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. 

Data! Data! Data!

My school requires teachers to have Data Binders, but I have been using one for about 15 years. I like all of my students' information to be in one place. It makes it easy for me use during conferences and take to meetings. Some years my binder is thicker than other years, but this year is the largest it has ever been due to the increased number of assessments students are required to take during the school year.

 

 

I place my student contact sheets in the front pocket so I can easily contact families. Behind my table of contents (which I seem to constantly edit) I keep all of my passwords because who can ever keep up with all of them?!

 

 

Students are working below grade level are required to be placed on Personalized Education Plans (PEPs) so I keep all of their information in one section.

 

 

I keep my students' reading levels in a section which includes oral reading fluency, Guided Reading levels, and all of my reference charts from Reading 3D, Teachers College, and Fountas and Pinnell.

 

In the MAP section I keep my training booklet for when I can't remember what a report is called or what it should be used for. I record progress on charts and also keep signed copies of growth reports from parents/guardians.

 

 

I keep track of MAP goals so I know who needs reteach and who can benefit from enrichment.

 

 

 

Everything in my binder is designed to be easily accessible and easily understood. I keep my data current because it ensures I am differentiating for my students' needs.

 

Invisible Reading Strategy

Invisible ink will hook any reluctant writer! Teach like a pirate and teach your students to record their thoughts without stress or judgment. My students are in the midst of the Lucy Calkins unit Navigating Nonfiction. I amped up the lesson about mentally recording main idea and details on your hand by calling it The Invisible Strategy!

 

 

Not only did the lesson reinforce main idea and supporting details, but I was able to extend the lesson and teach Common Core vocabulary.  Sometimes the main idea isn't called the main idea!

Students added the graphic reminder to their reading notebooks.

 

During independent reading the students practiced using the strategy.

The Invisible Strategy was a memorable introduction to the formal reading strategy of Boxes and Bullets and helped them grasp it more easily.

 

 

The students' understanding of main idea transformed from invisible to concrete!

Halloween Poetry Jottings

When Halloween falls on a weekday, teachers need to embrace it in order to make it through a successful day of learning! I took a break from our current unit, Following Characters into Meaning. Instead of reading from our unit read aloud Because of Winn Dixie, I used some holiday poems to keep students focused. They thought it was cool to stop doing Reading Workshop (they just didn't realize they were still doing it)! When you teach like a pirate, sometimes you have to hook students by letting them think they are getting away with something. If they want to think they aren't doing work because the activity is new and different, then by all means I will run with it! 

 

I selected a variety of poems: repetitive, acrostic, rhyming, free verse, musical lyrics, haiku. I chose poems that I thought fit the category of complex text. The poems had strong vocabulary, allowed students to practice oral reading fluency, contained literal and figurative language, and lead students to envision. 

 

Students read the poems with their reading partner. They made jottings focused on empathy, envisioning, and predictions.

 

 

Students placed their jottings on the back of the poems so that I can use these jottings to conference with them next week.

Cooperative Grammar

Grammar, grammar...blah, blah, blah. This topic can sometimes be very dull to teach. Please don't let it be! If you think it is dull, the students will think it is dull.  Teach like a pirate and hook them with what they like! I teach grammar using songs, videos and read alouds. We make Tree Maps and play charades. We do non-examples. We go on grammar safari hunts. 



My students love to draw and they enjoy being social, so the students in my Block 1 Literacy worked in groups to design posters displaying a location that contained nouns, verbs, and adjectives. Each student chose a slip of paper. There was a letter on the slip that correlated to one of the places--S for school, H for home, B for beach, M for mall, F for farm, Z for zoo, R for restaurant. Students who picked the same letter were grouped together. Brief directions for the activity were posted on the Smart Board after I showed them an example.

 

This activity required minimum prep work.

 

The students were creative and it allowed me to assess if students could distinguish between these three parts of speech.

 

Now we can move on to Common Core Standard  L.3.1 and learn about plural nouns, abstract nouns, irregular verbs, and comparative/superlative adjectives.

