Historical Fiction Book Club {Freebies!}

Getting ready to start my historical fiction book clubs! I love getting students outside their comfort zone. Many students don't think they like historical fiction until they get some great books in their hands!

If you're thinking of starting your own book clubs, here are a few things that can help you get started on your own book club adventure! My teaching partner and I think that the "prep" is key. For this book club, we're focusing on the Civil Rights Movement. Since this time period deals with lots of tension, we send a letter home to the parents to let them know about what will be going on in our classroom and book clubs. We've also done a lot of work making this unit relevant to our students. We look for books that are current, well-written, and engaging!

If you're wanting to start book clubs, here's a peek at my Historical Fiction Unit.

{Click the image to snag a free copy}

During the first week of book club, we really try and focus on the time period. Getting students to become aware of the setting and the important events that took place during their time period. We keep track using different handouts and activities so that we can refer back to these as often as needed! 

How do you start a new reading unit?

Favorite Civil Rights Reads!

Since February is Black History Month, I thought this would a great time to link up with the lovely ladies at the Teaching Trio to share my three favorite Civil Rights picture books for their Favorite Things Linky!

In 5th grade, we have an entire integrated unit about the Civil Rights Movement. We read tons and tons of primary sources. We watch videos, we learn about the history, we make timelines. Its truly one of the best units we teach all year. However, one of my favorite ways to "teach" this time period is through amazing picture books. You can see more of my favorite books by checking out my past post on Historical Fiction & my Civil Rights feed!

Here are my three favorites:

Freedom on the Menu
This picture book is great for teaching the idea of injustice. Told through the eyes of a little girl who wants a banana split at the lunch counter this book resonates with my 5th graders. The book is extremely well written and has great "stop and jot" moments. This book is also a great companion to primary sources about the Greensboro Sit-ins. {Click each book cover to see more on Amazon!}

Freedom Summer
 This book focuses on two best friends that try and go swimming together at the public pool, only to find out the pool is only open to whites. The writing is impeccable. For fifth graders, this book is perfect for meeting our multimedia standard in Language Arts. Have students read the entire story typed up without pictures first. Then, reread the story together with the pictures! The pictures definitely add to the tone, beauty, and understanding of the text. I'm so glad a fellow colleague thought up this great lesson!

A Taste of Colored Water
I love this book because it's written from a completely different perceptive. Instead of being through the eyes of an African American child, this story is told through two rural boys that have no concept of segregation. Lots of inferencing and imagination are at work in this story! The boys venture into the city with their uncle lured by the taste of "colored" or rainbow flavored water. My students love the humor but always see the bigger message of this text. It also pairs extremely well with the picture book White Water.

I use all of these books to teach about different historical perspectives and events. I also use them as our models before we start writing our own historical fiction. If you're celebrating Black History Month and need some great reads definitely start with my three fravorites!

What are some of your favorite February picture books?

Hump Day Highlight: Freedom on the Menu

Happy Wednesday! Since it's hummmmmp day, I thought I'd link up with Mrs. Standford's Class for my first Hump Day Highlight!

With Martin Luther King Jr. Day on Monday, I knew I needed to start gearing up for our Civil Rights Movement unit and Black History Month. Plus, I'm currently reading Maniac Magee to my class which describes segregation and discrimination although no time period is ever mentioned. I knew, I needed a resource to help pull in some of my favorite Civil Rights picture books.

One of my favorite's is Freedom on the Menu by Carole Boston Weatherford. I've been using interactive notebooks this year so I created a FREEBIE that includes interactive notebook pages or a lapbook version that aligns to the book {and of course Common Core standards}. I'll make sure to take some snapshots once my students complete their notebook pages!

Here's a preview:{Click the images for a direct link to download!}

Here's some of the 5th Grade standards covered:

If you download, please leave some feedback for this freebie! Happy Wednesday! 

How are you preparing for MLK Day and/or Black History Month?

Peek at my Week: Historical Fiction Reading & Canada!

Only one more week until Spring Break! 

