The Umbrella {Literacy and Science}

With a school wide Book of the Month for Jan Brett's The Umbrella underway, I've been working to complete a literacy companion.  This book is rich with content and aligns wonderfully with multiple core and science expectations.  

Our school theme for the year happens to be rainforest with each grade level selecting a specific continent to highlight.  In the past, we work through lessons and host a culminating event at the end of the year.  

Here's what is available in this file...

 8 featured story animals {Posters and Trading Cards}

Links provided for a class webquest on each animal!

An additional 6 rainforest animals {Posters and Trading Cards}

Links provided for class webquest on the additional rainforest animals.

Layers of the Rainforest {Posters and Trading Cards}

Interactive Notebook Activity

Links available for class webquest on Rainforest Layers

Comprehension Strategies and Response Pages Provided

There are many ways to teach this book.

This week I will be diving into my learning of The Umbrella and the rainforest.  I plan to come back and share pictures soon!  Open house is next week.  I hope to have lots of stuff up on my wall! 

Biography and Text Feature Freebies

This week we began biographies in readers workshop and reports in writers workshop.  Our week began with an introduction to biographies.  Eek!! Wilma Rudolph was so.very.popular!  The kids began their studies with the anthology which featured a wonderful non fiction story about Wilma in time order. By mid week, we were diving into the school wide book of the month: Wilma Unlimited: How Wilma Rudolph Became the Fastest Woman.  

Writers had a strong focus on text features.  The kids took a keen interest in learning all content thrown their way!  It just so happened that I was offered an opportunity to try Scholastic Magazine for February and March just in time for reports and life cycles.  After reading Beth Newingham's article on Non Fiction Reading Resources, I jumped at the offer.  The magazines are perfect for learning text features and their digital issues would ensure students engagement throughout the entire lessons.  With the now!Board, I was able to display and allow the kids to interact with the magazines whole group.  I decided to focus on timelines.

This article came from Feb 2012 Scholastic Issues.

After reading Wilma Unlimited and observing photos online, we charted a few facts.  The kids went back to their anthologies to pull out the rest of their facts.  With peer and teacher conferencing, kids ordered their dated facts on a timeline and secured them with tape.  Their biographies were the best I've ever seen from 2nd graders.  

I tried to enlarge so that you can read!

To conclude biographies, we ended our week learning about George Washington Carver with our 3rd Grade FCAT Buddies.  Brainpopjr features a wonderful video on their website.  I purchased a membership early this year for a single computer at $8.00 a month.  TOTALLY WORTH IT!!  As a result, we have this cutie patootie door!!!!

Whatcha think?

The kids created a list of words from the Brainpop video to describe George Washington Carver.  They teamed up with their buddies and used a Thesaurus to identify synonyms.  With synergy, Team FCAT developed wonderful vocabulary.  

If you want to subscribe to Scholastic Magazines, you can go to this link here!

The Book Whisperer: Reading Carousels

In honor of The Book Whisperer's chapter 2, I created various favorite books for each subject.  I plan on having a Book Frenzy at the start of my school year.  No Rules, No Expectations...Just allowing the kids to select their favorites from my classroom library.  This provides an opportunity to see what students gravitate to.  I would like to include an additional step in this frenzy. My class has their own blog.  I'd like the kids to create their own Amazon widget, capturing their favorite books.

My favorite quote from this chapter came from Mark Twain, "The man who does not read great books is no better than the man who can't."

Reading Strategy Charts

I've created reading strategy charts to align with the graphics used in my personal focus walls.  I've uploaded the file to my TpT store.

Comprehension Connections

Comprehension Connections: Bridges to Strategic Reading was recommended by a colleague.  It is written by a teacher whom provides concrete connections for anchor lessons in reading strategies. Metacognition, schema, inferring, questioning, determining importance, visualizing, and synthesizing can be difficult for many primary students.  Tanny's book spells out interactive meaningful connections to understanding the strategies taught with easy to read lessons to align.  

Reading Resource (dot) net has pictures demonstrating activities from Tanny's book and printable sheets to use with activities.  Link here.