One of our 6th grade standards requires students to explain how a story’s plot unfolds and reaches a resolution. We have been working on explaining how an author uses indirect characterization to reveal a character’s personality. This week we revisited plot, and students had to retell the main events in Bud, Not Buddy and explain the plot in their own way. Finally, students had to reflect on their project and choose a theme to represent the text; they had to also make sure they could find textual evidence to support their theme.
We started reading Ray Bradbury’s story “All Summer in a Day” last week, and I decided to record myself reading the book aloud. I actually read this story with my 7th graders three years ago, but I decided to have my 6th graders read it this year.
We just so happened to read it on a rainy day. With the lights off. All binds closed. With rain sounds in the background. 🙂 It was a great day!
My students used Actively Learn to read and annotate the text and answer text-dependent questions. I’ve known about Actively Learn for over a year now, but I FINALLY got a chance to really use it in class. I loved it! I’m going to poll my students this week to see how they like it, and I’ll report back with some updates.
Here’s what my students will be working on for the next two days as we wrap up our work for this story:
Earlier in the school year I was trying to figure out a way to have my students talk about the books they were reading without having to crank out a hum-drum book report every month.
I decided to use Google Slides. Students were able to provide a brief synopsis about the book on a slide, and then they could read classmates’ slides and leave comments. I was floored by how enthusiastic my students were about their Book Talks! I had students asking if they could talk about more than one book, and many of my students continue to use the Book Talk slides to find new books to read.
Here is a YouTube video I created for my students to explain how to fill out their slides:
Tips, Tricks, and Ideas:
Have students claim their slides–in waves: I made the mistake of saying, “Okay, everyone! Claim your slide!” Uh, no. Not a good idea! There were multiple students typing on slides, and it was kind of a train wreck. When I presented the slides to my 3rd, 5th, and 6th periods, I had students select their slides in groups of four.
When leaving comments, use the + to tag people: The + will allow students to add peers’ names to the comments and this will alert the added individual by email that they have a new comment to read.
Allow students to insert and make their own videos: Students can insert videos from YouTube (ex: trailers for books made into movies), or insert videos of them talking about the book.
Students can create collages using Google Draw: My students really love Google Draw, and we’ve used Draw to create collages. Students can create collages about their books (a couple of images, quotes, thematic topics/thematic statement) and insert them onto their slides.
How to Get Started:
Create a new Google Slides project and title it.
You can set it up like I did (see the video), or you can just have one slide with directions and students can add their own slides. If you opt to do the latter, them trick number one (above) won’t be necessary.
Share the link to the slide deck with your students via email or Google Classroom.
It was another busy week in all of Mrs. Leonardo’s sixth grade classes! Let’s take a look at what students learned:
Monday: We started preparing to read Jim Murphy’s excerpt, The Great Fire. Students learned the importance of activating prior knowledge, and we discussed the differences between the connotation and the denotation of a word. We then typed connotations for the term devastation after watching videos about wildfires. This was an important topic of discussion because of California’s current drought and the wildfires raging across California (read about how to help victims of these fires here).
Tuesday: We set a purpose for reading The Great Fire; I introduced students to annotating the text, and we discussed the characteristics of informational text. The student sample above shows annotations after we read the text a total of three times. The before reading portion on the back page is the student’s thoughts from day one. Before reading the text, we read paragraphs one and six in order to build background knowledge.
Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday: Students learned how to infer by using clues in the text. This particular lesson spanned across three days because some students knew what inferences were, but they didn’t know how to infer. Some admitted that they had no idea what an inference was. Wednesday was spent learning about inferences and how to infer, Thursday was spent practicing how to infer, and Friday was devoted to finding themes within specific paragraphs of The Great Fire.
We’re preparing to write a summary of The Great Fire, then students will create videos in iMovie about the great Chicago fire using toys and green screen! We spent the last half of Friday getting to know the green screen app!
I spent some time updating my YouTube channel this weekend; you can get all of the details here.
This week we will be wrapping up our reading, writing a summary, and preparing to get the ball rolling with our green screen project. More details to come!
