Synthesizing with The Wednesday Surprise

Each year I use The Wednesday Surprise by Eve Bunting to do a lesson on synthesis. Synthesis is when your thinking changes during reading. This book is a great choice because it is short and sweet and your thinking changes quite drastically from the beginning to the end.

 I have taught this lesson for years with only one copy of the book. This year I ordered a class set and it made a big difference. In the middle we start to think  that the main character, Anna, will be reading to her father as his birthday surprise. Synthesizing through this part was the most difficult. I found we had to reread the page three times for full understanding. Having a class set really helped with this. At the end we find out that the surprise is really that the grandmother cannot read. Anna taught her to read and they surprised the father on his birthday. This was a great place it introduce the word: illiterate.

The next day I decided to review those spots in the text when the author either mislead the reader or left us a clue as to what the story was really about. I went through the text and created this worksheet.

We wrote our notes about what was happening to us as  readers on the opposite side. Christine

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 the Titanic

The 100 year anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic is tomorrow. Scholastic had the first book of the I Survived..... series on sale for $1.00 a piece! What a great book! Both the 4th and 5th graders thoroughly enjoyed reading it.We started learning about the Titanic with an article in Weekly Reader. The more I use Weekly Reader the more impressed I've become. I'm always looking for nonfiction sources with great text features. This month WR had an awesome map/timeline of the sinking of the Titanic. I also found some great Youtube videos about the Titanic to use in class. After we finished I Survived The Sinking of  The Titanic we had to write a two word summary. Here is a picture of the poster we made together.

Some children chose words that described George, the main character, others chose words  to describe the feelings they had while reading the book. A few children felt an object from the story or a theme was most important. Coming up with only two words to describe a whole book can be challenging!

We also spent some time reading about the Costa Concordia that sank off the coast of Italy in January in an old WR edition.. The article gave us lots of room for comparison to the Titanic. It also had another great map to help us visualize what exactly happened to that ship.
If your students are very interested in the Titanic and you are looking for even more resources,
http://www.wegivebooks.org/books has the book Titanic Sinks! available to read online for free.  Christine

Learning about owls

This is the bulletin board I made for our owls unit. The big owl in the middle is actually a kite I found in a toy store many years ago. My favorite book that I have used for teaching about owls is Owls by Eric Weiner. I like it because the new vocabulary words like talons and species are in italics and the definitions are embedded in the text. Unfortunately it seems to be out of print. Here are some other great books for teaching about owls. Christine

Teaching about flashbacks

A few years back my 4th graders completely misinterpreted the meaning of a text because they didn't understand that the character was now explaining something that had happened long ago. Flashbacks can be confusing to the reader. I really like The Summer My Father Was Ten by Pat Brisson as a mentor text for teaching  about flashbacks.

I got this book from Teaching for Deep Comprehension by Linda Dorn. The teaching resource has a DVD which shows a 4th grade teacher modeling how to use the book. Also, I really recommend this blog: Life in 4B http://lifein4b.blogspot.com/2011/12/were-baaaack.html if you don't already follow it. Its been a great resource for me for the last few years. A few weeks ago I was reading Sarah Plain and Tall with my 4th graders. I like using the story Dakota Dugout after reading Sarah Plain and Tall and then comparing the two stories. I got the idea for using Dakota Dugout to teach about flashbacks from Miss Bongers at Life in 4B.

If you have any great suggestions about what books to use to teach children about flashbacks let me know. Christine

More on Chris Van Allsburg

I love reading The Stranger and The Sweetest Fig by Van Allsburg. with children, but I have never used The Mysteries of Harris Burdick before. Some Van Allsburg books take some time to "get". I didn't like The Stranger the first time I read it, but now it is one of my favorite books. The Mysteries of Harris Burdick is just a group of unconnected pencil drawings, each with a title and an introductory sentence.Here is an example:

It all started when someone left the window open....

The reader is left to wonder what happens next. Its a great book to use with young writers who have great imaginations. Questions instantly come to mind: Who left the window open? Why? Is that bird on the wallpaper coming to life? 

The Chronicles of Harris Burdick was recently published. It is like an answer key for those pencil drawings. A short story was written for each of the drawings by famous authors like Louis Sachar and Stephen King. I couldn't wait to read it and share it with some of my young writers with great imaginations. Here is a website to explore more if you are interested:

http://www.houghtonmifflinbooks.com/features/harrisburdick/index.html

Christine

Happy Birthday Statue of Liberty!

This week, the Statue of Liberty turns 125! My fourth graders are reading  Lily and Miss Liberty by Deborah Kogan Ray. Its a short historical fiction story which explains how children throughout the country raised pennies to help pay for Liberty's pedestal.

We also read A Picnic in October by my favorite author, Eve Bunting. In true Bunting fashion, she leads the reader to think the birthday party the children are preparing for is for their grandmother, an Italian immigrant. At the end of the story we learn that Grandma and family celebrate Lady Liberty's birthday in front of the statue every year. It's become a family tradition, a way of thanking America for welcoming Grandma when she was a young Italian immigrant.

To add to the fun this week we did a few more projects:

Here I am in my Halloween costume. I don't look bad for 125 yrs old!

Here is an art project we did on the Statue of Libery

More on The Stranger

My original post from 2010: My two favorite Van Allburg books are The Stranger and The Sweetest Fig. The Stranger is a great book to use when teaching inferring. You can see from my poster that I start with: I think the stranger is.... and Here are the clues (details) that helped me:  I put a sticky over the answer. As we read the book I had the children make their thinking visible on post it notes and then stick them to the page.We developed the list on the anchor chart together. Many children are able to understand that something unusual or magical is happening but they don't have the background knowledge to come up with the name Jack Frost.
            This year as I was reading The Stranger to my class I started thinking how much our questions  lead us to understanding who the stranger really is. I produced this new anchor chart with the 4th graders.  I combined parts of the text with the post it notes where the children made their thinking visible. Here are some pictures:

     

I love Shiloh

My fifth graders have just finished reading Shiloh. I love the story because it gives us so many things to discuss. Here are some pictures from some of the lessons we did while reading the story:

Character traits: What kind of a boy is Marty? We kept adding to this poster as we read the book. The green sticky is the trait and the orange ones are the text based evidence.

We did some more work on Marty's character traits.

 Marty had to make a tough decision when he found Shiloh in the woods. We wrote about all the different options he had. Did he make the right choice? What were the pros and cons of each option? What would you have done?

The story was very suspenseful. Here is the plot profile we created together. You can clearly see the rising and falling action. Chapter 9 was by far the most exciting.Later on in the school year we will read the other two Shiloh books in the trilogy. Christine

first day of school read alouds

Here are the two read alouds I chose for the first day of school for my 4th and 5th graders. Mrs. Watson Wants Your Teeth is a cute story of a first grader who thinks her new  teacher is a tooth stealing alien with a purple tongue! I got the idea to read this story from

www.lifein4b.blogspot.com Its great for teaching about how rumors spread. The theme: Think for yourself, makes this story of a first grader applicable to every elementary grade. I also used the speech bubbles that are throughout the story to introduce the new concepts of dialogue and monologue for the first time.
My 5th grade read aloud is the beautiful book: The Golden Rule. We had a wonderful first day of school discussion about treating others like you want to be treated....A simple rule that is sometimes very hard to follow. I pinned the book jacket up next to our new behavior chart as a reminder. Happy first day of school. Christine