Anchor Charts: Character Analysis

Yesterday I posted some anchor charts for you in regards to starting out the school year with narratives. So, I'm sticking with that theme today in getting into one particular aspect of narrative elements: characters.

Across grade levels readers are responsible for getting to know their characters deeply, to walk in their shoes. As intermediate readers, our students need to be able to grow ideas about the characters in their stories. To be able to predict what the characters will think/do later in the story, and to notice when their characters are acting out of the ordinary. They need to be able to understand and explain why their characters are behaving in a certain manner and what causes characters to change.

Here are some ideas to get you started with analyzing characters:

Anchor Charts: Narrative Elements

Between your trips to the beach or the movies, I'm sure you're spending parts your summer vacation thinking about going back to school in the Fall. During Reader's Workshop at the start of the year my friends learn about stamina, choosing Just Right Books, and we spend lots and lots of time in narratives. We learn about narrative elements and getting to know our characters. These anchor charts may help you in planning where to start in August or September with your readers.

Data on the Brain! *FREEBIE*

Good morning everyone! I don't know about you, but I'm already having my "teacher" dreams. You know the ones, it's open house or the first day of school and you feel lost. Still have a month of summer left, but that doesn't mean my mind isn't prepping for it already.

Reader's Notebooks & *FREEBIE*

I've been thinking about school already! I have seen so many wonderful posts from all of you about the projects you're working on, and I guess you've inspired me. I'm starting with rethinking my Reader's Notebooks.

Synthesis Part Deux: Next Steps

Here they are, my lovely ladies! They have been working synthesis magic in my classroom over the last week. We've been really digging in to what it means to synthesize by using our schema and questioning to examine our changes in thinking. {See my last post if you missed it!} I've been brainstorming where to go next in this inquiry into synthesis, and after talking with a teammate today I think I've got it mapped out. But you know how it goes..best laid plans of mice and men and whatnot...

Synthesis and a *freebie*

I've been tackling the tricky thinking strategy of synthesis this month. I say "tricky" because it always seemed like too abstract of an idea for my kiddos to understand. How would I teach them to  understand how their thinking changed over time and texts?

Expository Text Structures

Today was the first day back, but without the kiddos. My team and I spent most of the morning planning common assessments for our next reading unit - nonfiction expository texts. This is honestly the first time we've ever had the opportunity to sit down and plan out all of our concept assessments for a unit, and it was great! Here's a peek into what we'll be learning next:

Linky: Must Haves for Reading Workshop

I'm linking up with another Lindsay from My Life as a Third Grade Teacher to share my Must Haves for Reader's Workshop. She's asking us to share what items we cannot live without for our Reading and/or Writing Workshops. These are items that either you or your students use on a daily basis.

Book Clubs & Inquiry Circles

So let me preface this by saying this is my first time at the rodeo! I'm trying my hand at book clubs with my kiddos, and I cannot be happier with how things are turning out! If only I'd done this earlier in the year, it's so much fun and they're learning SO much!

Denver, Here I Come!

This weekend I'm taking off with a couple of colleagues for a week in Denver, Colorado to attend the Spring Thinking Strategies Institute. I am beyond ecstatic at this opportunity to learn more about the thinking strategies our Literacy Team has been so focused on over the last two years. Coming from a Reading First background, this was all new to me upon my move to Florida. I must say I welcomed it with open arms! It has been an eye-opening experience to learn and understand what strong readers do, and being able to pass this information on to my kiddos is so rewarding.

Independent Reading

Sorry for the lull in posts! It seems that the past month has been packed with To-Dos,  and I'm just now getting a breather!

This may seem more like a beginning of the year kind of post, but I'm finding my friends need a little reminder about what independent reading looks and sounds like. We spend at least 30 minutes a day in Just Right books, busy tracking our thinking and sharing our ideas with partners.

Usually most students are engaged in their text, but some rarely track quality thinking or share their ideas with their partners. So this week we'll spend some time refreshing ourselves to Reader's Workshop. I made a bookmark and a few rubrics for my friends to use during independent reading. Please feel free to use them in your class too!

QAR

I hate to say it, but we're quickly approaching the end of the year assessments, in my case FCAT! I know many teachers at my school teach the QAR strategies early in the year. This encourages the students to use and feel comfortable with the strategy.

Character Traits

We've been working in narrative nonfiction in our reader's workshop this month. Reading narrative nonfiction is very similar to reading narrative fiction. Narrative nonfiction readers do the same kind of work that narrative fiction readers do. They track their thinking and pay attention to the main character. Only this time, your main character is a real person!

Using and Creating Rubrics

We started back at school this week with a full day of professional development. I attended a workshop on using and creating rubrics for assessing reading. I've never really used rubrics, other than a hand full of times when assessing projects in science, or book reports/projects, so this was a real eye opener for me!

Word Study Journals

Since I'm working on beefing up the word study part of my reading block, I've been thinking about what to include in my students' word study journals. As part of the 5th grade curriculum, my students need to know and be about to use word parts- prefixes, suffixes, and Greek & Latin roots.

Word Study

This year our school is revamping our word study approach for upper grades. As part of our school's Literacy Team, I was really excited to try something new for my 5th grade friends. We got off to a good start at the beginning of the year using Month by Month Phonics (whose materials only go up to 4th grade !) and Words Their Way.