STAAR Revising & Editing Lessons, continued! *Freebie!

So last week, I shared an idea I'm trying out in my writing classroom. My students and I used a paragraph through the whole week to work on some revising and editing skills. I aligned the questioning with STAAR, but instead of boring test practice, it was interesting and engaging! (I thought it was, anyway).

This is the paragraph I had on the board the first day (you could also do a pocket chart): One benefit of being a reader is that you can grow your vocabulary. When you read, you learn new ___ and you can use them in your own writing! I have to use context ___ to figure out their meaning and understand what the message was.

On Monday, we practiced editing skills: apostrophe or plural? You can read about that here.

Then we practiced the STAAR released question that addressed this skill.

Tuesday - Thursday, we practiced revising skills. Below are the skills and the questioning that we practiced. 

Tuesday: Look at sentence __. The phrase “---“ does not express what I was trying to say.

- Which word could BEST replace “grow“ and help me improve the meaning of the sentence?

- Which word could BEST replace “figure out“ and help me improve the meaning of the sentence?

Choices: expand, demonstrate, determine, decrease

Then we practiced the STAAR released question that addressed this skill.

Wednesday: I would like to add the following sentence to the paragraph. Where is the BEST place to insert this sentence?

Sometimes I come across words that I’ve never seen before and I don’t know what they mean.

Then we practiced the STAAR released question that addressed this skill.

Thursday: I want to add a conclusion to my paper. Which of the following could BEST follow sentence __ and close the paragraph?

-       I don’t like taking vocabulary quizzes.

-       When I use my vocabulary strategies, I get the most out of reading!

-       Yesterday, I learned the word, “elated”.

-       Some context clues are difficult to find.

Then we practiced the STAAR released question that addressed this skill.

At the end of the week, this is what the paragraph looked like:

One benefit of being a reader is that you can expand your vocabulary. When you read, you learn new words and you can use them in your own writing! Sometimes I come across words that I’ve never seen before and I don’t know what they mean. I have to use context clues to determine their meaning and understand what the author’s was. When I use my vocabulary strategies, I get the most out of reading!

It took about fifteen minutes each day, and fifteen minutes more to practice the STAAR-released question that utilized the same exact skill, as well as some Mentoring Minds questions.

Not only did we create a pretty decent paragraph, we addressed several difficult revising/editing skills in an engaging, collaborative way, and we applied it to test-taking situations to prepare for the STAAR test. I think it was a week well-spent.


In case this sounds like something you'd like to try out in your own classroom, I put together a new freebie pack!

It includes the lessons, how to prepare, and pictures of the first lesson's delivery!

Grab it free at TPT!
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STAAR Revising & Editing Lessons *Freebie!

I'm camping out at Dunkin' Donuts. My hunny and I brought our laptops and we are oh-so-busy, working away. I broke down the data from our last third grade reading assessment (they kicked butt) and then I looked at fourth grade writing. Our fourth graders are having some trouble with revising & editing skills. This is not surprising. It's hard to teach these skills in a concrete manner, and apply it to a testing situation.    I'm working with a pull-out group of students (it's a large group; about 20 kids), and so I wanted the most efficient way to practice a skill and then practice it in test questions.    And this is what I came up with! I'm rolling it out this week with a group of students who have struggled in the past on revising & editing, so I have pictures in action.   This was Monday. We worked on editing skills. One area I noticed the kids struggling in was when they should use an apostrophe and when they should make a word plural. (Shocking, right? But all the kid's seem to be confused with these skill's.)   To start, I read this paragraph and left out the blanks. Then I held up the two cards that said "words" and "word's".    "What's the difference?" I asked.   "That one has the comma up there," said one brave student.   Ah, yes. The 'comma up there'. I've also heard 'comma in the air.' This apostrophe, apparently, is the Michael Jordan of commas.  

