A Little on The Littles

Great book deals!  I’m all about great book deals!  When my assistant principal shared last year that Scholastic was offering Dollar Deals I JUMPED on it!  One of the choices was The Littles.  I didn’t know much about the text, but I jumped right in.  For a $1 a book, why not!  Before I knew it, I had 20 hot off the press copies of The Littles in my hands.  I had every intention of reading it with my second graders, but, luckily, didn’t.  At the end of the year I found out I was teaching 3^rd grade. 

That is when my personal debate began.  Should I read this book with my 3^rd grade students?  Is the level of reading (J) appropriate for students at a much higher level?  This came down to a level of complexity.   Let’s take a look at why I decided to read this lower level book with my primarily M+ readers.  

This was the primary reason why I chose to start with this book.  Most of my students have never read a REAL book in their classrooms as a learning tool.  Readers are great, but the whole book experience is a totally different thing.  Students need to be trained across a text when using real literature.  Training requires time and focus.  If students are struggling with understanding the words and the events, then the training will be ineffective.  The reading level was perfect in this aspect. 

Let’s face it.  How in the WORLD are we supposed to teach some of these standards.  We have relied on the interpretations of  the book companies and other “experts” in the field.  Most of us don’t know these experts.  Plus, they are raising the Lexile levels to the point that students are struggling to understand the information.  I thought I would attack this in a different way.  I brought in the higher order thinking and paired it with the lower text level so that students can understand  what the standard is trying to teach.  With this text we focused on the structure of the novel, Standard 5.  We were able to track story events throughout the reading.  This would have been very difficult to do if I just handed them a plot diagram.  This would have been very difficult if we just read a single story from our text.  Instead,  we charted this “fever” with the use of a thermometer.  

We were able to discuss how “fevered” the chapter was, causing us to look deeply at how the text was building chapter by chapter.  We discovered when chapters were helping us to bridge or connect ideas instead of providing a dramatic plot event.  As a team, we worked through this process because a simpler texted provided us with the opportunity to examine complex standards. 

Here's how I used the chart to complete the plot diagram.  

This text also allowed for a quicker read, utilizing time to the positive.   Students could examine the text with depth and complexity, but also retain the information for comprehension reasons.  Honestly, I had some of the best written responses for examining a character across the scope of a book that I’ve ever had!  

These responses were well structured, covered the character changes, and were dead on!  This, I feel, was because time was used well.  Characters could be viewed clearly and in a time period that allowed students to understand who they were and how they changed. 

Overall, I’m very happy with how this study came out!  It was amazing to see students grab hold of this text and the skills and work through them in a way that will stay with them and allow them to grow even more as we examine more stories.  Yes, I have strugglers, but that is normal.  However, we now have a mentor text that I can refer to that all students understand and will remember!  After all, the all said, “NOOOOOOOO!” when we finished the story, together, as a class! 

What do you think?   Do you have any other ideas or suggestions to add to this idea?  I’d love to hear about them!

5 Things from my CRAZY Week!

This week!  Holy cow!  It was fast, it was slow, it was incredible, and it was insane all in one big jumble!  So, I missed my Tuesday post and have decided to join the Five for Friday fun!  Here we go!

We finished learning about types of prompts.   Honestly, the materials my school bought for writing are the most boringly designed products I’ve ever seen!  They cost an arm and a leg also!  I just couldn’t hand them to my kids and be happy!  Then I got the idea for this lovely game-Spot the Prompt!  The kids enjoyed it so much and really had a lot of good practice with it!  Once we finished playing (it actually took a couple of days) we were able to complete the partner practice and the guided practice for a grade.  Overall, I was really pleased!  

Spot the Prompt has a few finishing touches and then it will be available in my store!

We also became Knights for a few days!  Together we worked to defeat the Digits Dragon and save the Rounding Table!  My kids were in LOVE!  We read Saint George and the Dragon by Margaret Hodges and I was also able to discuss some of the aspects of fairy tales.  We had a great time practicing our poem, rounding, and playing the game to become Knights!  You can find this product here!

We also started to learn about synonyms. 

Little did I know that this would be one of the kids’ favorite parts of the day.  I do Morning Meeting and last year many of the games were my students’ favorite moments.  I started by incorporating my Social Studies Weekly as our shared reading.  I took a sentence from the article to begin to talk about what synonyms are.  The students provided the non-examples that lead us to complete the chart.  I then used this website to create cards that we used to match up with a synonym buddy.  I had them greet each other, use eye contact, and say thank you to each other when the pair didn’t match.  I increased it to 3 and then 4 groups as the week went on.  I have a feeling I will be doing more of this!  They were so excited today to do this activity!  They cheered!  More importantly, they learned.  I was able to connect synonyms to context clues!  When they didn’t know the word, a sample sentence was given, and they had to use the context to solve!  It was AWESOME!

As a class we have also been hard at work reading The Littles and working on literature Standard 5!  This is a little idea I came up with to track the events of the chapter and have the students begin to understand the structure of a novel.  It has been enlightening, to say the least!  We have had some very good debates over what is and what isn’t a fever chapter. We have had firm agreements on what is normal or somewhat feverish.  It has been a great discussion and it allows interaction among my literacy partners on a daily basis.  More importantly, it is truly setting up a classroom of learners, allowing for routine and for polite discussion. Truly awesome! 

I will say, I’m not totally sold on the mood of the chapter part.  Any suggestions would be great!!

Finally, I’m birthdayed out!  I had THREE this week and, during a discussion, found out we missed one due to our hurricane days!  PLUS there was a birthday last Friday.  What is with September birthdays and my class!  Not that I can say anything personally.  I squeezed my oldest son out in September!  (Did I just say that-I did!!)  It was just a lot.  We had so much food though!  It just might be time to think of a different birthday routine!  One thing I do for my students is let them decide about the cha-cha-cha.  A few years ago I had a student come up to me and ask if I would tell the kids NOT to cha-cha-cha because they really didn’t like it.  The great thing was, I could tell that child that I felt the same exact way!  It annoys me!  So I did, and the class was fine with it!  Ever since, I ask about their cha-cha-cha choice.  Today, neither girl wanted the cha-cha-cha!  It is a small thing, but I’ve discovered that it is important to them-and it is their day! 

So, that’s it!  Hope you week was rockin’ and not as crazy as mine!  I’d love to hear how it went!