Dr. Seuss Week

To celebrate one of history’s most influential children’s authors, we’ve been reading a Seuss story each day in class this week. Of course the kids love it, but it also offers so many teaching and learning opportunities too. Here are a couple of the things we did with Seuss week this year:

Story Elements-

Dr. Seuss books are the perfect tools for teaching key story elements like characterization, plot, rising action/climax/falling action, conflict, and the hardest one of them all- theme. All you need is a mini-lesson to review story elements and then you follow it with a Seuss read-aloud or even a youtube ebook, and BAM, they get it. With books like The Lorax and Star Bellied Sneetches, this stuff literally teaches itself. Below is a copy of the prezi I found on story elements along with the story map that I created to go along with The Lorax. I’ve also added the ebook that we used in class so you won’t have to go on a hunt for it.

 Seuss Story Map Worksheet

Figurative Language-

Everyone knows that Dr. Seuss is a master rhymer, but sometimes we miss the chance to show other figurative language techniques that he uses to our students. I had one of those ah-ha moments about 2 weeks after Dr. Seuss week last year and could have kicked myself for not seizing the moment. This year, I was ready though, so today we watched this killer video put out by the folks at flocabulary.com on figurative language and again, followed it up with a Seuss story to see what kinds of examples we could find. If you haven’t seen this already, it’s well worth the 3 minutes.

 

Kira-Kira Novel Study

One of the course books I chose this year was Kira-Kira, a realistic fiction novel by Cynthia Kadohata, written from a young girl’s perspective. The narrator of the story is Katie, the middle child of an immigrant family in rural Georgia in the 1950’s. The writing is beautifully simple and the author does an amazing job of allowing the reader to see the world through young eyes. From the moment we cracked the cover to the final page, the whole class (myself included) were hooked.

From a literary standpoint, the novel offers a lot of opportunity for discussion and analysis. It touches on all kinds of issues from racism to loss and is a good entry point for having difficult (but necessary) conversations. I loved it and can’t wait to teach it again to future students.

Aside from reading specific chapters in class as a group, I assigned partner read-alouds and reading homework so I wanted to make sure everyone was on the same page with comprehension, vocab, etc., so I created some online reading questions as chapters were assigned. Google Drive has definitely revolutionized the interaction I have with students. If you’re not using some of these amazing features, you are missing out my friends! Click here to see my short tutorial on creating these snazzy forms and check out the links below if you’re teaching this book and need reading questions… Any other good tween novel recommendations are always appreciated. Cheers!  

 

Chapters 1-3

Chapters 4-5

Chapters 6-7

Chapters 8-10

Chapters 11-12

Chapters 13-16

 

 

 

 

Online Book Reviews

Well, we made it through our final assessments, survived our last service learning fundraiser, and wowed parents at our Christmas concert… now it’s time for a break. Trust me, there were several times over the last couple of weeks where I didn’t think we’d get here, but I’m so happy to be on the other side of it.

Back when I was mentally preparing for how to keep my students busy over the break, I put together a reading competition through Google Drive and linked it to our class edmodo page to keep track of their progress and keep them motivated to read. I got a couple of prizes for the winner(s) and got the students pumped up before school let out. Winners will be announced when we return from break… Stay tuned.

If you’ve never used Google Drive, you should try it out. Google Drive is such a great tool for digitizing your classroom, AND it free! From creating surveys, sharing presentations and documents, to keeping your students accountable for their assignments, this allows you to do it all- and with ease. Here’s the online book review form that I made for my class.  

Here’s what I did:

1.      Log in to your Google account and select the Drive tab at the top of the menu bar.  

 

2.      Go to Create and you will see a drop-down menu with a few selections.

 

3.      Click on Form and this will take you to a form where you can add questions to fit your form.

 

4.      Upload the link to your form as an assignment on your edmodo page and it will automatically tally the forms for you as the students fill them in.

 

 

And there you have it, folks. Have a great vacation!

21st Century book reports

Now that week one is out of the way, we’re heading full-force into the school year and I’m pretty excited about what’s in store. As you may recall from my post on thematic teaching, we’ve started the year off with a simple, yet great book about Sadako Sasaki, a Japanese girl who died from Leukemia years after the bombing in Hiroshima. I wanted to review concepts like plot, setting, conflict/resolution and theme, but find written book reports to be, um, BORING. So Mr. J showed us this funky, free site where the kids can create their own videos, choose graphics and play around with animation all while presenting the information that they’ve written. The website is www.goanimate.com and the possibilities to incorporate it into teaching are infinite. Check out a couple of examples that came from my students this week:

 

Sadako and the thousand paper cranes by winnie4 on GoAnimate

Animation Software - Powered by GoAnimate.


 

sadako report by arthur2 on GoAnimate

Animation Software - Powered by GoAnimate.


Happy hump day everyone!!!