Sparking an Interest in Books!

I've been back at school for nearly three weeks! What?! I know I can't believe it myself! My new fifth graders are excited about and books but I noticed some bouncing around habits within the first few weeks of school already. So, today, I'm linking up the fabulous Joanne at Head Over Heels for Teaching to share some motivational tips for those indecisive readers!

After noticing so much flip-flopping over books, I knew I had to do something to get students IN TO books... They were so excited that they couldn't find a book and stick with it! I purposely wanted to see their habits so I didn't do a lot of recommendations and we don't start book clubs right away either. After thinking about how to get my students excited, I was struck with an idea... SCHOLASTIC BOOK FAIR VIDEOS! My students are always SO excited to see the new books coming out - so why not show it without the book fair? Luckily, our librarin saves previous year book fair DVDs but I also found the videos on You Tube and the current year is on Scholastic's website.

I showed the Spring 2014 knowing these books are current and able to found in a library or book store.... 

As we watched the Book Talks, my students jotted down books they might want to read or author's that sounded interesting to them so I could help them find those books!

I took a trip to Half Price after reading my interest surveys and then took the stack to school. I pointed out "new" books I'd be adding to our library. I had a line after class asking when the books would be "ready" since the students knew I needed to scan them into the library and label them. The interest and buzz spread throughout nearly the entire room. Some students even offered to share the book with a friend...

We're using the 40 Book Challenge again this year! This year, I'm also completing the challenge along with my students. I've hung up the books I'm reading and the genre so my students are are reading right along with me. Catherine from the The Brown Bag teacher has a great free 40 Book Challenge that I've used for several years. This year, I'm actually using Lauren from the The Sweet Thing's Just Read: Reading Management System. I loved that everything was EDITABLE {bonus} and that she had other handouts like a books I want to read list and other important reading resources along with with her challenge.

Building the community also helps students stay engaged with books! I know many students want to read books that their friends are reading or that I'm reading! I've really tried to do a lot of showing off my reading in these first 2 1/2 weeks... Students definitely learn to value what teachers value. So I'm trying to show a range of diversity in my own reading to get kids excited about all different books!

Here's a few snapshots from several of my reading emergencies this summer... 

Need to get out the house Starbucks emergency...

Early to yoga reading emergency... 

My reading wishlist after watching the Scholastic Book Fair video... Showed my planner and note to my students!

Students have also been showing off their reading to each other with my {free} Currently Reading Locker Tags! 

Don't forget to check out all the other amazing ideas over at Joanne's blog! Can't wait to see all the wonderful back to school motivational tips!

Happy Saturday,

Spark Student Motivation: Online Reading Logs!

I've been absentee blogger lately because I haven't felt that I've had much worth sharing as of late. But today, I'm excited to share a new website for logging reading! Thanks to Joanne from Head Over Heels for Teaching for hosting one of my favorite linkys, Spark Student Motivation Saturdays!
Joanne is amazing, she has so many great ideas for "big kids" -- so hop over and check out her blog!

Okay, back to the amazing reading find! My teaching partner, Chelsea, deserves all the credit for finding this gem as an ad on Facebook. The website is called Learn 2 Earn. The website was designed for reading fundraisers. Students are able to log on the the site and for FREE log minutes and books they've read. Then, they can gain sponsors for the minutes or books they've logged. However, after playing around with the site, my teaching partner and I discovered, it'd be great for our online reading logs! Teachers can create a class "tree" for free and easily set up student accounts. They even have a way to print out a class set of directions and user names and passwords for each student. We've been thinking about going digital because this year our paper version was a real struggle for many of our kids and not very motivating. We do have our 40 Book Challenge in place but that hasn't had the pull as it has in years past.


So, what's just so great about Learn 2 Earn ?... 

I think pictures are worth more than words. Here's some of the features like an "Owl-vatar", owl shop, and profile page that had my fifth graders begging to use the iPads during our "Friday freetime" at intervention.

Why is this great for teachers?

As a teacher, I can post questions for students to answer. You can choose from Common Core Aligned questions by grade or write your own.

When students can respond they show up in my digital turn in tray. You can navigate through the responses one by one or see them all in your "news feed."  I can score the responses online and provide feedback. Teachers can leave visible comments or leave comments just visible to the student who wrote the response. Students can also comment on each others' books to create a reading dialogue outside of class (WHAT?!). Think of this like a safe Facebook Page all about books!

We just launched this Friday and when I woke up today, I had over 40 responses to review and score. Now, many students did not do a stellar job with answering some of the responses completely - but with the invisible comment tool, I was ale to leave them messages to fix their work so it could be re-scored. My biggest take away was that my students were excited about reading and recommending books to each other -- that is priceless! We can work on extended responses from there!

