Big Books for Big Readers

My morning Literacy Block is an inclusion class of 3rd graders. The other day my student with the lowest reading level in the class (level C) was book shopping and he wanted to take a big book home to read. I asked him why and he told me that he was a big reader and needed a big book! How could I argue with that?! I remembered that I had a huge Ziplock storage bag in the cupboard, so I took it out and gave it to him to use for his take-home bag! He was thrilled!!!!

Poetry Jottings and Comprehension

I struggle between what I know are TRUE balanced literacy practices and what is required by my state to measure comprehension with common assessments and standardized testing. So I try my best to meld the two together.

In December my students were practicing inferencing as they read a poem about a cat laying under a Christmas tree and looking up at the ornaments. Instead of just having them read the poem and answer the questions on the back, I had them "turn and talk" and "stop and sketch." Then they had to make a jotting on a sticky note about the poem. Some students made predictions and others explained having empathy for the cat because they have laid under a tree outside and looked up.

After reading the jottings, I printed off three main comments that the students' responses fit into. I print my conference notes on address labels so I can stick one in the student's Reading Notebook and another in my Conference Notebook.

Then I called the students back and used the printed comments to give students compliments and things to work on to improve.

                          

                          

                           

 

The Beginning of Book Clubs in B13

My literacy blocks are beginning their first book clubs. They will be reading and discussing books in a series.  They were supposed to do this unit back in November, but at that time my teammates and I thought it best to go ahead with the nonfiction unit instead. The main reason was that we did not have enough books. Now we are ready to go and the students are really excited! Here are some of the pieces I have put in place to get us started...I will share more as the clubs progress.

 

Each book club completed and signed a contract. We put them on display to remind everyone of the expectations and procedures.

 

Book Club folders contain the following: a copy of the contract, a meeting checklist, a calendar of meeting times and page assignments, the book, sticky notes.

 

Students use the meeting checklist as a self-assessment.

 

Students filled out their own calendars to decide how many pages or chapters they were going to read to prepare for each meeting.

Book Club Anchor Charts

 



Repurposing Those Old, Boring Textbooks

My school had some old Social Studies big books and Open Court textbooks that were being sent away for disposal. I snatched them and repurposed them for a nonfiction text feature lesson!  I set it up like a scavenger hunt. The students had a list of features. They worked in cooperative groups to cut out the examples, label them, and write a short description. They glued everything down on large pieces of butcher paper and we hung them up as an anchor chart during our Navigating Through Nonfiction unit.

This activity is easily differentiated for students at- or above- grade level and for those students below-grade level or who have a disability of some sort. The work sample above is the average or above-average group. They did the entire activity on their own. 

The work sample below was completed by a group of exceptional needs students with learning disabilities. I had the descriptions pre-written and cut out for them.  I also had the text features already cut out. They had to match the descriptions to the examples and glue them down.

Navigating Nonfiction Assessments

During the Lucy Calkins' 3-5 Reading Workshop Unit titled Navigating Through Nonfiction, I used the leveled passages found on the resource CD to assess my students in their use of nonfiction strategies and skills. Each child received a passage based on his or her Fountas and Pinnell guided reading level. They used a large sticky note to make a "box and bullet" jotting to identify the main idea and supporting details. This was scored using a rubric (I have found that rubrics are the best way for me to grade assessments in a Balanced Literacy framework because my school district uses percentage-based grades for report cards).

The students filled out the Responding to Nonfiction form to measure if they were able to deconstruct a nonfiction passage. They had to check off the nonfiction text features found in the passage, activate prior knowledge, ask questions to help guide their reading, and locate new vocabulary.  I am sorry I do not have the link to this form--I did download it for free from Teachers Pay Teachers.

 

Students and families appreciate being able to read feedback after completing an assessment.

Moving on to Nonfiction

Our Teacher's College manual said that we should be doing a series book club in November. Since we were new to the balanced literacy framework, my 3rd grade literacy team decided to switch and do the Lucy Calkins Navigating Nonfiction unit in November and December because we did not have enough series books yet.  We were also able to make some strong integrated lessons with our Social Studies unit during those months.

Here are some of the anchor charts I used during the navigating nonfiction unit lessons.

Revisiting the Organization of My Balanced Literacy Room

I have added hundreds of books to my classroom library since the beginning of the year. The students have created their own book categories. I have finally found a spot to keep my teaching materials. This is not a very insightful post, but I know I like seeing how other classrooms are organized for Balanced Literacy. I hope you can take something away from mine.

