Mock Newbery Write Around

It feels like it's been ages since I've sat down and blogged. Truthfully, I'm a little sad because I absolutely love the time I spend blogging. I have a few new Read This & Then Read That posts planned out and hope to complete a few more Mock Newbery related posts as well. So, check back in soon!

Today, I thought I'd share a little about how Mock Newbery is going so far in my classroom and share a few resources that were really helpful to me and my students!

Since we only had 30 minutes for our first meeting, we tried to keep it simple. We read The Last Stop on Market Street and then discussed how that text was distinguished. This launched us into creating an anchor chart of what we can notice about a text and how different stories can be distinguished.

These notes were taken inside manila folders next to their calendar of dates and some "teacher" reminders. To see our notes you can check out our handout {here}.

For our second meeting, we reviewed what it meant to be distinguished and then set kids off to talk about distinguished elements they've been noticing in their books. Last year, we had created a poster for each Mock Newbery Book. This year with more titles and a group of about 42 students, that just was not feasible. We focused our posters on story elements this year and students choose books that they felt had excelled in those areas.

Here are our results:

If you would like a copy for your classroom, you can grab the Editable PowerPoint version {here} or the Non-editable PDF version {here}. Looking back, if I had to create these again, I'd use Last Stop on Market Street as that was a previous winner and a touchstone for all my book club students. However, in the moment, I used Wish by Barbara O'Connor because it is our current read aloud and a book all students are very familiar with.

Hope everyone else is enjoying these great books of 2017! 
Look for a new Read This & Then That post soon!