Need a Freebie?! Here's a copy of our directions/requirements (pdf version and word version) for our students if you're interesting in starting your own Learn 2 Earn.org Whooos Reading Class Tree! 

What gets your students motivated to read more?

Spark Student Motivation: Book "Previews"

For the second week in a row, I'm late to the party, but I'm here nonetheless! I'm once again linking up with the fabulous Joanne at Head Over Heels for Teaching for her Spark Student Motivation Saturday! This week, I'm sharing how we get our students excited about reading in our Character Book Clubs.

A little book club background:

Our book clubs are essentially students reading books by level independently and then getting together on Fridays to discuss them like a real "book club." This offers our students some choice in reading but also allows the teacher to keep track of only 10 - 12 different novels. We are currently starting our character unit. Our class mentor text is Rules. Each day we read aloud part of Rules and model a reading lesson or strategy. Students then have time to read their book club novel and perform the same task with their novels. For our faster readers, once they read two novels they can read their own books or they can continue going through our book club list. This is an additional motivator for students wanting complete freedom in independent reading.

To get our students excited before reading, we start with book previews! Who doesn't love watching the previews before a movie? It's normal to love the previews! To get my students excited, I go online and try to find book trailers or mini-movies from You Tube or Scholastic about the books. We then take the time to go over each book choice. We read the level, blurb, and then watch the trailer. Students then rank each book as a book they'd want to read or a book they'd pass on. My teaching partner and I have found that this method of showing the "previews" really gets our students excited about books and reading!

Here's a few previews from our character unit:

 

Here's the letter & book "blurbs" we send home with students and parents:

You can get a PDF version here or an editable Word version here.
This is only the first page, book choices go through the letter W.

We passed our book club novels last week and I'm sure come Monday, I'll already have students finished. I've found it's worth the time to "show" students "good books" and authors. This helps motivate even some of our non-readers. Students are also allowed to count all book club novels for their 40 Book Challenge {We are using The Brown Bag Teacher's Reading Log for our challenge} since they are read independently. For many students, this is an additional motivating factor in reading through the list or reading at least two novels.

How do you motivate students to read in your classroom?

Spark Student Motivation: Class Symphony Poems

Okay, I'm a day late to the party but I was enjoying two friends' wedding on Saturday proper. So, tonight, now that I'm home and laundry is in for tomorrow, I figured I'd link up Joanne at Head Over Hells for Teaching for my first Spark Student Motivation of this school year!

Today, I'm sharing a writing idea to get the creative juices flowing in the classroom! My teaching partner, once again, had a fabulous writing activity from her summer classes with the Ohio Writing Project. One idea was to encourage writing through a class symphony poem.

In class, we're been reading Love that Dog by Sharon Creech. In the novel,  Jack, the main character is very reluctant to write poetry and claims that "only girls do it." Throughout the book, Jack beings lifting lines from famous poets he loves to start to tell his story through various poems. I connected the book to our class poem by having students lift lines they love from favorite songs. We talk about how lines we love can have a deeper meaning to our lives or just make us feel good. Students each took a sentence strip and added their favorite lines to a strip. Then I had a few helpers, help me arrange our lines into a poem. I know a fellow colleague had students working in partners to choose lines that could "fit" together to help write her class poem.

I hung up our entire poem outside our classroom door. We wrapped up Love that Dog last week. I know some of my new poetry lessons helped foster a sense of writing and creativity as one of my most honest students left on Friday telling me, "Now I love poetry. I just want to write it all the time. I even spent some time at recess writing a poem! I'm going to write them all year!"

#FillsMyTeacherHeart

Here's our final poems:

 

What are you doing to motivate writing in your class rooms?

Spark Student Motivation: Double Stuff Your Paragraphs!

Today I'm linking up once again with Joanne at Head Over Heels for Teaching for her Spark Student Motivation Saturdays. Want your reluctant writers to give you a well written paragraph? Offer them a sweet treat for "double stuffing" their paragraphs! Currently, we're getting ready to start drafting our research based argumentative essays. These are a persuasive essay but students must also collect research which helps with their claim and any counterclaims. I've found that fifth graders love to argue but not all of them love writing!

First I spark their motivation with the topics! I absolutely love giving my kids choice... however, since every student needs to read about both the claim and counterclaim - they really need a good text set to rely on. So, for this piece, my teaching partner and I gathered all the research. But we tried to choose topics our students care about!

Here are a few of the choices we came up with...

• Should we have school uniforms?
• Should junk food and soda be sold in schools?
• Should e-readers replace textbooks?
• Should people be allowed to own exotic pets?
• Should cell phones be banned in schools?

Students spent time reading their text sets and researching their topics. Last week, we ended by writing our claims and making a chart of both sides of our arguments. The students did a great job with this activity and really wrote some strong thesis statements. So this week... we get to start double stuffing our paragraphs!

