Notice and Note and Close Reading

I read anything by Kylene Beers, but this is her best book yet! In it she recommends teaching six "signposts" to help aid students in deep reading comprehension. By page 4 I was hooked! On it is a list of the 25 most commonly taught novels in grades 4-8. Yes! five of my favorites are on the list.  After reading the book I made the 6 posters (see a few below) and dove right in. (It was late May/early June...my favorite time to experiment with something new).The first signpost (I can't say that I really like the word choice, but I can't think of exactly what to call them either!) is contrasts and contradictions. This is when a character in a book acts in a way that is unexpected. The behavior makes you think: Why would the character act this way? Beers and Probst say when this happens in a novel it is a moment to stop and do a close read. We found a contrast/contradiction in the novel Number The Stars. It happened when Papa was on the phone with Uncle Henrick. Papa tells Henrick that their are many cigarettes in Copenhagen if you know where to look. As the reader we know that this is untrue. We wonder about this contradiction. Why is Papa lying? It is a good spot to do some close reading and discussion.
    

I copied these posters right from the book.

   Another signpost that kept surfacing as we read Number The Stars was again and again. We noticed that Lois Lowry mentions the country of Sweden over and over again. Could this mean something? What is the author trying to tell us? This caused lots of discussion and prompted us to look at a map to see where Sweden was located. Hmmm..so interesting that Uncle Henrick's boat is moored so close to Sweden!
     I learned quite a bit as an adult reader from Notice and Note. I've read Number The Stars at least ten times and the signposts made me look at the novel with new eyes. Next year I plan to teach the signposts at the beginning of the year and use them with Shiloh, our first novel of the year. Christine

Common Core book picks

The appendix to the Common Core has an interesting  list of books you could use to teach the new standards. I really liked this nonfiction pick: Toys! Amazing Stories Behind Some Great Inventions. by Don Wulffson. I used Youtube videos to introduce a few of the the different inventions: the slinky, magic rocks, and Mr. Potato Head. These are posted at the bottom. After reading each individual story I had the students work on this worksheet I created:

They had to record the name of the invention, the inventor, when and where they invented it, what inspired him/her, and a problem the inventor encountered. The last block was a place to record a trait or characteristic we noticed that the inventor had. For example: creative, hardworking, intelligent. Most of the stories in the book Toys! follow this pattern. Later on in the week we worked in groups to prove that inventors have common characteristics.

I used those large stickers to have the groups  record text based evidence of inventors showing that they were smart, persistent, creative or hardworking. The kids really liked this book. The stories are short. You could read 2-3 in a period. They could also be easily summarized.

• RI.4.1. Refer to details and examples in a text when explaining what the text says explicitly and when drawing inferences from the text. (We had to infer common traits of inventors)
• RI.4.2. Determine the main idea of a text and explain how it is supported by key details; summarize the text.
• RI.4.3. Explain events, procedures, ideas, or concepts in a historical, scientific, or technical text, including what happened and why, based on specific information in the text

RI.4.7. Interpret information presented visually, orally, or quantitatively (e.g., in charts, graphs, diagrams, time lines, animations, or interactive elements on Web pages) and explain how the information contributes to an understanding of the text in which it appears. ( Some of the info from the Youtube video on the invention of the slinky conflicted and/or added to the information we learned from the text)
RI.4.10. By the end of year, read and comprehend informational texts, including history/social studies, science, and technical texts, in the grades 4–5 text complexity band proficiently, with scaffolding as needed at the high end of the range.

Common Core State Standards: Elementary School

Boosting Reading Skills: Will 'Common Core' Pay Off?

