Literacy in November: All About the Characters Part One

Whew! Does November seem to go by too fast for anyone else? It seems like just yesterday we were trick or treating around the classroom and now it's December alread.. With a bunch of days off last month, it seemed like a struggle to get everything done but my third graders worked hard and we learned a lot.

Oh right, I'm teaching third grade now, with my own room and wonderful class. I'm gearing up to really put some time and effort into my teaching blog but bear with me as I comb through the last three hectic months!

But first thing's first: literacy in the month of November. I chose this post to kick off my return to blogging because I really loved what we did to celebrate the characters in our fiction books. In just under a month, we dug deep and got to the root of what our characters do to help us understand our stories.

Some of the books we focused on:







My class is big fans of Kevin Henkes and I am too. He develops wonderfully believable characters who express themselves in ways that elementary students can understand which is just perfect for a character study unit.



We also used David Shannon's A Bad Case of Stripes because who can forget Camilla Cream?

Since we were working on this unit in November and it is such a short month, we mostly focused on character traits and the skill of inferring. This is something my kids really need. The skill I identified as a goal for most of my students is improving comprehension. They are great decoders and most understand how to cross check and flip sounds but when it comes to referencing the text to answer higher level questions, they are really struggling. So in my class I'm choosing to spend more time on comprehension skills in my mini-lessons. Those lessons on accuracy, decoding, and fluency are saved for small group or individual instruction and I find that actually works better for focusing on those skills.

I started by helping students differentiate between a character's emotions (feelings that are fleeting) versus their traits (their inner personality). I found great resources on introducing character traits from Genia Connell on Scholastic including some great freebies to display and graphic organizers for their reader's notebooks. We began reading Lily's Purple Plastic Purse and then created a chart of character traits over two days. Here's what our anchor chart looked like:

Sorry for the blurriness! This is what happens when you're taking pictures of anchor charts fifteen minutes before the students arrive! Talking about Lily was really a springboard for discussing ways we can describe other characters and my students had a really easy time making the connections to books they've read. One of their independent reading tasks was to write on sticky notes character traits of a character in their books and we added those too. The next day was spent understanding positive and negative traits. We made dots next to each trait: purple for negative and green for positive. 

My next area of focus is my focus for the whole year: show me how you know. I feel like a broken record sometimes because I say it at the end of every reading lesson, every time I check in with my students, and in basically every block of our day. But so much of the emphasis of the Common Core is students being able to demonstrate and communicate their thinking. I also feel like this is an important life skill, being able to demonstrate your competency, so I'll keep on saying it every day of the year. 

What I did was create a visual and text anchor chart to show my students how I wanted them to show me what they know. We used Lily as our example:

I asked students to help me pick three character traits from an earlier anchor chart to list. I made sure that we picked three traits that covered the whole book since Lily changed throughout the book (though we didn't talk about characters changing for another week). We picked one trait and found evidence from the text to support our thinking. For our guided practice of this skill, I created similar anchor charts with characters from books we'd already read and then had mixed ability groups find character traits and text evidence to support their thinking. 

Don't they look great?! Even though it meant a late night at school drawing (which I didn't have to do but couldn't bring myself to stop), I think they turned out really great. I had the groups present their posters to the whole class and it was amazing to see how this activity helped them focus on finding text evidence. 

The last part of the week students independently practiced finding character traits and supporting their reasoning with the text. I searched high and low for a graphic organizer that would work really well to help students organize their thinking and writing but most were sold as part of a character study pack on Teachers Pay Teachers. I decided to be resourceful and create my own. Check it out and let me know if it helps you!

This is only part one; in my next post I'll be talking about tackling character change and internal vs. external traits. 

Art in the Classroom

If you take the time to hop on over to my resume page on this blog, you will notice that I did not go to college for education but instead went to a post-graduate program. The years I spent as an undergraduate were filled with dreams of teaching something other than language arts and math; I wanted to work in a museum and teach about art. Of course, it sounded way more glamorous than it really was and after a summer of working long museum hours with only getting to plan and host two programs for kids, I realized that I was much better suited for the classroom life.

Though I am not spending my days in front of pretty paintings, I still love and appreciate everything that art has to offer. Art can engage us on multiple levels from physical experiences with sculptures to triggering memories and learning new things. Art is a part of almost every school's curriculum but I don't think it has to be confined to the art room. If you're in a school with limited art opportunities, what better way to keep the arts alive than in your classroom? Here are a few of the ways I hope to be a more artistic and art-oriented classroom this coming year:

- In a writer's workshop lesson focusing on personal narratives, autobiographies, and biographies, introduce famous artists. We usually go with the old standbys of presidents or sports figures but artists have pretty interesting lives too. For our younger students, a great read aloud is Tomie dePaola's semi-autobiographical book The Art Lesson. It's great book about being creative and following your dreams as well as telling the world your story.

- Take the time to discuss the illustrations in your stories: why is it important to include illustrations with our writing? Why did the illustrator draw this scene? If you were the illustrator, what would you draw?

