schedule it to be deleted in a couple weeks. I used it this year when my students first started learning about historical fiction. After a few lessons on features of historical fiction, students created their own character from the Great Depression time period. The students used Todaysmeet to role-play their character and create a chatroom environment that would resemble the 1930s. I made a self-assessment handout to go along with it. Download it for free here. This was such an easy and fun lesson to do. The kids didn't want to stop!

Elapsed Time with Google Maps

Hi, we've decided to venture off with our own blogs! Please go to teachitivity.blogspot.com to find a revised version of this post. See you there. 

Living in the city, I've realized that I am directionally challenged. Therefore, I love Google Maps. I use it all the time in my personal life and thought, why not use it in the classroom? My students now use it in math to practice elapsed time word problems and are hooked. Surprisingly, my students who take pride in being technologically savvy were unfamiliar with navigating through the app. Who would've thunk it!? I loved that I was able to also incorporate some geography in the math lesson. Killed two birds with one stone. Check it out HERE!!

Weather Channel App in Math

Hi, we've decided to venture off with our own blogs! Please go to teachitivity.blogspot.com to find a revised version of this post. See you there. 

Why not teach kids about temperature using something we use everyday - the Weather Channel app! I'm a huge fan of double dipping whenever I can. This activity brings in geography and statistics while the kids have fun calculating temperatures. The day my kids did this, I tweeted it on our class twitter account and the Weather Channel retweeted us. Of course, I flipped out and took a screenshot of it to show my kids the next day. Find this activity HERE!!
-Katharine

Teaching Food Webs with Facebook

Hi, we've decided to venture off with our own blogs! Please go to teachitivity.blogspot.com to find my new posts. See you there. 
Kids love social networking but often times, it's hard to incorporate it safely in the classroom. I put together this mock-Facebook template for science this year and it turned out to be a blast for the kids. I just used Pages (or Word) and made text boxes. The kids chose an ocean organism from the bottom of the ocean food web and made a "Facebook" profile for them. They showed their understanding of the food web by writing statuses. For instance: "Just had a nice meal of algea, plankton, and bacteria with my family!" Then they might post a status as if an organism higher up on the food chain consumed them today and tagged them on Facebook. It was so easy to differentiate too. Students who needed a challenge either imported images from the internet, staged photographs using photobooth, or created videos using Videolicious. Many of the students included each other's organism in their statuses which made it seem even more authentic. I can't wait to see how else I can use this template next year!

-Katharine