Since break is rapidly approaching, we're going to be doing some wrapping up this week! We're ending our integrated (reading and social studies) Civil Rights unit this week. Our students having been reading historical fiction novels as well as studying the history of the Civil Rights movement. This week, we're moving on to historical fiction writing now that they're a wealth of knowledge on the time period.

Here's a few books that I'm going to use as mentor texts for our writing unit:

Titles include:

Freedom on the Menu, White Water, A Sweet Smell of Roses. 

A Taste of Colored Water and Freedom Summe.r

For social studies, we're moving into Canada! This is a new unit for our fifth teachers, so we've planned some fun activities and lessons that will helpfully teach our students some new information about our northern neighbors. As with all my units this year, I'm starting out with a word wall. I've added a copy to my drop box so feel free to grab a copy if you want some Canadian vocabulary! After the word wall we're going to be working on some maps of Canada and go on a Canada scavenger hunt this week...

 Don't forget to check out the other posts at Mrs. Laughin's Laughings linky Peek at My Week! I always get such great ideas from other great teachers' weekly "peeks."

What's your week look like??

Must Read Mentor Text: A Sweet Smell of Roses

We're in the  middle of our integrated civil rights unit. Everything we're doing in Language Arts & Social Studies revolves around this time period. Thus, we're learning the history, reading historical fiction, and writing historical fiction. I absolutely love our books in this unit! We have some fantastic mentor texts that we use for this unit. So I had to link up with Amanda & Stacia to share a Must Read Mentor Text that I used to teach historical fiction writing!

One of my favorites for teaching historical fiction writing is A Sweet Smell of Roses by Angela Johnson. 

 

 The book centers around two sisters who sneak out early one morning to join up with a march. The book hints at the roles of children during the civil rights movement. It's written in more verse than prose and has beautiful illustrations. This is a book to use a model for historical fiction writing. There is great word choice and a clear story arch. There is also tons of author's craft. The entire book focus on the "sweet smell of roses" as a metaphor for the victories of the civil rights protests. Last year, I used this book to teach mood, implied setting, and metaphors/symbolism. It's a short read that packs a punch! 

 

Here's two pieces of historical fiction from my students last year...using imagery, symbolism, or metaphor in their writings. Our final product was a children's book about the civil rights movement.

  This one uses "red, white, and blue" imagery.

This piece has a dove flying off into the sun at the end! Pretty good symbolism for one of my struggling writers!

Can't wait to check out everyone's fabulous Language Arts mentor texts this week! Don't forget to link up with the gals at Collaboration Cuties with your favorite mentor texts!

Five for Friday: Historical Fiction, here we come!

Perhaps, one of the best joys of Friday is being able to sit down at the computer for a minutes to blog about the week. It's really the little things in life that get me by! Plus, right now my student teacher is rocking it and teaching all day long... so I've got lots of time to think about new blog posts! Let's hope the creativity starts flowing!

Until then... I thought I'd start simple by linking up with Doodle Bugs Teaching for the always inspiring Five for Friday!

Sent my student teacher home with one of my favorite "teacher" resources for our Civil Rights unit! If you have to teach the Civil Rights or just want to brush up on your own knowledge then you definitely need to check out Belinda Rochelle's Witness to Freedom -- this book is such a great read! I actually copied a few articles out of the book last year for my students as well. Plus, all the stories and biographies focus on how kids were able to participate in the movement. It's an easy read with lots of great information and background.

New book club books were passed out this week! We're starting our historical fiction reading unit next week. Students had an opportunity to pick their three favorites before I created groups. We offered 11 different choices at a variety of levels. Some students already started to dig into their books today. Love watching them devour books! Here's a few of my piles (minus an additional crate)... I think I'll have enough copies this year!

Speaking of Civil Rights... we're getting into the history of the Civil Rights movement this week! Front load, front load, front load. We've been reading nonfiction and watching videos so we're ready to read our historical fiction novel! We've done quite a bit of vocabulary work as well. On Monday, we're taking all of our new vocabulary and posting it to our classroom word wall! I have the headers and blank paper ready to go. Definitely worth the time to display throughout our unit.