- There are many powerful images from artists documenting historical events from the perspective of someone who lived it. I still remember when we talked about the French Revolution in my high school history class but the discussion was motivated by Delacroix's Liberty Leading the People. All learners will become engaged in a lesson where they have to think rather than being told.

- I'm thinking about creating a comic book writing unit. My students have always loved graphic novels and I think this would be the perfect way for us to get excited about writing, maybe early in the year. It would be a perfect unit to include mini lessons on sequence and onomatopoeia.

I can't wait to integrate art into my classroom culture and curriculum this year. There are plenty of resources out there to make art a part of your classroom. One of my favorite finds so far is Patty Palmer's Deep Sea Sparkle site which has lessons for every grade level with literature resources too.

If you have any recommendations about getting art into the classroom, please let me know!

Test Prep Made Fun: What's For Dinner?

It's finally summer and I finally have a moment to update my blogging space! I apologize for the crickets around here but it's been a hectic time and I wanted to wait until I could devote a little extra time to write some quality posts.

Even though school's been over for two weeks now, I am just now getting around to organizing my materials from the end of the school year. I can't be the only one out there! As I'm filing things in my folders and squaring away lesson plans for future reference, I was looking through the materials I used for state test prep. One of the things I tried to focus on as I got my students ready for testing was using all of my experiences to keep it from being a boring, fact recalling, sitting on our bottoms three weeks. That meant creating hands-on activities that were engaging but provided multiple opportunities for reviewing the concepts that were going to be on the test. For reading comprehension and writing tasks, I tried to keep us out of our seats and engaged with partner work and thematic writing based on what my students enjoyed. For math, I added a little more engagement through group work and manipulatives. While keeping my kids using their minds and higher level thinking skills to review day in and day out was a challenge, it also produced one of my favorite lessons.

I guess you could call this lesson "A Trip to the Grocery Store." The first half of the school year I was a leave replacement teacher in a kindergarten classroom. One of the guiding principles of early childhood education is allowing students to explore their world through imagination in hands-on activities. I loved to watch my students, both boys and girls, "cooking" and serving dinner in the play kitchen area of our classroom. Watching my third graders, who are old enough to sit three hours a day for a standardized test but still play make believe games on the playground at recess, I decided that bringing that same principle of using play to grow our minds would work for them as well.

I spent my prep period creating a mock grocery store in our classroom. There was a dairy section, a butcher's station, an aisle for spices and an aisle for baking needs. Some areas had props which meant weeks of saving containers from the recycling or trash. Items had prices that were based on measurements, i.e. one tablespoon of salt is equal to three cents. When students came back for our math block, they were given a recipe for a part of a meal and they had to find the ingredients, find the price, and determine how much this meal was going to cost them to make. The goal of this whole exercise was to review word problems of multiples and money.

There were two great things about this lesson: it allowed for a lot of differentiation and small group work and it kept the kids moving instead of sitting at their desk working off a piece of paper. I chose recipes based on the strength of students math skills so my kids with higher math abilities worked on a problem that asked them to think about multiplying by a half while my kids who struggle with this type of thinking could work with me and see what we needed to do. I watched them rush around the room and one little girl even asked if she could do another one since it was so much fun to go shopping. And when I assessed them the next day with a review test with a similar money and quantity problem on there, almost every kid got it right. You're never too old to get down and dirty with hands-on learning.

A May Update

As you can see, I haven't been updating my blog lately. Fortunately the reason for this is I have been too busy teaching! About a month ago, I accepted a third grade leave replacement teacher. Having subbed in third grade many times I knew it would be a great fit and I was very excited to get started. Unfortunately I stepped in right before New Jersey state testing. But never fear! I used all that different experience I got from tutoring special education to subbing in every grade from preschool to fifth grade to get those kiddos ready for their first ever standardized test.

It was quite a whirlwind but I focused on reviewing concepts from math and language arts. I also briefly touched on concepts I thought might be on the test but I didn't have time to fully teach. I wanted to make sure the kids went into the test confidently and familiar with everything they saw. While I used the Buckle Down Series (which were a great guide for test review and I highly recommend them) I also integrated some fun hands-on experience. I am definitely not a teacher who can just sit and watch her students do desk work!

In the next few days, I'll show you some of those lessons that I used for test prep with my third graders but for now I will leave you with one of our fun "study break" lessons. To keep us from getting bored and "stale" in our seats, we took a quick break one day to talk about things we needed to remember to do the day of the test. We brainstormed as a class and came up with ideas like "get a good night's sleep", "stay focused", "read the directions carefully", and "check your answers." Then, in a nod to technology (as well as our lack of it), we took these reminders and turned them into "apps" on iPads, study iPads.

How cute did those turn out?! It was a great way to break up the monotony of review and talk about testing skills in a fun and friendly way for eight and nine year olds. I personally think we were app-solutely ready for our big test!

Celebrate National Poetry Month in April

April is National Poetry Month an one of my favorites. This is a great month to easily connect your reading and writing workshop lessons and immerse your students in a specific genre of writing. The other thing that makes poetry my favorite is that it is accessible to all ages. It's fun to read, fun to write and there are so many resources out there for you to bring into the classroom.

