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?

Five for Friday: October? What?!

It's FRIIIIIDAY! This week was actually a very smooth week. Plus, I was able to get out of work at 3:30 on a Friday! Thank goodness for planning ahead and using the copy "mom" volunteers! I feel like I'm finally getting into the flow of this year and these kiddos. It's only taken two months...That's not too bad right? #dontanswer  Now that my hamster wheel is slowing down, I figured I'd link up for a Five for Friday with a recap of my week!

 I'm so excited for October and fall weather! Fall means... sweaters, pumpkin spice lattes, leggings, boots, and, of course, football! I need to get one of these T-shirts ASAP!

We've been using Flocabulary in class! I can't say enough great things about the website. I'm just using a free trail right now and I'm maximizing my usage. This week, we watched a great video, "Hay Nativos" to introduce the Maya, Inca, and Aztecs! Love short informational (and catchy) Social Studies videos!

In Reader's Workshop, students are flying through our book club choices. I love when my students devour books. Because of Mr. Terupt has inspired so many of my reluctant readers! Hoot has been another popular addition. On Fridays we allow the students to meet in clubs to discuss their novels, usually in a fun way. Today, we used Presto Plan's "Fakebook" activity in our clubs. The lesson was an absolute success! Our students were engaged and excited and applied so many higher level thinking skills... plus, there were so many creative hashtags my cheeks hurt by the end of class! #fifthgradehumoristhebest

During intervention, we've been really focusing on great reading strategies. We've been using the note card summary strategy and just this week we stepped up our summary writing. We used our Scholastic News magazines to prewrite and then compose a well written summary. To get started we used resources from Catherine Reed's Main Idea in a Bag the day before. Students did a fabulous job at transferring skills from her activity to a full length article!

This week has been filled with meetings and with conferences approaching, I need to a quick cheat sheet to bring to meetings and leave with parents. I have class data for me but parents always love to leave with an update on their student. So, I came up with a quick data sheet based on a an old sheet I used several years ago... You can snag a copy of my Student Data Tracker on my Google Drive and edit it to fit your needs!

Happy Friday!

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?

Workshop Wednesday: Organizing it All!

Glad to be back into the blogging swing of things. I'm even more excited to share some of my workshop organization today thanks to Jivey's Workshop Wednesday linky! Such a great place to find Reading, Writing, and Math Workshop ideas.

We are still in our launching phrase of Reading and Writing Workshop. We're using poetry to launch our workshop and interactive notebooks. Last year, we had some issues on our team with students losing or missing supplies... so I knew storing notebooks had to be built into my workshop routine.

First, I used some "pinspiration" to create my interactive notebooks storage area. Here is a peek into one table's organizational set-up.

Each table has one double-decker crate. The crates are stackable milkcrates. Inside are magazine holders from the Target One Spot last spring. 

First "floor" is my morning class's Readers' and Writers' notebooks. Each magazine holder has a label so that students can easily grab and pass out the notebooks that are needed.

All supplies students need for Reading or Writing Workshop are also at the table in each caddy.

To organize book club choices and keep students moving through books in Reader's Workshop, I've labeled small stacking baskets from Target for book club novels. I'm hoping that having three baskets and sorting books by level will encourage "Just Right" choices.

 These hot pink baskets were a cartwheel and very sturdy for around $2.99! 

 For Writing Workshop, I stuck with one central writing area for my students. Students have access to colored pens, a pencil sharpener, editing wheels, self-revision guides (editing and revision posters shrunk down to create mini-books), grammar handouts, and whole class journals! This area is perfect for students who finish early or need to move to the next step in workshop!

This is the "Writing Depot"

  

Writing posters on the next cabinet for studnets that need "Fix-Up" Strategies.

  These include my ARMS and CUPS posters.

I don't have a lot of station supplies. All my extra "stuff" for Workshop is housed under the counter in some three drawer carts from Target. Those are for teachers only, however.

What organizational strategies do you use to keep your students on track?