MUNSCH MADNESS BABY!!

Okay...so my husband is a basketball coach, freak, obsessive, compulsive fan. March Madness is his absolute FAVORITE time of year! It's also MINE! Except, I put a little twist on it....

Are you familiar with Robert Munsch? FABULOUS children's author! I was introduced to him during my student teaching semester 13 years ago, and I STILL love him! His stories are written using children he has actually met as the characters. They are funny, excellent for fluency practice, and great for character analysis or "I wonder what's going to happen next??".
You HAVE to read his books to your class! Any grade level!

On the 3rd day of March (can't start 'til after Dr. Suess's birthday on March 2nd!) I start my month long "Munsch Madness!" I always start by reading outloud "Purple, Green and Yellow"-my FAVORITE book! The kiddos absolutely love it and hang on every word! This year we (my team-teacher compadre) have a great bullentine board we're sharing outside our class room. We've been reading Robert Munsch all month and using his books to build our fluency. Monday, we're reading "The Paper Bag Princess" on Tumble Books and writing a surprise ending. We hang the best surprise endings in the hallway for all to enjoy! I'll post pictures next week!

Happy weekend! I can't believe there's only 2 more months of school left! Oh...here is Robert Munsch's website. Check it out! : www.robertmunsch.com

Higher-Order Thinking Questions for Literature Circles

I've always had "Reflection Cards" for literature response time, or flexible groups, but I felt the need to upgrade them a bit with the new STAAR test. Our district uses CSCOPE curriculum, which is supposed to be directly aligned with STAAR, and its Exemplary Lessons promote higher-order thinking to its upmost level. So, I spent a nice evening at home combing through the entire L/A Reading 4th grade CSCOPE and typed up every questions I could find. I then enlarged them, printed and glued them onto construction paper. They were then laminated and cut apart. I sorted them into 10 different categories: Text to Self, Text to Text, Text to World, Expository Text, Story Elements, Bio/Autobiography, Drama/poetry, Author's Purpose/Theme, Research Writing, Word Study and Writing, and made the notebook below to store them in. Now I can grab my notebook when I call a flexible group, or literature circle, and pull questions that align with the text they're reading, etc.

Crazy about Idioms!!

I love doing this project with my students! The original idea came from a fellow 5th grade Reading teacher. The kids love it! Other classes are encouraged to come down our hallway and try to "solve" our idioms.

Here are just a few of them:

The answers are under the flap. Scroll down to see the answer to the first one!

Comparing Characters

If you've never read Beatrice's Goat byPaige McBrier or The Royal Bee by Frances Park, you and your students are missing out on a perfect pair of books for comparing and contrasting characters! Both characters come from poverty and rise above their problems to attend school and help their families. The overall theme of each book is a life lesson we all can learn from. Here are the anchor charts our class created during the lesson. Students worked on their graphic organizers in their Reading Reflection journals as we worked on the large ones all together.

The circle charts include characteristics of Beatrice and Song Ho around the inner circle. The outer circle has our inferences about the characters. We then did a venn diagram between the two. This was over two days. The students are now able to do this graphic organizer easily with other books during Literature circles or other lessons across curriculum.