  I introduced the name for this punctuation mark: apostrophe, and we talked about its use; to show belonging. Then we looked at the other card and decided it meant more than one word. I had students reread the sentence and decide if something belonged to the word, or if it was more than one word. (It was more than one.) 

We repeated the process with "clues" vs. "clue's" and "authors" vs. "author's". This part of the lesson went pretty well.

After this, I had students practice two questions that required them to use this skill. That was our editing day. The remainder of the week, we worked on revising skills.

You can grab two free weeks of hands-on revision and editing lessons in expository text, or check out the nine weeks unit!

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Point of View Freebie!

So last week, one of our lovely teachers was out sick, so I got to teach fifth grade Saturday School!

Eek! It was fun, though. I got to plan a little lesson about explaining different forms of third person points of view.

This was kind of a neat lesson to do, because I hadn't taught that in fourth grade - we just differentiated between first person and third person.

I shared three different versions of the same short story, first. It was the same events told from the three different points of view.

We identified the differences between the three and marked them with colored markers.

Then we used these differences to explain which point of view each story was written from and added them to our anchor chart.

I put red lips on who was telling the story. The red lips are on the character in the first person, but they'e on the sidelines in both third person forms. The yellow shows whose thoughts you know. In first and third person limited, you know only the main character's thoughts, but in third person omniscient, you know other characters' as well!

After we made our chart and used the stories to create clues to look for, I had students practice with the materials I found here for 2.50 on TPT. They're simple paragraphs designed for students to use the clues to sort. We created a tree map with the paragraphs and highlighted the evidence.

Below is the freebie pack I revised for TPT! Please check it out and download.

It includes the three versions of the story I used, the sample anchor chart, and some printable posters for first person, third person, third person limited, and third person omniscient!

And if you're interested in working with point of view, check out my my Analyzing Point of View Strategy MiniPack on TPT.

Have fun teaching point of view!

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Are you down with the Abbey?

I've been trying to be very good and post about instruction. But today, it's just not gonna happen. My hunny worked late, so I spent the evening trying to Zumba at my sister-in-law's house. I figured I have to fit into some sort of a wedding dress sometime by October (why don't I just by a larger size dress?) and I thought it might be good to do some dancing-based exercising.
This was a bad idea. There was no actual dancing going on. There should have been dancing. The people on the screen were dancing. I was not. I was jiggling and sweating and doing any number of odd gestures to try to mimic the very attractive and ethnic dancers on the screen. But no. I'm sure I burned some calories, but it wasn't pretty.
Anyway, after I left my bro's house, I trucked it home - this is about a two-minute drive, thank goodness, because they bought a house several streets away - love it - and decided to catch up on the  Abbey. Downton Abbey, that is.
If you don't watch Downton, you might be kind of bored from here on out. That's pretty much all I'm going to talk about. Of course, I will put my spin on it, so you might get a kick out of it anyway.
Heads-up: SPOILER! of season 3, episode 2.
I say this, despite having the episode spoiled for me by enthusiastic friends' facebook posts. I totally get it. With issues this big, you need an audience to reflect.
So I sat on my couch, filled up my glass o' wine (several times, to be honest) and pushed play at pbs.org to watch (I'm ashamed) Downton Abbey: Episode 2 of this season. I know. I'm behind. Anyway, I spent the first several minutes badmouthing Edith on facebook.
Seriously?! I said. I didn't realize it was possible for Edith to be more annoying, but it is! Lay off the cheese, Edith. "He thought his life was over, but now he finds it is only just beginning!" Barf. And then it happened. He left her at the alter. 
O.
M.
G.
I'm sorry, Edith. All the things I said are true. (You're super cheesy, ok?) But I do feel bad that I posted them. He left yuo at the altar?! How crappy! That's. So. Wrong.
So I spent the next several minutes feeling a little guilty.
She handled it about as well as I would have. By which I mean she spent the next couple days in bed. Anyway, when my hunnybun came home (three glasses of wine later) I told him about the episode while staring at him aggressively. 
"And he left her at the altar!" I said.
"Wow," he said disinterestedly. 
I then informed him that he better really consider the consequence of such an action. Cause they won't be pretty.
"Oh, hunny," he said. "I love you very much."
Mm-hmm. We'll see.
BTW: I really don't like any of the sisters very much. But I do like Granny, Ms. Hughes, Mr. Carson, and I looooove to watch Thomas, even though he's a big jerk.
Do you have a favorite sister? Or just a least favorite sister? My least favorite is (still) Edith.
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Guided Reading Update: Good Readers statements

