WONDERful Jottings

Jottings are an important part of a Balanced Literacy framework. Yes, the sticky notes are abundant and can be found everywhere! How can you manage the jottings and use them for instructional purposes? When I assign students specific jotting topics, the students turn their writing in on the Parking Lot. I have students design the Parking Lot to reflect the current unit of study.

 

 

During our unit, Following Characters into Meaning, we read the book Wonder by RJ Palacio. Students designed their parking spaces in the style of August, the main character.

 

I can get an instant visual of who did not complete their jotting. I can quickly read over their jots to see who needs to conference with me. I will conference with students who used the targeted strategy incorrectly.

Reading March Madness

I live in North Carolina and March Madness is a top priority!  Teachers try to find reasons to put a basketball game on the television: examining stats, multiplication facts by 2's and 3's, geography, college and career readiness. Teachers can get pretty creative! 

Last Monday during my weekly Teach Like a Pirate group chat on Twitter (#tlap), some pirate teachers shared ways they use March Madness brackets in the classroom.  This is a perfect real-life hook for my students. They live in a state that has numerous, top-rate colleges.

I decided to use the list of books we have read so far this year and create a bracket so my students could vote for their favorite books.

I made one half of the bracket fiction and the other half nonfiction. Each day students will complete a quadrant of the bracket.  In 18 school days we will be able to declare the winner. I plan on incorporating the Common Core argumentative writing standard into this activity by having students write reasons for their votes. I won't do this every day. I will do it with the first vote in each round.
  

The fiction brackets will be a tight race between No Flying in the House, Stone Fox, The One and Only Ivan, and Because of Winn Dixie. I predict that the Final Four will be No Flying in the House, Because of Winn Dixie, Titanic, and Rosa. 

My Talking Writers

Each year our third graders complete an animal research project. They work all the steps of the expository writing process--choose a topic, research, record research on notecards, draft, revise and edit, publish.  My students used KidRex as their search engine. I like this search engine because it is safe and it offers videos and text. It also helps with time management because I know where they found the websites and I don't have to worry as much.

 

 

 

Students kept track of where they were in the process by checking off their status on a class chart. It also helped me stay organized and current!

The end product was a plain, old, boring, handwritten, published report. Yawn!  So they could have typed them...or turned them into Power Points...or created posters with pictures printed from the internet. 

 

 

You need to teach like a pirate!  Let your students be awesome! Find a way to spark their imagination and hook them! I used the My Talking Pet app to show my students how to create talking versions of the animals they researched. They created the most amazing creatures.

 

We had a Wild About Writing publishing party. The principal, assistant principal, school social worker, and Exceptional Needs  teacher all stopped by to watch the videos the students created.

 

 

No animal research party would be complete without animal crackers and animal print napkins!

 

The party started when the students shared all of the steps they took to get to the end result.

 

Each student came up to the Smart Board to activate their video and to stand next to it while it played.  The students beamed and were so proud of themselves. One suggestion that helped with the success of this: students can click on their videos, but I sat at the computer to be the behind the scenes clicker in case there were technical issues. One of the students even said, "my video is having a hiccup."

 

They created the videos on iPads, but I downloaded the finished products into my Gaggle Digital Locker. I experienced some technical difficulties getting them to play from that source, so there is very simple way to export files from Gaggle to your Google Docs. The videos now can be shared with families.

My Talking Pet is well worth the $2.99. You can use this app to make book characters talk and provide a book summary. You could have students create talking versions of historical figures. They could make scientists talk about a discovery or share results of an experiment. Students could make a talking version of themselves explaining how to solve a math problem. You could make a talking version of yourself to deliver a class message. I think the possibilities are endless.

Character Traits the Common Core Way

One of the more difficult skills to teach third graders is to reference the text and provide evidence for their thoughts. During our current unit, I think I have encouraged and/or required my students a million times to show evidence from the text .

 

I try to provide them with a variety of activities to practice this skill. Some students catch on to the skill and are able to use it simply by writing a jotting on a sticky note. Other students need a template while still others must have a fill-in activity sheet to follow exact steps in a process.

 

Whatever type of response my students use, I always post examples on the Focus Board so they can reference it whenever they need to during their Independent Reading time.