Hooked on Art

I used the Picasso Hook from Teach Like a Pirate to activate my students' creativity during Reading Workshop. When they arrived at my Literacy Block, there were piles of yellow and black paper on their tables. They had glue and scissors in their supply buckets. I simply told them to create a bee. I did not give them patterns or examples. I made one too under the document camera so that my reluctant artists could have a model.

I had the students hang their bees on the cupboards to create a swarm. We talked about what a swarm of bees might sound like and then mimicked the sound. This led into my focus lesson on creating a buzz about books. Students learned how to share their ideas about what makes books so wonderful to read. We discussed how to recommend a book to other readers.

I think this hook was a success because the students worked efficiently and successfully. The most overheard comment was, "I can't believe we get to do art and it's not even Art class." This did make me sad. I know that I am so focused on the standards I need to cover and the student growth I need to show by May that I do need to remember they are only 8 years old and need to have fun. Teach Like a Pirate has helped me put fun back into my teaching!

Adjusting, Revisiting, Discussing

As I worked my way through my test prep unit, I noticed some common weaknesses among my students. While I was conferencing with them, they were not discussing characters in the same light that they had during our character unit in the Fall. They were also getting a little bit lazy with their descriptions of theme, morals, and central messages. Finally, some common assessment results showed me that they needed more exposure to comparing and contrasting between texts.

My reading teacher brain turned mathematical...an equation developed in my mind...

strong characters + strong themes + comparing/contrasting books by one author =

 

CHRIS VAN ALLSBURG

 

I created anchor chart #1 to review the character elements we have used throughout the year.

 

The Sweetest Fig by Chris Van Allsburg for minilesson #1

 

In the front of the book I wrote a large green sticky note with my metacognition stems. Throughout the book, I put green tabs at the spots where students would stop and jot using the stems. The large yellow sticky note lists common core ideas for talking and inferring about characters. Throughout the book I put yellow sticky notes with my jottings and questions that match the common core stems.

 

Student jotting with my conference note to add in evidence from the text.

 

Student jotting--plus you have to love companies like Harris Teeter and Renaissance Learning who donate sticky notes! 

 

Student jotting with my conference note to use synonyms instead of repeating thoughts. The student also added in text evidence.

 

I conferenced with several students about how to use shades of an adjective when describing characters. Their art teacher told me she was teaching the same thing with paints so we were able to use each other as examples in our lessons! I love a great coincidence!

 

We conferenced about citing evidence and using shades of an adjective. This is a reluctant writer who enjoys reading. I scripted his text evidence for him. It is a fine line to push him to write because sometimes it shuts him off to jotting altogether.

 

I asked this student why he drew extra boxes and he said he heard me conferencing about adding evidence so he added it in before he met with me!

 

adding evidence and reviewing synonyms

 

 

I found several theme anchor charts on Pinterest so I combined them and created anchor chart #2.

Just a Dream by Chris Van Allsburg for minilesson #2

 

In the front of the book I wrote a large green sticky note with synthesizing stems. Throughout the book, I put green tabs at the spots where students would stop and jot to show synthesis. The large yellow sticky note lists my common core ideas for developing and interpreting morals, lessons, and themes. Throughout the book I put yellow sticky notes with my jottings and questions that match the stems.

 

 

 

 

I used hot pink sticky notes to show my thinking that stretches between the two Van Allsburg books.

 

Student jottings and conference notes

 

 

During Independent Reading, this student found a copy of the book in our classroom library. He said, "this isn't my just right level, but can I please read it?" Of course!

 

 

The Wreck of the Zephyr--minilesson #3. I think it is important to make jottings about the cover of the book, not just the story inside.

 

 

In the front of the book I wrote a large green sticky note with inferencing stems. Throughout the book, I put green tabs at the spots where students would stop and jot to show their inferences. The large yellow sticky note lists my common core ideas for supporting thinking with evidence. Throughout the book I put yellow sticky notes with my jottings and questions that match the stems.

 

 

Once again the pink sticky notes show where I compare and contrast between the books. The orange flags note interesting vocabulary words.