Tried it Thursday: "PEELS" Response

Linking up with the wonderful Holly from Fourth Grade Flipper for a Tried it Tuesday, Thursday style! A little late to the party, but with a great resource to share! With PARCC testing approaching in March, I've been looking for an easy way for my students to organize writing for their Performance Based Assessment. A co-worker suggested the super easy PEEL(S) model!

First, we glued this handout in our Reader's Notebooks. 
You can grab your own copy from Tracee Orman's TPT store - for FREE!

Then I modeled and went through the process with Maniac Magee. Our prompt was to choose one theme from Maniac Magee and support the theme with evidence from the text.

Here's my model: {Want a copy? Click the image to grab the PDF}

Then students got to work and started writing their own PEEL paragraph answering the same question about their book club novel.

Look at all this writing about reading! And evidence, evidence, evidence!

So, happy I tried this organization method. My goal is to do a quick flash drafts of short essays using PEEL each week until we take the PARCC. Students can choose to create the organizer before writing or they can go straight to the paragraph but I will be checking and monitoring all the PEELS parts during Reader's Workshop "Writing Days."

What have your tried to help students write about reading?

Tried it Tuesday: Learn2Earn.org Update!

I've done several posts about how much I'm absolutely loving Learn 2 Earn.Org {check them out here}. But, I thought an update and link-up with Holly over at Fourth Grade Flipper for Tried it Tuesday was needed! When I first blogged about Learn2Earn.org, we were just starting it out and going for it... so now after two months, I thought an update may be good for those of you on the fence!

Recap, Learn2Earn.Org is a new start-up company that tracks student reading. The aim of the website is to have students logging reading minutes online. They have a website at Learn2Earn.Org and even an Instagram {Learn2EarnOrg} account. They have a fundraising feature perfect for PTO readathons or schoolwide reading challenges so that students can get pledges for all their reading! Right now, our school isn't participating in a reading challenge but my teaching partner and I are loving all the other great things that are happening...

Some of my kiddos have made such a huge growth in their attitude toward reading logs and reading at home -- it is truly amazing! Plus, I don't have all that "paperwork" laying around and minutes to add up each week. Grading can be a little difficult since it's not alphabetical but that's really the only downside to this site! It's easy for the kids to do on an iPad or laptop. My students beg to post responses {a few are on a 13 - 15 day reading streak!} and get online so they can share a book with a friend or buy more stuff for their owls. Right now, titles like "Princess" and "Genius" are the trendy items to buy.

 Here's why I'm loving this site:
- Keeps track of students' books, minutes, and responses
- Created {and editable!} Common Core aligned questions
- Questions are engaging {Tweets, $500 Summary, Book told from an 80 year old character, etc.}
- Responses for fiction and nonfiction
- Averages the responses for you! {And you can set the date range!}
- SOCIAL {Students can comment, recommend, and "like" each other's books}
- Owlvatars!

Here's what I see as a teacher:

And just for fun... 

 

If you're considering joining Learn2Earn.org or want to set up your free Whoooo's Reading Class {Click here} and use my referral link.  The upgrade is $5 dollars a month for custom scoring, custom teacher avatar, side bar of response expectations, and new prompts each month! I'm definitely purchasing the upgrade after winter break because my class is loving this site - so worth $5 dollars a month!

Whooo's trying out other new websites?

Tried it Tuesday: This I Believe

I'm so happy that Tried it Tuesday is back up and running weekly! I love this linky and the wonderful Holly over at Fourth Grade Flipper. I get so many great ideas each Tuesday. 

For this week's Tried it Tuesday, I can't take credit for the fabulous idea and lesson but I just have to share because it turned out so well! My teaching partner Mrs.Wirtz over at Endeavors of Innovative Teaching took a poetry class this summer from the Ohio Writing Project. The ideas she has shared have been amazing. For this Tried it Tuesday, I'm sharing her idea for students to write a "This I Believe" poem.

The concept is simple. Students write a poem (or it could be an essay type piece) of things they believe. The idea is inspired by NPR's "This I Believe" segment. Before writing, I shared a short broadcast from NPR's "This I Believe" with my students. The segment I played featured kindergartener, Tarak McLain, sharing some of his beliefs. Tarak wrote 100 beliefs for his 100th day of school and shares 30 of his favorites on air. You can listen to the broadcast and view photos of Tarak here. My students were blown away by the ideas of a 6 year old! I then shared my version seen below and my teaching partner's version you can view here.