 

 

During the unit, I was on Pinterest searching for some anchor charts to use. I found a couple of ideas I liked and tweaked them to create my own charts.

 

 

Pinterest Chart--above

 

 

 

My own chart--above

 

Student response activity after a lesson using the anchor chart

 

Pinterest Chart--above

 

My own chart--above

 

 

Student response after a lesson using the anchor chart

 

 

Student response after a lesson using the anchor chart

 

 

Student response after a lesson using the anchor chart...and what I discussed with the student during conferencing

 

 

This is what one student wrote about the character traits for the dog, Winn Dixie, in our read aloud lesson! Check out what he said for the evidence!

 

 

Students posting their jots about character traits

 

Student jots

 

 

Student jots

 

 

I conferenced with the student about how to find evidence in the text.

 

 

Mental Movies

Our current unit, Following Characters into Meaning, focuses on four main skills: envisioning, empathy, making predictions, describing character traits. Using the book Because of Winn Dixie as a read aloud, I have taught my students that envisioning is like making a mental movie in their heads. To bring this point to the front of their minds, I created a movie poster using scenes from the movie Because of Winn Dixie.

 

I had an old book that I found somewhere (probably a freebie from Scholastic) that was a scrapbook of the movie. I cut out photos from the book and placed them on the movie screen after we read that particular portion of the book.

 

The students love looking at the display each morning to see what new photos have been added. Many times they comment to each other that this is not what they had envisioned during the book!

 

In the book, Teach Like a Pirate, there is a strategy called the Board Message Hook. This isn't a message on the front board, but I think it meets the same criteria. Originally I thought it was more of a Props Hook, but I've changed my mind! This display hooked my students and encouraged them to discuss the book outside of Reading Workshop. I say that is success!

Biography Book Club Jottings Assessment

This is one of the forms I used to collect data on my students and what they were learning during our biography and narrative nonfiction unit. I asked them to choose some of their jottings from their Biography Book Club books and then they had to tell why they chose those particular jottings by circling the choices at the bottom of the form. I used these forms during conferencing to celebrate success and address any weaknesses.

 

During the conference with this student, I complimented her descriptions of Rosa Parks' character, but we talked about how to better reference the text and explain events in her life that showed she was that type of woman that was described in the jottings.

 

I complimented this student on her independent use of a chart from a previous minilesson. We discussed synonymns to use that are more detailed than just caring and helpful.

 

I complimented this boy on asking such an intense question. In addition to a quick reminder of capitalization, we discussed other people he has read about that also changed the world. I encouraged him to make more connections between other texts when reading.

 

I complimented this student for referencing the text, but reminded him that when he is a biography reader he should not just be recalling facts. I had him practice relating to the text instead of just retelling details. I led him to the thought that maybe the statue was so big because Dr. King did big things for civil rights.

I was proud of the student, Bryan, because the other members of his book club were absent on the day they did this activity so he put all of their names on the jotting.

 

EMPATHY!

 

relating...not just recalling

 

again relating...not recalling

 

 

This child is religious and often makes connections to her church. In this jotting I complimented her for relating to Abe Lincoln reading the bible. We talked about reasons why he possibly chose to become a stateman instead of a minister.

 

I complimented this student on asking a question and then drawing a line to write the answer to the question after he found it in the text. I encouraged him to reference the text with a few more details. I complimented him on relating to Black Beard's family because he thought the pirate should protect his family and not the gold treasure.

 

I complimented Mya for referencing an event in her book and relating to it. I told her I agreed with her 4-star rating of her jotting.

 

I complimented this student on being in touch with the text and asking questions to help understand what she was reading. I told her that I agreed with her star ratings. She is limited English proficient (LEP) so I think that her questions were justified. We had a basic conversation about Obama and his life. It was not too deep or detailed because that is not what she needed at this time.

 

EMPATHY!

 

Great use of character traits and referencing the text.

 

I complimented this student for referencing the text, but we talked about the difference between fact and opinion when reading a biography.

 

When I conferenced with this student, I had him show me the fancy writing that he found because I thought maybe he was not understanding italics. It was actually a photograph of Declaration of Independence. We had a conversation about how writing has changed from old times and the different types of writing we might see and use today.