Common Core Persuasive Writing Lesson

I love the book Should Their Be Zoos? by Tony Stead. I've written about my lessons using this book in previous posts. . Recently I found a writing lesson which is aligned to the common core that I want to share with you. The students write an opinion piece and support their point of view with reasons from the text Should Their Be Zoos,and The Swazi Eleven by Kelly Boland.(A copy of this article is given in the packed from the link below). They also use facts learned from  a video clip from a Phoenix news station about an endangered animal which has thrived at a local zoo. I posted a copy of the video I found on Youtube below. Here is the link to the NYC Dept. of Education website:
http://schools.nyc.gov/NR/rdonlyres/C03E352F-F0EE-4152-8CBE-76F1D62864F5/0/NYCDOEG5Literacy_TCRWP_Final.pdf


Common Core Standards addressed:RI.5.1 Quote accurately from a text when explaining what the text says explicitly and when drawing
inferences from the text.
RI.5.2: Determine two or more main ideas of a text and explain how they are supported by key details;
summarize the text.
RI.5.10: By the end of the year, read and comprehend informational texts, including history/social studies,
science, and technical texts, at the high end of the grades 4–5 text complexity band independently and
proficiently.
W.5.1: Write opinion pieces on topics or texts, supporting a point of view with reasons and
information.

Another book pick for the Common Core

I ordered a class set of this wonderful picture book/biography, Irena's Jar of Secrets by Marsha Vaughan to add to my nonfiction collections. It is the story of a young girl who grew up Catholic in Poland. She became a social worker who  bravely rescued 2,500 Jewish children from the Nazis. The names and locations of the children where kept in a jar which she hid under a apple tree. Irena Sendler lived to the ripe old age of 98!

This picture book is not for young children due to the topic. It will be a great addition to my lessons surrounding  Number The Stars by Lois Lowry. Now I will have that (historical) fiction/nonfiction (biography)connection.
Here are some of the Common Core standards we will be working on with this book:

• RI.5.1. Quote accurately from a text when explaining what the text says explicitly and when drawing inferences from the text.
• RI.5.2. Determine two or more main ideas of a text and explain how they are supported by key details; summarize the text.
• RI.5.3. Explain the relationships or interactions between two or more individuals, events, ideas, or concepts in a historical, scientific, or technical text based on specific information in the text.

Learning about Honey Bees

I've picked out a few class sets to help me teach the new common core standards. The Hive Detectives: Chronicle of a Honey Bee Catastrophe  by Loree Griffin Burns is one of them. Many years ago I met a bee keeper and that started my fascination with honey bees. In the last ten years millions of honey bees have been found dead or have vanished without a trace. This book delves into the mystery about what is actually happening to the honey bees and why it is important to us all.
The new common core standards push for an increase in reading informational text in elementary school. I am going to use this book to teach these standards:

• RI.5.4. Determine the meaning of general academic and domain-specific words and phrases in a text relevant to a grade 5 topic or subject area. (the book has an excellent glossary to help us as well.)
• RI.5.5. Compare and contrast the overall structure (e.g., chronology, comparison, cause/effect, problem/solution) of events, ideas, concepts, or information in two or more texts. (Their are at least  two structures present: chronological and problem/solution)
• RI.5.1. Quote accurately from a text when explaining what the text says explicitly and when drawing inferences from the text.
• RI.5.2. Determine two or more main ideas of a text and explain how they are supported by key details; summarize the text.

Infer a character's feelings

I have a class set of Mildred Pitts Walter's Ty's One Man Band. Recently we used it to practice inferring how a character feels. We studied Ty's thoughts, actions and words to figure out his emotions. This objective is very clearly written in the new Common Core standards for fourth graders. This text is rather simple so it is a good choice when working on such a complex skill.

Here is the poster I made for the reading lesson. On the left I put copies of pages from the story where Ty was feeling a certain emotion. (I highlighted the evidence.)

On this page Ty is curious. You can see that he is hiding from the mysterious stranger.

This is the worksheet I used. You can see that the students had to locate the feeling or emotion ( I gave them the page numbers). Later we added the stickies with the information about which emotion he felt and the way it was revealed to us to the poster. Youtube has the story Ty's One Man Band in  a Reading Rainbow episode. We were able to watch it on the Smartboard. See it below. Christine