This I Believe 

I believe that we should tell the ones we love we care about them.
I believe that pets are a part of the family.
I believe that we should hold the door for others.
I believe that "please" and "thank you" are two of the most important words.
I believe that words are powerful.
I believe that my students can soar above my expectations.
I believe that mistakes lead to great discoveries.
I believe that you can never use too many exclamation points!!!
I believe that everyone has a special talent deep inside.
I believe that you should take pride in all that you do.
I believe that you should always put your best foot forward.
I believe that you can teach an old dog new tricks.
I believe that you never stop learning. 
I believe that fair is not always equal.
I believe in hard work and loving what you do! 


Then I challenged my students to create their own list of beliefs to turn into a poem. We wrote continuously for 10 - 15 minutes and then stopped to create our class poem. It gave me chills to hear some of the powerful things my 5th graders put into their poems. Everyone just read a single line as we went around the room without stopping. We had a few "silly" lines to laugh about but overall my students really did some deep thinking about themselves and what they believe.

Here are a few of my favorite lines from my students:

I believe one little act can change the world.

I believe everyone has some good inside.

I believe in Karma.

I believe that life isn't always fair.

I believe that we should respect and help others.

I believe we should be thankful for what we have.

I believe we can always make new friends.

I believe that friends come and go - and that's okay.

I believe in myself.

This activity took less than 20 minutes and was an easy nonthreatening way to launch poetry, writing, and a sense of community within the classroom. If you have a few spare minutes, share the broadcast with your students and listen to what they have to say. Sometimes the simplest statements have the most powerful impacts!

Hope everyone else had a great Tuesday!

Tried it Tuesday: Reading Hieroglypics

I know I posted about the hieroglyphics before - but this is a Tried it Tuesday update! Recap: The team across the hall does such a fantastic job of getting students to use their reading "hieroglyphics" to code a text. Students even use them in the content area classes! So, my teaching partners and I jumped on board this year as well! We all have the reading hieroglyphics posters displayed in our classroom and we're also taking a page from our neighboring team and will be rewarding students for use great note strategies in all classes!

Here's my poster:

You can grab it for free on Teachers Pay Teachers.

Today, we introduced the idea of our hieroglyphics. We used Diane from Fifth in the Middle's Close Reading April texts as our mentor texts for this activity. I started by reading "Jelly Beans" to the class and then did all my thinking out loud as I coded the text. Then students were given "Ship of Dreams?" to do some coding of their own.

I was pretty impressed with their coding and thinking for the second week of school!
Here's some student samples:

Bonus: They were even able to discuss parts of the article afterwards. This lesson was a success and I can't wait to watch my new 5th graders use their hieroglyphics throughout the year. Tomorrow, we're building on this idea by "talking back to the text."

Don't forget to check out all the other great August ideas over for Tried it Tuesday over at Fourth Grade Flipper! Thanks for hosting Holly!

Happy Tuesday!

Tried it Tuesday: Engineering Prints

Okay, it's better late then never to link up with Holly from Fourth Grade Flipper for her Tried it Tuesday linky. I love this link up and always get so many great ideas! Thanks Holly!

I'll admit, I know engineering prints aren't a new thing. I've seen them on Pinterest for a while now with numerous projects but I've never actually tried to "make" one. OMG, it is the easiest thing in the entire world! I needed to create several posters for my classroom and I just couldn't find what I was looking for and although, I have good handwriting, I didn't want to be handwriting out posters when I have a huge collection of font! Come on!

I created my posters in PowerPoint and then saved them as a PDF file which is needed for making an engineering print. You can either upload via the web or you can take your flash drive to Staples {or any other office store}. After making my creations, I headed over to Staples with my flash drive in hand!

The nice Staples lady did the rest! I had three posters printed and one for my teaching partner. The cost for {the smallest} 18 x 24 size was only $1.75 each! For under $8 dollars out the door I had four new posters! Engineering prints are amazing! The downside is they are only black and white but if you were feeling crafty you could color with markers or colored pencils before laminating. I opted to leave the completely black and white so they would not fade over time.

Here's the finished products:

My teaching partner's awesome poster!

Our school laminator was locked up. So I had them laminated at United Art & Education.

I'm pretty proud of my handiwork on this one! I had several people on Instagram express an interest in the Money Menu and Reading Heiroglyphics Poster. You can click the names or the images above and they are free from my Google Drive! An additional shout out to Graphics From the Pond for the amazing clipart, borders, and fonts! #I'mobessed!

Happy Tuesday!

Tried it Tuesday: The Lemonade War & Scholastic Summer Reading Challenge

I've been absent far too long. These past few months have flown by and I've been trying to tackle all my end of the year projects for both school and home. I've really neglected my blog and I'm going to try and be more diligent.

 With that being said, I have two Tried it Tuesdays to share with everyone today! Thanks again to the always fabulous Holly over at Fourth Grade Flipper for hosting and sharing! Even though I've been MIA, I always read and favorite the great ideas everyone shares.

