Share the Love of a Good Book!

Last week, my class focused on the important skill of summarizing a text. A few of my students were struggling with this and I wanted to find a way for them to gain extra practice without making them feel like I was just giving them extra work. Since I couldn't find anything that seemed to fit on TeachersPayTeachers, I decided to create it myself.

http://bit.ly/1Px5QSO

I have written off and on in journals for years, but have found that I am much more engaged and consistent now that I have a blog. Having an audience makes all the difference. Of course, at this point the audience of my blog may only consist of my co-teacher and my best friend. I think even my husband only skims it.  Still it is an audience. My students needed an audience for their summaries.

My students have been fired up about reading since we returned to school in January. They share books and recommend books to each other from our classroom library. With the book fair at our school this week, everyone was talking about books and I needed to capitalize on that. I could have had them write simple book reports and read these out loud to the class, but I knew our week didn't allow enough time for that. What gives information about a book, but is far shorter than a book report? A book review!

Using the format of Somebody, Wanted, But, Then, So, I created a form for students to fill out about a book they had recently read from our classroom library. I added a second form to include more information about the book. The students needed a little help filling out these forms. I sat at my kidney shaped table with six students and provided support as they each chose a book and completed the forms. Once the forms were completed, the students simply filled in the blanks to write a book review. It was necessary to read back over their writing and add a few words here and there, but for the most part I was impressed with their results.

It was time for an authentic audience. Potential readers typically read book reviews, so my students visited http://goqr.me, typed in their review, and downloaded a qr code link. They added this qr code to a Google Doc along with the title and their name. Once it was printed, I taped the qr code to the back of the book from our classroom library. Now anyone considering reading each book, can scan the qr code and read the student's review.

Although I initially created this for my students that needed extra summarizing practice, by the second day every student in my class was asking to write one. I found my stronger readers needed very little help with the format. We use Google Classroom, so many of them were surprised how easy it was to create the qr code and insert it into the Google Doc. Students have asked if they may write one every time they read a book from our classroom library. Students asking to write more? Nothing warms my heart more! As a Valentine's gift to my dear readers, I've put my QR Code Book Review product on TpT on sale from February 14th to February 17th. Show your students how much you care by giving them an opportunity to write for an authentic audience.

Telephone Book Tag

Over the weekend, our school was inundated with telephone books.  About fifty phone books were left at the front door.  I think they purposefully deliver when we are closed, so we can't refuse the books. No one in our school actually uses a telephone book.  For goodness sakes, even our kindergarteners know how to use google. In an effort to rid the front office of the telephone books, our clever, yet OCD, facilities manager said, "Hey Sellars, surely you can come up with some crazy, educational use for all these telephone books." We've worked together for a long time.  I know all about his OCD tendencies, and he knows I never back down from a challenge.

Although I love how independent my students are when it comes to technology.  There are a few skills that need sharpening.  One is looking up something in a long alphabetized list.  We do use dictionaries on occasion, but my students are more likely to lookup a word on dictionary.com. Many of the rowdy kids in 3B are a bit on the competitive side.  I've learned that any type of competitive game, keeps them engaged much longer.  We play many different types of games, so that all of the children have moments of success.

To play Telephone Book Tag. The students each stand behind their desk with hands by their side. On each desk is a closed telephone book.  The teacher begins the game by calling out a random name from the telephone book.  The first student to correctly locate the name is "it."  This student comes to the front of the room and randomly chooses another name.  After a student has been named it twice, he or she is crowned Telephone Book Tag Master.  Telephone Book Tag Masters no longer play, but help struggling students find names faster.  If you have the extra time, you could even make crowns from pages from the extra phone books for the Masters.