Our New Read Aloud

Last week we finished up Absolutely Almost.

I really enjoyed this book. I still cannot decide if I enjoyed it more than Half a Chance.

Both books are great and hopefully the students enjoyed them as much as I did. Today I introduced our next read aloud. I love reading new books. My goal each year is to read aloud the book that might win the Newbery. I have been lucky the last two years to have read aloud the book that became the winner. This year I have a favorite to win. I am saving that book for our read aloud when we get back from winter break. 

The book we started today was Nuts to You. 

Last year the winner of the Newbery was Flora and Ulysses. The book centered around the story of a girl and a squirrel. As you can tell from the cover squirrels are going to play a big part of this book. 

I loved when we started this book today that a student predicted this book will include Words of the Wiser. When I asked the class what animal in the woods might be the character to deliver the Words of the Wiser, they all predicted that it would come from an owl. 

It is was nice to see that the class was already realizing that they should not just be looking for the signposts we have discussed in Charlotte's Web. Hopefully as we read the book the class will love it as much as our other books. I also hope that we can find some of the signposts we have talked about so far.

Changes

This year is bringing many changes. Ohio has adopted Ohio's New Learning Standards. The way that fourth graders are assessed will also look very different from what you experienced last year. I think it is important to make you aware of these changes. I am planning on spending one night a week (for the next few months) on the blog talking about these new ideas.

Tonight I thought I would take it easy and just give you a website. The website will take you to PARCC online. PARCC is the group creating the new assessments that fourth graders will take this year. Here is a brief description of PARCC that comes directly from their website:

The Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) is a group of states working together to develop a set of assessments that measure whether students are on track to be successful in college and their careers. These high quality, computer-based K–12 assessments in Mathematics and English Language Arts/Literacy give teachers, schools, students, and parents better information whether students are on track in their learning and for success after high school, and tools to help teachers customize learning to meet student needs. The PARCC assessments will be ready for states to administer during the 2014-15 school year.

If you do go to the site, it will appear that PARCC is an online test. This is the case, but this year our fourth graders will be taking a pencil paper version of the test. I hope that this information helps. If you have any questions please feel free to get in touch with me and I will try to answer them the best I can.

Hope you are having a great week.

Another Signpost

Today the fourth grade language arts teachers got to attend a professional development to talk about writing across the curriculum. I hate to be away from the room but I believe professional development is so important. I always walk away from a professional development day with a handful of ideas that I can use in the class right away. Today was no different. I cannot wait to give these new ideas a try in our room.

In class the students continued to work on reading Charlotte's Web.

When the class is reading this book they are on the look out for signposts that will help them to a deeper understanding of the book. I already talked about our first signpost...Tough Questions. If you did not read about Tough Questions, just scroll down a few days to learn about that important signpost. Another signpost that the class is on the lookout for is Words of the Wiser. 

Words of the Wiser is one of my favorite signposts. Many of the characters that I love in books and movies are the ones delivering the wise lines. There is Yoda in Star Wars, Mookie in How to Steal a Dog, the wise turtle, Dumbledore, Charlotte, and the list goes on and on. 

When students find these Words of the Wiser moments, they need to stop and ask themselves the question: "What's the life lesson, and how might it affect the character?" The advice from this wise character can often lead you to the theme of the book. So be on the lookout for examples of these wise characters in the books, television shows, and movies that you are watching. If you notice an example of the wise words, stop the movie or pause the show or grab that bookmark and have a discussion about how those words might affect the character.

Hope you are having a great week.

Tough Questions

Today Ms. Cavallaro introduced our first signpost that we are going to talk about as we read the book Charlotte's Web. 

The book that we took these ideas of signposts from is called Notice and Note.

The authors of the book found six signposts that you can almost find in every book. When reader's find these signposts they can start to have a deeper understanding of the book they read. We have decided to just introduce two of the six signposts as we read Charlotte's Web.