A couple of weeks ago, RCSD‘s staff development department sent out an email to all district teachers about an upcoming optional professional development day at Krause Center for Innovation. Redwood City Education Foundation was going to make it possible for at least 10 teachers to attend the mini Google Summit event; I went to the larger Google Summit event at Gunn High School in Palo Alto two years ago, so I knew I had to make sure to be at the KCI event. The catch? Teachers had to apply for a chance to go.
As soon as I got home from our staff meeting, I typed up my answers, submitted them, and waited. A few days later I got an email and it said, “CONGRATULATIONS! YOU GET TO GO TO GOOGLE SUMMIT!” Woohoo! I enjoy learning about new ways to enhance my teaching, so I was excited to learn about new computer applications, ways to better my workflow (and my students’ workflow), and how to enhance student learning through my current blended learning model.
Yesterday (Saturday) I spent the entire day at Krause Center for Innovation learning about ways to use Google Apps for Education in the classroom. In the next few days I plan to implement a few new strategies, and I’ll write about the new sites I learned about, too.
Last week I introduced students to answering text-dependent questions using evidence from the text. This seemed to be a difficult task for many students because they wanted to write their answers using their opinions and thoughts.
I had an evidenced based poster I created last year, but when I went to look for it on my computer, I couldn’t find it! I ended up finding this poster on Teachers Pay Teachers, and while it isn’t the best way for students to write with evidence, it helped many students last week.
This week I am sharing Carlos’s work. Carlos did a great job using evidence to answer text-dependent questions. On Friday students watched CNN Student News and typed answers to three questions answered in the newscast. Carlos did a great job answering question number three.
First, it was hard for me to believe summer was over. Now, I’m trying to figure out how the first two weeks of school zoomed on by! We kept busy over the past ten days; I had an aide comment, “Wow! You’ve got these kids working hard in here!” WOOHOO! Yeah!
Let’s take a look at what we’ve been working on, shall we?
Writing Survey and Rhetorical Awareness
I spent the summer reading Teaching Writing that Matters: Tools and Projects That Motivate Adolescent Writers. Gallagher and Lee stress the importance of students being rhetorically aware; in other words, students need to know their audience, their purpose, and context for writing. I can remember being asked several times to write about myself during the first days of school. By the time you reach middle school, About Me essays can be a bit boring to write. Gallagher and Lee suggest having students complete a writing survey followed by a Three of Me activity. The Three of Me activity requires students to write three different descriptions of themselves. I thought this would be a great way for me to informally assess students’ writing, and it allowed them to write about themselves in different ways.
Here’s a sample of the writing survey students completed. I really enjoyed reading through these because I got to see some of the rules of writing students have heard throughout elementary school, and I got to see who LOVES to write and who HATES to write.
For the Three of Me assignment, students had to introduce themselves to the class, describe themselves as if they were in an advertisement, and write a campaign speech explaining their qualifications.
Part 1:
Part 2 (students used Google Draw for their “advertisements”):
Part 3 Students explained their qualifications for a public office.:
At the beginning, this concept was a bit difficult for students comprehend. We had to review the words qualifications and public office. We watched a few middle school campaign speeches on Youtube, looked at campaign posters, and watched President Obama give speeches to various audiences. Those videos and images seemed to help a lot!
Reciprocal Teaching/Fab Four Reading Strategies
I also introduced students to Cornell Notes. This was a very scaffolded version of Cornell Notes. My aim is to continuously model how to take notes during the first trimester and continue to loosen the strings as the year progresses. For this lesson, students filled in the yellow blanks with words from my PowerPoint. This lesson was about the Fab Four reading strategies: predict, question, clarify, and summarize. We watched this video and a video I made last year (you’ve gotta watch this! The students love this video!).
On Friday, students came to class and read over their Cornell Notes and discussed any questions they had about Thursday’s lesson with their partner. Then they quizzed each other using the Cornell Notes. After that, they took a short check for understanding quiz I created using Google Forms. 100% accuracy from all classes. Yes!!
After the quiz, we read Gary Soto’s The Drive-In Movies and used the Fab Four Strategies while reading. Before reading, students rated their knowledge of key vocabulary found in the story. We didn’t finish this, so we will revisit the vocabulary on Tuesday. Watch the video I created for this lesson here.
I know it well: I can define this word, I know the part of speech for this word, I can use it in multiple sentences, and I use it in my vocabulary.