 

My first share this week is for the book The Lemonade War by Jacqueline Davis. Although the book is a little too easy for many of my fifth graders, it does such a great job at teaching so many underlying concepts of economics! This is a must read if you teach economics in 4th or 5th grade! My students preferred the novel over a textbook any day! Plus, reading the novel, means Lemonade Day! This was my first year participating in "Lemonade Day" as dubbed by several coworkers who started this great project a few years back.

While reading, The Lemonade War, students created their own drinks for others to sample. They need to use some of the advertising techniques discussed in the book as well as in class. As as well create a drink, people would want to try! As fifth grade teachers, we also added in a portion of the project based on interdependence and globalization. Students had to state somewhere in their advertising why it'd be beneficial to trade with other states/countries/etc. in the creation of their drink. 

Requirements:
- Creative name
- Slogan for drink
- Advertising technique
- Statement about interdependence
- Price of drink

Here are some snapshots of our Lemonade Day:

Our Lemonade Day was a huge success! We have many young entrepreneurs and marketing execs. on our team. Hats off to a great book and fun end of the year "project."

Since we've read so many great books in class this year, I decided to try out the Scholastic Reading Challenge to keep my students motivated and reading over the summer. Thanks to my teaching partner for hearing about this easy to manage summer "reading log."

Scholastic allows you to enter your class roster into their reading website. Simply go the Scholastic Reading Challenge page and choose "Educator." Students will be assigned a user name and password. I just cut out the strips after printing but you could also give students the cute user name cards that Scholastic has on their website. Then students can go on each week and "log" their minutes read. We offered a prize to any students who reads 1,000 minutes over the summer.

Students can also see how their school's minutes compare to other areas of the country. There are also lots of great videos and facts centered around this year's theme of space.

The best part, you can check up on your readers! You log on like placing a book order and can see the minutes read by each student in your class. Super easy to check on their progress or verify their "winnings" next year. It's easy and very  motivating to several of my students. It's great too because I can see how many winners, I'll have before next school year to plan my "prizes" accordingly. If you're still in school, definitely share the challenge with your students.

What have you tried this week?

Tried it Tuesday: Scholastic Book Fair App

I've been absent for a while but I'm back with a Tried it Tuesday! Thanks once again for the wonderful Holly at Fourth Grade Flipper for hosting! If you follow me on Instagram I posted about this amazing app a few weeks ago... but I never actually got around to blogging about it! Plus, it's a great app to have in the classroom and to tell your students about!

Do you have the Scholastic Book Fair app? If not, you  need to download it! It's a free app that allows students to scan the cover OR barcode of a book to learn more about it. It pulls in reading levels, short summaries, videos, etc. about the book with one scan!

Here's the app:

Here's the menu of options:

Here's a screen shot of Matched after a cover scan:

This app was handy at book fair when students were trying to find their "Just Right" level. We scanned the books and {presto!} there was the information! Students were also able to create wishlists if they had their own device. This book would also be great at a book store, library, etc. It's a super fast way to check reading level and get a quick summary. Some books also have video reviews or trailers!  There were a few books that our reader didn't' find but overall I was really happy with the app and my 5th graders gave it a thumbs up!

Happy Scanning!

Tried it Tuesday: Science Studies Weekly

At least I'm getting around to blogging on Tuesdays. For this installment of Tried it Tuesday, I'm linking up once again with the fabulous Holly at Fourth Grade Flipper to share my take on Science Studies Weekly.

At our school we get a portion of our students' school fee money to spend on classroom supplies that take learning "above and beyond." Therefore, you can buy classroom magazines, bare books, or anything else that would be "consumable" that takes learning to another level. Each year, I always order classroom magazines. This year our science teaching partner convinced us to try Science Studies Weekly (there is also a Social Studies Weekly). These "newspapers" align to state science standards and feature various articles relating to each standard. There are 28 total editions - enough for "weekly" reading if you choose to use them! Click the link for a list of some possible fifth grade topics.

On our team, we've found that Science Weekly is a great way to incorporate some integration between Language Arts and Science. Students are learning science content while using nonfiction text features and strategies to help with their reading. There is also a quick quiz to accompany each week that my partner loves to use to check for comprehension and understanding of the material. The students really enjoy them and there is usually a crossword puzzle or brainteaser in each addition - who doesn't like the crossword?

As a teacher, I do like the exposure to science reading for my students. I tend to do a lot of Social Studies type readings for nonfiction since I'm the Language Arts & Social Studies teacher - so I like that my students can see me reading "science stuff." My teaching partner loved that the weeks came in three HUGE shipments so she could sort the issues by what's she was currently teaching. Thus, you don't have to read them in precise order.