You know when you notice your kids do weird stuff when they read to you? But then you're not always sure what to do about it?

Yeah, that's a common problem.

Here's another problem:

Sometimes, at the beginning of a lesson, we say, "Today we're going to practice making predictions". And the kid looks at you like, "Well, that's great." 

Then you say, "So let's look at the cover. What do you predict will happen in this book?" and the kid goes, "I don't know. I don't know how to make predictions. You might want to explain this a little more thoroughly if you actually expect me to do it."

Ok, so kids don't actually tell us that. They usually give us a blank stare or something. But that's the truth, right? We ask kids to do this stuff without explicitly stating how to do it.

That's why I created my "Good Readers" statements. They are written to explicitly but briefly introduce the strategy we want kids to use. I wrote statements for comprehension and decoding strategies. And guess what? You can download them for free! Just head over to my TpT store and download it as part of the Rolling Out Guided Reading Freebie.

Here's a little pointer about creating a Good Readers statement to use as a strategy focus during guided reading:

• For example: Good readers make inferences.
• This statement doesn’t tell the student what to do or how to do it.
• Good readers read closely for evidence about characters and think about what it means.
• This statement includes a specific directions for the student to complete.

You can get the "Good Readers" statements as a part of a free download! Just enter your email address below to get freebies and tips for guided reading.

and for the complete set, including these tools and more, check out my new Rolling Out Guided Reading Pack at TPT! Over 100 pages of planning and instructional tools, organizational tips and binder resources for Guided Reading! (It even includes editable pages for you to work with on your computer!)

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Nonfiction: Main Idea, Part 3

This is the third day of my main idea posts. Can you tell we've spent a lot of time on this idea? 

Her'e a strategy to practice main ideas. I've used it during Guided Reading. One of the nice things about our textbook adoption (not a big textbook user, BTW) is that it came with these leveled readers to use during guided reading. There are all different genres, too, so it actually supports our standards. I was working with a group of fifth grade kids when I did this lesson, but I've used it before with third and fourth graders. 

First, of course, we previewed & predicted about the text. 

This book is all about changes on Earth caused by different forces: water, weather, and plate movement in the Earth's crust.

In our small group, each child has a book and a post-it. We look at a paragraph at a time. This page was all about Landslides, as you can see by the heading and photograph/caption. I want kids to start using the features to predict what the section will be about, so we have a conversation. Then I have each student read on his/her own, but seated at the table with me.

As they read, they are instructed to find the 3-4 words that the paragraph is mostly about and record them on their post-its.  

After each student has recorded his/her words, we talk about which words we chose and why. This is an opportunity for students to revise their words. For example, while we were reading a paragraph that included a list of characteristics of weather, the words hot and cold came up. A couple students wrote "hot" and "cold" on their lists, using up two of their four words. 

Another student, however, wrote "temperature." This idea incorporated both hot and cold, as well as several other sentences in the text. Kids can become more evaluative in their choices and really think about determining the most important ideas represented in the text.

After kids get good at identifying the main ideas of paragraphs, we move into sections. Then, they write a main idea statement for each section and combine them to create a summary of their reading.

Hope that helps.
New on TPT and Teacher's Notebook, my ginormous Nonfiction Pack! I'm so excited about this pack. It's my biggest pack yet: over 60 pages of Nonfiction stuff!
Check it out at TPT and Teacher's Notebook!

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