Rick's Reading Workshop: Overview

What Teachers Make Final Moviebk2 0001

Rick Wormeli: Redos, Retakes, and Do-Overs, Part One

Rick Wormeli: Formative and Summative Assessment

What I am reading right now

This is a great professional book for K-6 writing teachers. I love to use mentor texts when teaching writing but it is hard to find a picture book  which matches the skill you are trying to teach. . This book contains lists and lists of good choices when you are teaching writers craft elements like alliteration, flashback, onomatopoeia, point of view and many others . It also contains lessons using the specific book mentioned. While reading the lessons I found I needed to have some of the recommended books in front of me so I took a bunch out of the library. None of them were a disappointment. Here are a few I really liked:

This picture book is recommended for teaching personification or point of view. I also like that it was full of facts about our ocean.

This cute story could be used to teach hyperbole, similes or voice in a writing lesson.

Good choice for teaching creative language, metaphors, and repetition.

Funny story that is a great choice for teaching voice and alliteration

I am so happy I found this new resource to help me teach writing. Now the next step is to find copies of some of these books. Christine

I keep pinning!

Here is the link to my new hobby:
http://pinterest.com/cjken42/
What a great site to store pictures of all of those wonderful ideas you come across on the internet. I also put a Pinterest button on my blog...look to the right. If you are interested in looking at over 100 pinterest boards made by teachers, go to www.theteacherslane.blogspot.com
So much fun! Christine

End of the year projects

For end of the year projects my fifth graders produced these booklets which were reviews of favorite books we had read together in fourth or fifth grade. The front is a copy of the book's cover. Inside I had them review the narrative elements in various ways.

First the children drew the cover, then I cut the paper down the center

This is what the inside of the booklet looks like

You can see here how they stand up

Here are some examples of what they wrote on the inside: author's purpose, symbols from the story, a list of the major and minor characters, details about setting (time and place), themes found in the book, character traits with text based evidence, a story map or plot profile, or the types of conflicts they experienced in the book. They could also rate the book or write a summary. I mounted the projects on cardboard so they actually stand up. It was lots of fun! Christine