My honest opinion? I'm not sure I'm as in LOVE with this text as my teaching partner, but it has really forced our students into reading nonfiction texts on a weekly basis. However, next year I think I'm going back to purchasing the magazine Super Science. Although, all the articles do not always align with her state science standards, the reading material is a little more "meaty" for the money!

If you're looking to incorporate more nonfiction, check out Studies Weekly. They have subscriptions available for K - 6th grade in Science, Social Studies, and Math. Just find your state to make sure your issues align with your content standards!

Do you subscribe to any publications? What are your favorites?

Tried it Wednesday: Totally Target!

I really had the best intentions to submit my blog entry yesterday but I was just so exhausted... I was really to pack an alliteration punch with the "Tried it Tuesday: Totally Target." Has a nice ring to it doesn't? But I guess I'll just have to make "Tried it Wednesday" work!

Okay, this week I'm once again sharing my "tried it" with Holly over at Fourth Grade Flipper for her Tried it Tuesday linky party! I'm excited to share my new couponing website called, "Totally Target." I as a teacher on a budget, I usually blow said budget at Target. I always have the best intentions but Target lures in me every time!

Oh so true...

My teaching partner recently shared with an amazing website called Totally Target. Thanks Mrs. K, you're best deal diva around! Totally Target takes each week's ad and breaks down the best ways to "get you  more red for less green." They show you the in store "specials," cartwheel deals, and any manufacturer coupons available for printing! The website shows you a cost breakdown so you can see what your "savings" will be with all the offers available.  Genius and economical! 

#PicStitch of Totally Target's Website 

For example, this week there was a deal at Target for Zone Perfect protein bars. My boyfriend loves protein bars for breakfast and usually they are over $1 a piece! Target had a buy 4 and get a $5 gift card plus the bars were on sale. Not a bad deal. However, after checking Totally Target's Special Deals, I realized there were coupons available through Facebook and Coupons.com. So I "liked" Zone Perfect on Facebook and they sent me a $3 off 2 coupon and I was able to print two $1 off 1 coupons from Coupon.com. Plus, I checked my cartwheel and found 25% off Zone Perfect Cartwheel offer! 

Here's my cart full of protein bars plus some Capri Suns for our class party! 

 

So here was my breakdown:
4 boxes of Zone Perfect bars for $4.79 each              = $19.16 (Yikes!)
Then I had $5 dollars in manufacturer coupons         = $14.16 (Not much better)
Then a $5 gift card for next time at Target                 = $9.16
Then 25% off my entire purchase                              = $4.41! (That's like getting a box for FREE!)

I walked away with 20 protein bars for $4.41... that's only .22 cents a bar! Originally those bars were nearly $1 a bar!!! I feel like I've lived up to my blog namesake tonight!

Grab the deal before it's gone!
Here's the link to the $1 off 1 Zone Perfect (can print two per computer).
Here's the link to $3 off 2 Zone Perfect VIP.

Let's hope for another steal next week! 

Don't forget to visit Holly and check out the Tried it Tuesday posts!

Thank you Totally Target!

Tried it Tuesday: Winter Olympics Close Reading

It's been too long blogging world! This is what happens when you miss over a week of school with snow days and then have holidays... I think we've went one full week the past two months! So, I'm finally getting my blog back on track and organizing my thoughts!

Today, I decided to come back and link up with Holly at Fourth Grade Flipper for Tried it Tuesday! I know, I've mentioned Close Reading before but I'm really starting to fall in love with the concept of a close read! My students are doing such a great job at looking for textual evidence and really thinking about their reading this year. I'm one proud teacher!

Since, I loved Ashleigh's (from Ashleigh's Educational Journey) Holidays Around the World Close Reading bundle, I thought I'd check out some of her other products. Her Winter Olympics Close Readings do no disappoint.

There are three levels of each passage that rank from about Q/R to W for guided reading levels. The topics range from general Olympics history, to Sochi Russia, to many sporting events at the Olympic Games. Although some of my fifth graders are reading at a high level than W, these passages are still wonderful for practicing different close reading skills. Plus, the content is "not too boring" according to the fifth grader consensus. We've already read about the four different types of Skiing last and we will continue on with Bobsledding this week. Even if it's not a winter Olympic year, these passages do a great job getting students to thoughtful go back and reread.

 

Highlights from the lessons:
- Clear and concise directions for each read
- Students learn how to annotate a text by taking notes in the margin
- Students engage in metacognition and as they record prior and new knowledge
- Students practice answering text dependent questions
- Students  learn technical vocabulary for each sporting event

These lessons are great preparation for another close reading my class will do for a Social Studies text about the civil rights movement this Friday! Click the handout for a close reading excerpt & questions .

 

What new reading strategies have you tried with your students? 
Do you use close reading in your classroom?