The signpost that we introduced today is called Tough Questions. You can see the poster above that explains the signpost. To introduce the idea Ms. Cavallaro showed a clip from the movie The Lion King. In the clip Simba asks himself the tough questions that we are looking for in our book. 

Ms. Cavallaro then taught the class the question they will ask themselves when they notice the question. Now students can search for moments in Charlotte's Web where the characters ask themselves tough questions. We will continue to talk about tough questions and showing the class examples of characters in books and movies asking themselves Tough Questions. If you are a reader yourself or love movies, you might want to look for these signposts yourself. They do make reading more enjoyable. When you find one of these Tough Questions moment you can ask yourself the same question our students will be asking when they find an example:

What does this question make me wonder about?

Hope you are having a great week.

Charlotte's Web

Do you know that in 1953 Secret of the Andes won the Newbery Medal? The reason that I bring it up is we just started to read the book it beat out Charlotte's Web. I love Charlotte's Web. It is a classic. I constantly try to read the new books from the new authors. I think it is important to know modern books but I think it is just as important to know and read the classics. This book is a classic.

We are going to read this book as a class. A whole class novel. This is something new for me. I think there is value to reading a book together as a class. First it helps build a community in our room. We will all share the experience of reading this book together. I also now that in upper grades the whole class novel is often the main way of teaching. Our students need to be prepared for that experience so we might as well start. 

The main reason that Ms. Cavallaro and I wanted to read this book together is to introduce some ideas that we found in the book Notice and Note. 

The rest of the week we are going to introduce two signposts that students can find while they read a book. I will try and explain these signposts on the blog the rest of this week.

I hope you had a great start to your week.

Book Talks

We have started our second round of book talks this week. I love getting to hear about the new books that our students are reading.

These are some of the titles that we have heard so far and some that we are going to hear in the next few days. The main reason that I love book talks so much is it gives the students a chance to hear about books from fellow students. I try as hard as I can to find a book that is right for students sometimes I get lucky sometimes I don't. When students hear about a book that a friend read, they always seem to get lucky. 

When I have our reading conferences in the days following a book talk, I always notice the books that were shared are now the ones that are being read. Books fly off the shelf when students see that other students loved the book. We have about two more weeks of these book talks (we are only have two students share a day). I cannot wait to hear more of these talks and see the excitement over the books build.

Hope you are having a great week.

Absolutely Almost

I have said this before but my favorite part of the day is read aloud. It is great to sit at the rocking chair and share a book with the class. I love to hear the thinking that the class has to share about the book. This week and even last week our main character Albie has been going through a lot. 

He has lost a group of friends at school and he feels that his father does not have time for him and things just keep getting worse and worse. Today Albie tossed a model airplane out of his window, his whole birthday was ruined, and his life seemed broken like that airplane that crashed to the ground.

On Monday we asked the class to think back about the book and try to fill out an A to Z list. We have done this A to Z list earlier this year during our thinking about the drought. I love the A to Z list. Students can really show off what they know about a topic or a book when they fill out these A to Z lists.

I loved some of the work that the students shared on their A to Z list. For the letter R we had red gummy bears, for D we had donuts (of course), for Z we had zombie in the bathtub, and the amazing ideas went on and on. After the class had time to fill out their A to Z list, they picked one letter that they thought was the most important to the book. Then they wrote about why that idea was so important to the book.

Hope you are having a great week.

Writing In Our Own Words

Today before we started to work on the final drafts of our drought articles, we wanted to think about writing in our own words. I think when we write nonfiction two things that we always seem to need to work on is not making the writing sound like a list of facts and plagiarism. To try and tackle a bit of both problems we looked at some writing by the amazing Seymour Simon.

We marked pages from each of these amazing books. Then the students in their groups got a chance to read the text. This reading exposed them to how Simon writes without making his writing seem so list-ish. Then we talked to the groups about how we turned text from a source into our own words. The groups took off and turned the page they had read into their own writing. The groups did a great job. Tomorrow and the rest of the week they will get a chance to put this practice into action as they create their final draft.

Hope you had a great start to your week.