I have seen or heard it: I can’t really define this word, but I have seen or heard it before.
I have no clue: I know nothing about this word!
We didn’t break into Fab Four groups; instead we read the story as a class (listen to me read it here), and I paused at certain points in the story to show them how to predict, question, and clarify. After we read the story, students tried their best to write a summary using 15-20 words. Students used the reciprocal reading tracker below for all of their questions, etc.
After finishing Bud, Not Buddy a few weeks ago, I wanted to complete one more Bud, Not Buddy assignment. The students just finished state testing, so I didn’t want to overwhelm them with another paper or poem analysis. I decided to let them choose a character from Bud, Not Buddy, and create a faux Instagram or Facebook for the character. They REALLY loved this! All of the students really got into it, and were trying to one up each other with silly comments, emoji, and pictures. Most of them wanted to pretend to be Bud Caldwell, and I had a few students decide to mix it up. Their social media account of choice? INSTAGRAM! Out of 80 students, I only had three students turn in Facebook profiles!
We finally wrapped up Bud, Not Buddyby Christopher Paul Curtis! I’ve heard positive reviews from students, and I’m glad they liked the book. With Common Core State Standards, there’s a big push for students to be able to analyze literary and non-fiction texts. When we read The Lightning Thief, students read an excerpt from Joseph Campbell’s The Hero’s Journey, and ended up writing an analysis explaining how Percy Jackson followed the archetype of a hero. With Bud, Not Buddy, we read Steve Jobs’s 2009 Stanford University commencement speech, and compared fictional character Bud Caldwell to Steve Jobs. Students were also required to closely read President Barack Obama’s 2009 back to school speech, answer text-dependent questions, and compare the text with Bud, Not Buddy and the life of Steve Jobs.
Now that we’ve finished our novel, the last part of our unit included reading Rudyard Kipling’s classic poem “If”; while reading the poem, students were asked to identify personification and alliteration, use context clues to define unknown words, and answer four questions about the poem. The last and final element will be for students to list themes found in Bud, Not Buddy and If, and write an analysis comparing the novel and the poem.
I read the poem aloud first, and then we watched two YouTube videos (video A and video B) featuring the poems. I stopped the videos multiple times to ask questions, have students discuss, and make annotations to the text.
Instead of paper, we used iPads this week. I’m a Chromebook kind of girl, but because the laptops were being used for state testing, I couldn’t get my hands on them. Listed below is a student’s work:
After students finished this assignment, they used the Explain Everything App on iPad to create screencast presentations. The presentations allowed the students to verbally state their reasoning for their answers. Check out a few gems!
Great things:
Students were able to get creative with their presentations.
NO PAPER 🙂
Students helped one another with projects.
Next time:
Allow more time for screencasts. We only had two periods to complete the screencasts, and many students wanted more time.
Have students type their answers to the questions first to create a script of some sort.
Remind students to verbally refer to the text when answering questions (we do this with writing, but they forgot to use evidence, or refer to the text, when answering questions; many students drew circles around the area of text they were discussing, and I thought that was acceptable).
Remind students to state just their first name when recording their screencast (because…you know…COPPA!)
I’ve always been a little on the fence about reading logs and book reports. When I was a child, I LOVED to read. I could zoom through a couple of books a day, and when my mom said my sister and I couldn’t go to the library, we’d cry!
However, when teachers would assign reading logs and book reports, it pained me. I always did the reports of course, but they seemed to take the fun out of reading for me. Now, I was a kid who loved to read. Can you imagine being the student that doesn’t see the joy in reading, and you are required to submit weekly reading logs and monthly book reports?! *Shudder.*
1. Infer: Why did people begin laughing and talking once they entered the mission, and why was the gigantic picture being talked about?
2. Connect/Author’s Word Choice: Why does the author, Christopher Paul Curtis, repeat the word shiny in paragraph two?
3.Compare/Contrast: Look at the image from 1937 and the image from 2012. What do these two images have in common? What is different about these images?
4. Your Position: Bud was willing to lie to the man at the mission in order to get food. If you were placed in a similar position, would you be dishonest to get your basic needs met (food, shelter, clothing)?
5. Clarify/Discuss: Ask your group any questions you have about the reading. You may also discuss any parts you like/do not like about the book.