Packing the month with poetry reading and writing will build students' skills in so many different areas. I've seen younger elementary students benefit from using rhythm and rhyme where they're practicing identifying blends and digraphs and then transferring that knowledge into writing our own poems. Upper elementary students can discover ways that poets create vivid imagery and practice expressing their ideas in a new format. Poetry also has the benefit of energizing reluctant writers because it is such a different way of writing from the narratives and non-fiction writing emphasized through much of the year.


I have two favorite activities for Poetry month that I will definitely bring to my forever classroom. The first is the Great Poetry Race. I used this last Spring with second graders and you should have seen their enthusiasm for poetry...and the honor of having a plastic trophy on their desk! The goal is for students to practice reading fluency by reading a poem a week out loud to family and friends. To hold a "Great Poetry Race" in your classroom, all you need is simple, kid-friendly poems for each week of April. Print a poem on the front with lines for recording signatures on the back. Students take the poems around and read them out loud to anyone and everyone and the student who receives the most signatures by the end of the week will be the winner of the race for that week and get the honor of having a trophy on their desk. Such a simple idea and you won't believe how much they read!


Another wonderful way to celebrate National Poetry Month is by creating a "Poet-tree." While this is hardly a unique idea, sometimes the old ideas are the best. Create a bare branched tree to hang in the hallway or in the classroom and then encourage students to fill the tree with "leaves": leaf-shaped paper with poems of their own creation. Students love being able to add things to the classroom environment. It's great for self-expression and it allows students to show you what they learned after you teach different styles of poetry. Talk about a great assessment and student-centered learning!

Enjoy celebrating National Poetry Month with your students! Some of my favorite books for the month are: Where the Sidewalk Ends by Shel Silverstein, Goodnight Moon, anything by Dr. Seuss or Bill Martin Jr. Whatever poetry resources you use, students can always benefit from having more poetry in their life.

Let's Share!

Good afternoon! For all of you who have Spring break this week, have a great week off and get some well deserved rest. For all of you who have already had it (like me), let's gear up and get some fresh ideas to get us through to Memorial Day weekend.

* For my Kindergarten and Firsty friends: still having some trouble with tricky B and D? I love Sprinkles to Kindergarten's b and d game for fun reinforcement

* Of course, March was Nutrition Month but you can discuss good nutrition with your students any time of the year. Check out Lesson Plan SOS's ideas for getting students to connect to the topic of nutrition. I especially love the sugar shock lesson; it'll scare the kids away from all that Easter candy!

* What are your favorite read aloud books? Here are some great ones for Kindergarten teachers (though they'll work for other elementary teachers too!)

* I find some many great tips from One Extra Degree and the latest is the idea of sticky note Jot Spots, a great way for your kids to keep track of their thinking during independent reading

* Move beyond KWL charts by giving scenarios to your students. I love this idea because it gives you a chance to assess students' thinking without boundaries. It gets them talking and sharing their thinking with one another, great skills to have in the classroom and beyond

Lesson idea: Be a Classroom Architect

Perimeter and area: two math terms that pop up at every grade level, in some way or another, on standardized tests across the country, and most importantly in the Common Core Standards. While it makes sense that students need to understand the basic concepts of space, how do you help students connect it to themselves and make it an important and relevant part of their lives? A connection and investment in one's learning is important for meaningful learning but area and perimeter seem like such foreign and unimportant concepts for five to ten year olds.

A fantastic activity that I have used to help students make a connection to the idea of perimeter and area and the concept of physical space is a lesson I like to call "Be a Classroom Architect." I have a background in architectural history from my undergrad studies and have always been fascinated by places and spaces. In the spirit of "use what you know", I combined my love of architecture with my love teaching by asking my students to consider themselves architects for 40 minutes in the afternoon.

After explaining the job of an architect, I asked my students to become architects who are commissioned with a project to build the best classroom they could think of, complete with measurements of area and perimeter. This lesson comes well within our study of area and perimeter so students are able to fluently work with both concepts with little frustration.

As students begin to sketch out their plans on graph paper, they are actively engaging their higher level thinking skills. We come up with several different questions we think are important to consider as we design: what will these students need? Where will the students read, write, and practice math facts? The job of calculating perimeter and area were completed pretty quickly (area was calculated by counting squares in the graph paper at the second grade level) and then they could get down to the fun stuff. I saw water slides that were going to be used to study science and a ball pit designed to be the perfect reading area. After plans were completed, several of our "architects" presented their plans and explained their design choices.

I can't think of any lesson I love more for teaching area and perimeter than the Classroom Architect. Besides allowing students for being extremely creative in their designs, it also allows for differentiation between your students. If a student is struggling with multi-digit addition, they might have a simpler design than a student who loves to challenge him or herself with lots of walls to add up in their perimeter calculations. It's also super simple to set up: model, give them graphing paper and watch them go wild! I wish I had taken pictures to show my students so actively engaged but take my word for it, they love it!