Last year, I found some great resources online for using the OREO model for writing persuasive pieces. OREO stands for Opinion, Reasons, Examples/Explain, and Opinion restarted. We're changed ours to Opinion, Research, Examples, and Opinion restarted. This gets the students to write  really hearty paragraphs full of research and examples to help support their claim or argue against the counter claims.

Here's the graphic organizer we'll be using: 
(You can find many versions for free on TPT. This one is from The Lesson Plan Diva)

 

Then we'll be using Michelle Tomaszewski's Persausive OREO Writing Bundle! She has some excellent graphic organizers as well plus... the real selling point was all her awesome handouts on persuasive writing terms. My teaching partner and I copied those and laminated them on colored card stock to have at each table. Here's a sample:

Once students use some of the persuasive words and are able to provide a DOUBLE STUFFED paragraph filled with research and examples... then they can have an actual Double Stuffed Oreo! Yum! Last year, even my reluctant writers wrote well researched paragraphs all for three Oreo cookies! Oh, the power of a cookie!

  

How do you motivate your reluctant writers?

Spark Student Movitation: Gifts of Writing!

I'm finally on winter break! My body clock didn't quite realize that this morning but I'm finally done with all my x-mas shopping and it felt great just to relax! Whew, this break was much needed! So, in the spirit of relaxing and getting caught up, I'm going to try and get back into blogging by linking up Joanne from Head Over Heels for Teaching for her Spark Student Motivation Saturdays!

This week we were finishing up our "gifts" of writing. This idea was created by a coworker of mine several years ago. The week or weeks (if you have the time) before break students begin working on a gift of writing for someone they care about. Students can choose a family member, friend, teacher, etc. Instead of going out and buying another gift, students are encouraged to give them the gift of writing.

Students have created scrapbooks, poetry collections, framed letters, calendars, etc. We always have some very creative students that do such a great job with their special "gifts." This project is very motivating because it offers students lots of choice.  They can choose the style, medium (paper, coffee mug, photo collage), and person to write about. It also allows students who normally loathe writing a chance to write about anyone, anything, for any length. They especially enjoy "wrapping" their gifts or getting the covers laminated. My only requirement is that the gift be thoughtful since it is a gift they are giving to someone else.

To get started students use this graphic organizer to generate ideas:

You can get a copy for free from my Teachers Pay Teachers store - just click the image above. Unfortunately, I was so busy hole punching calendars and helping to "edit" the work of my students that I forgot to take photos of the final products! I'll have to add a memo in my planner to remind myself to take photos next year! If only Santa could loan me some elves to help out around the classroom! 

From me and my fur babies.... 

We hope everyone has a great break and gets some special goodies from Santa!

Spark Student Motivation: 30 Book Challenge

It's Saturday, which means I'm focused on helping keep my students motivated! Today, I'm linking up with Joanne from Head Over Heels for Teaching to share how I keep my students reading between book clubs. Reading during book clubs isn't really a choice in my room. We get excited about the genre and the authors and then students need to read at least two books from my picks before they are "done" and able to move on. But of course, they are always welcome to read more...

But what happens after students "finish" a book club study? That's where the 30 Book Challenge comes into play! I was inspired by a Pin I saw on a Pinterest from Runde's Room's Teachers Pay Teachers store. I thought, This looks like something my fifth graders would LOVE... so, why not give it a try! My fifth graders love a good competition, only (shhhh!) this competition is with themselves. I found this great recording sheet online Google Docs. Click the image to get you copy!

Students each get a set of the "rules" at the beginning of the year for the challenge. All books read during our class read aloud do not count. These should be books students are reading independently. We put our chart in our data sections of our binders and then it's teacher hands off. The rest is up to the students. There is a special reward at the end of the year for those that complete my challenge! Last year our prize pack include a free personal LaRosa's pizza, Culver's ice cream, a popsicle during class, bonus raffle tickets for our end of the year raffle, and  personalized bookmarks. I was able to get all the certificates donated through student reward programs by various restaurants so the prizes cost me ZERO dollars, except for the freeze pops ;)

This challenge really seems to motivate many students to keep reading even when they have "finished" our in class reading work. It also gets my "fiction junkies" into some nonfiction information texts and biographies. Plus, there are still 8 free choice squares... Who doesn't want some choice?

Our school also has a huge annual fundraising and reading competition each year. It's kick off is a video of principals, teachers, and other students reading and getting excited ABOUT reading! This year even author Cynthia Lord even joined our video! We just wrapped up this year's Recording Breaking Reading Challenge. Our goal as a school was to read 1,000,000 minutes! Students could use any books finished during our school wide campaign for my 30 Book Challenge!  The week end in a victory cheer as we exceeded our goal of hitting 1,000,000 minutes! That means teachers and principals will be racing in front of students next Friday for the ultimate bragging rights!