 

I decided to put all of my Balanced Literacy teaching materials together on one bookcase. I meet with my literacy teammates twice a week and I am also a member of my school's Balanced Literacy team, so I need easy access to all of my materials. Also if a colleague borrows something it is easy for them to return to the correct place. My DIBELS and DRA assessment kits are on the top. In the cubbies underneath I house all of the books for my book clubs to use during the year. Since I am just starting out on the Balanced Literacy journey, I do not have many books for the clubs yet. I have found that by putting them in these separate cubbies I am able to see which clubs most need books.  This way when my facilitator or even classroom parents ask me if there are any books I need, I can take a quick visual inventory and give a quick answer.

 

Students created a Sports Basket.

 

I have added many new books since August, so I had to divide my leveled books in to picture book baskets and chapter book baskets.

 

I teach two blocks of literacy each day. My morning block is an inclusion group so the reading levels range from an A to a Q!

 

Students came up with the Books About Rodents basket and the Wings! basket.  We had so many books about cats and dogs that we had to divide them into picture books and chapter books.

 

Objects in the Sky was one of the units the students were studying in the Science Lab, so we created that basket.  I also used to teach Math so I pulled out all of my books with Math links and leveled them.

 

I have five cooperative group tables in my classroom. Each table has a Writing Tub that contains a dictionary, thesaurus, rhyming dictionary, punctuation and grammar handbooks, lists of commonly misspelled words, and any other type of spelling/writing/grammar book I have collected over the years. Each table has a Writing Captain that is in charge of getting the tub for students to use during Writing Workshop.

Winter Word Work

I used the winter song, Marshmallow World, as a fluency and word work activity. Students watched Bing Crosby sing it on You Tube. Then they practiced reading it using correct fluency. As a related assignment, they completed a Tree Map to sort the words in the song.

The Reason

I have had a wonderful week in 3rd grade.  The students' reading is really starting to take off!  I have to share some of my students' growth. The levels are Fountas and Pinnell.

Student JM: September Level E, November Level H
Student TL: September Level F, November Level I
Student JJ: September non-reader...below a Level A, November Level D

Student JJ asked me today if he could read to the class! He said,"come on boys and girls. Sit at the meeting area." The students all looked at me and I motioned for them to go ahead. He sat in my rocking chair and had 3 books with him. He asked the students after they sat down,"are you in your meeting place? Are you ready?" Then he held up each book and told them to raise their hands for the book they wanted him to read. He read all 3 books to the students.  He even asked them questions during the book. When some of the students yelled out to show the pictures he just kept on reading--just like I do!  It always makes my heart warm when students imitate me when they read.

I am so proud of Student JJ because balanced literacy has helped him become a reader. He always has books with him and he always knows when it is his shopping day. He loves getting new books and sharing them with his partner. I am looking forward to finishing my progress monitoring with my other students.

How Can You Assess Jottings?

My school district uses a percentage value to determine grades.  My literacy teammate and I had to spend some time at the end of the Lucy Calkins Unit 2: Following Characters Into Meaning deciding how we would assess our students.  In the past we would give a common assessment comprised of a few passages with some comprehension questions at the end. They would receive a grade based on how many questions they got right. But within a balanced literacy framework our assessments would need to change. We had to ask, "how do we assess the students at their own levels using jottings we have been using throughout this unit?"

This is what we came up with as our Jottings Assessment:

We chose fiction passages that had strong characters.  We chose a 1st grade passage, 2nd grade passage, 3rd grade passage, and 4th grade passage to reflect our students' reading levels. The passages are from HaveFunTeaching.com (next time though we plan to use the leveled passages from The Teacher's College Reading and Writing Project which we learned about after the assessment). Reading A to Z is also another good site to get leveled passages.

On the back of each passage was a sticky note labeled with the four strategies and skills the students had been using in their jottings during their fiction reading--envision, empathy, predicting, character traits. Each student read two passages and responded by writing their jottings on the sticky note templates.

 

Even my 3rd grade student who is at a Guided Reading Level A was able to be assessed. He dictated his responses to a scribe. My nonverbal student with cerebral palsey listened to her passage and pointed to picture responses that were recorded.

We created a rubric using Rubistar to score the students' jottings with a point value giving us our required percentage grade. Click here to download the rubric. We saved the entire assessment into student folders so that we could use them as talking points during parent conferences. The students really enjoyed the assessment. Afterwards they said it didn't seem like a test because they were just reading and jotting like always!