  

Want a copy of the words? Grab a copy of our Civil Rights word wall handout from my Drop Box. 

I might have a bag problem... I love my Scout teaching bag! It's fantastic but I was looking for something a little wider to hold a few more items or maybe to use as a pool bag. I'm not really sure - you don't need a use to buy everything, right? Since my teaching partner has started selling Initials, Inc. I ordered the Big Grip tote. Let's hope it's super cute with my free personalization!

 

 Favorite moment of the week: Two of my girls sitting side by side in the computer lab during our essay publishing session. One student finished early so she was helping "edit" and look over her friend's final copy! Love building a community of writers.

What was your favorite moment of the week?

Workshop Wednesday: Integrated Workshop Set-Up

Today, I'm linking up for my first Workshop Wednesday with Ideas by Jivey! I've been working on this post for quite while and it fits perfectly with this linky party! Thanks Jivey! Since it's the month of July, the focus of this linky is on how you prepare for Workshops. Our school has been slowly transitioning all the grade levels into reading and writing workshops. As a fifth grade teacher, we were one of the last grades to be transitioned. It's been an amazing three years and the workshop model has completely transformed my way of thinking and preparing!

When our district started with the Reading and Writing Project, all the intermediate teachers were given a set of Lucy Calkins' Units of Study Grades 3-5... Yet, I find Lucy a little verbose and as a fifth grade teacher I kept finding that earlier teachers had done nearly all the lessons presented in the books. The first year there was a chorus of... We read that! We've done this! I wrote about this before!... My worst nightmare! Then, I found these gems!... My holy books of reading and writing workshops....

 You can preview the Reading Workshop and Writing Workshop online books at Heinemann Publishing.*It appears they are no longer in publication but I found them for FREE on Plymouth Public Schools Literary Connection. Click here.

Lucy paired it down for these online grade level versions and gave teachers just the "teaching points" without all the theory. Thank you Lucy! These are great! She has created an entire year of lessons and plans for grades K-8! They are only $10 online for the digital copies! They are worth every single penny! Plus, there are no "repeats" from previous years! Luckily, our school calendar aligns almost perfectly to Lucy's books - so I can dig in right away and get started with my workshops (after the first 15-20 days of setting it up).

After consulting "Lucy",  I start hitting up the primary sources & trade books that can help supplement or enrich a lesson. Our historical fiction unit was new this year so I had lots of reading to do about the Civil Rights movement! Luckily, I was working with a fantastic group of teachers and curriculum leaders - we were all able to find such great resources!

Here are a few of my personal favorites:

From there I start creating my own simplified plans that use Lucy's books as a reference. This past year, I was really trying to integrate reading and writing workshop into social studies as much as possible. Here is an example unit plan for Reading Workshop & Civil Rights. This was not just my plan... My fantastic teacher partner and collaboration group all had a hand in writing up this great unit! We also created an aligned Writing Workshop unit plan that had students writing historical fiction about the Civil Rights movement! Then, another fantastic colleague of mine drafted a letter to be sent home to parents, explaining the purpose of unit. If you want my version of the letter with level book club books you can download it here. My teaching partner and I worked really hard this year to create letters for each reading workshop unit. We wanted parents to know what we would be studying, what students would be reading, and the big "teaching points" of each unit.

After all this prep.... read Lucy Calkins, find books, find more books, find fiction & nonfiction books, read novels, create a unit outline, write a letter to parents.... the fun can begin! Here are some "Social Studies" stations my classes worked on after all our history / nonfiction reading front-loading during workshop.

 Students were also able to "tweet" about famous quotes and their overall impression of the Civil Rights movement. Wish I would have taken a picture of my second class - they really #hashtagged it up and had some fantastic insights and reflections! This was a great spring board for discussing our  book club novels later in the unit! 

That's my Reading & Writing Workshops in a nutshell. Do you have a plan you like to follow or a go to reference for lesson ideas?