The best part, most of the work is hands off from my end - students only need to record evidence they read by stopping and jotting about the books on their weekly reading log and recording the books in the "Books I Read in 5th Grade Chart" in the data sections of their binders for books to count. You can grab my In School and Out of School Reading Log for free by clicking the image below. 

How to do you keep reading motivation alive?

Spark Student Motivation: Great State Race

This week I'm working on motivating my students to learn more about the regions of the United States! So, of course, I had to link up with Joanne from Head Over for Heels for Teaching for her Spark Student Motivation Saturdays and with Diane from Fifth in the Middle with some of my team's motivating geography techniques.

This week in Social Studies, I launched our next big study on the Regions of the United States. Our first stop is a train tour of the Northeast. This aligns with our text, Social Studies Alive! But we are not using the text's notes but instead are creating our own "interactive" suitcases for this unit. Students will be filling their suitcase with notes, maps, Kodak moments, and more as we travel throughout the Northeast. *The handouts are courtesy of Erin at I'm Lovin' Lit's editable pages in her Interactive Reading Literature Notebooks. I just modified them to work with our Social Studies text!

Here's my sample:

 

I do realize the Muse song title is wrong. It has since been corrected. The theme song for our Boston trip is Muse "Uprising."

Then, to get our students even more excited about our cross country trip, we also introduced our Great State Race Project this week. Each homeroom is asked to collect postcards from each of the 50 states. The first homeroom to collect a postcard from each state wins a special victory celebration! The students really get into competitive mode here and love seeking out the postcards. This project allows all students to get involved on some level and provides leadership opportunities to students who really want to track down those "remaining" postcards.

We hang a big USA map in the hallway and connect the postcards to the states. It's a BIG deal. Plus, they can also track each homerooms progress. 

Here's the letter I send home with my students. Click the image to download it from Dropbox.

The rules for the race are as follows:
- The postcard must be mailed from the state to count
- The postcard must contain one Social Studies fact about the state
- You may get multiple post cards from the same relative as long as the postcard is mailed from the state (example: Your grandparents go on vacation and mail you postcards from each state they visit)
- You can mail a postcard to yourself
- You can use any means necessary email, letters, phone calls, etc. to get postcards

Don't forget to check out all the great Student Motivation ideas on Head Over Heels for Teaching plus all the other Geography ideas at Fifth in the Middle!

Sparking Grammar Success!

I've always been frustrated by how to teach grammar! I tried the "DOL" type approach but I never it saw it transfer over into student writing. Then I tried short mini-lessons based on the type of writing we were doing in class. Those worked but students seemed to forget by the next piece some of the ideas of the lesson... then grammar seemed to fall by the wayside in my room for a while and I focused on ideas, craft, organization, and everything but mechanics. But that also drove me crazy! I wanted my students' writing to look intelligent! What's a teacher to do???

Then, I was introduced to Jeff Anderson's school of thought! Light-bulb moment! Have students take ownership and notice things about "good" writing. Stop showing them mistakes and bad grammar! Start showing students all the things great authors do well and have them intimate those "tricks" in their own writing. It's how we teach author's craft in workshop - why not grammar too! I owe a huge thank you to my colleague Amy who got me on the Jeff Anderson grammar bandwagon! After talking to her about her grammar units and discussing it with my teaching partner we decided to try out Ideas by Jivey's Mentor Sentence starter pack this year to ease our students into the process. My teaching partner and I are in love! We recently purchased the third set of sentences to continue the process!

Here's my spark....Let students take ownership!

• Students do all the noticing. They are the experts. I fill in with some reminders or names of things like "Oh, great you noticed the adverbs" but otherwise... it's all on them to notice the great things author's do.

• Students name the grammar rule. We don't use the "fancy names." What fifth grader remembers that anyway. We make it a contest and vote on the best name(s). The best ones go up on the wall as a header above the sentence. My only rule is that the should help us remember the rule in some way!

• Students compete to have their group's sentence featured on our Wall of Fame. Each week the table with the best sentence gets to be featured on the Wall of Fame. The first week, if they performed the rule correctly they went up. Now, it's a competition and I was blown away! They must also use at least 2 other types of author's craft int their sentences as well... not just the "rule" we are learning about.

Here's our Grammar Rocks Wall of Fame in a nutshell... 

This past week... I chose the best sentence from each class to be posted on the Grammar Wall of Fame! The sentences were amazing since they students knew that only one would be selected and posted! They rocked those hyphens! Sadly, our laminator was down and I didn't think to  bring my strips home... so I don't have a picture of this week's work. One winning sentence was about a super-creepy werewolf... perfect for this time of year, right?

Don't forget to link up with Joanne from Head over Heels for Teaching and share how you spark motivation in you classroom! Have a great Saturday!