Responding to Literature: Ideas and Book Responses for Teaching Reading Comprehension

Do you ever struggle getting your students to respond to books you read to teach comprehension?

Often do you wonder, "are they really getting it"?

When I am explicitly teaching about comprehension such as connections, schema, plot, etc., I use the vocabulary that teachers may think of as "scary" or "intimidating" for their students. 

Sometimes we think, "wait a minute, that word is way to big for me to use in my teaching dialogue with my 6 and 7 year olds!"

WRONG

My first graders use those big words, WHY...because they hear me use those BIG words.

Daily I hear my students using language such as this:

"I have a connection. This reminds me of a time....."

"I am using text clues to infer that..."

"In my schema..."

"I predict..."

We know that kids mimic what we say starting at a very young age.

If you are using "teacher talk" in your lessons, your  kids eventually will too!

Not only will they use they language, they will understand it and be able to write their thinking down as well! We all want our readers to be thinkers!

Here are some example books I use to teach my students comprehension strategies and the response pages they use to write about their thinking after we read the book.

Text to Text Connections

The Art Lesson

Patches Lost and Found

Text to Self Connections

The Relatives Came

Too Many Toys

Sequencing (Beginning-Middle-End)

Caps for Sale

Harry the Dirty Dog

Strega Nona

Comparing 

The Little Red Elf----Little Red Hot

Goldilocks----Goatilocks

Predicting

Green Wilma

Dory Story

Inferences

Two Bad Ants

Duck on a Bike

Main Idea

Click, Clack, Moo

Giggle, Giggle, Quack

Earlier this year we read the story Patches Lost and Found.

I had my students make 2 connections to the story. As they listened to me read, instead of raising their hand to share, they recorded their thinking on a sticky note.

{find the printable anchor chart seen HERE}

I love hearing my students thinking this time of year. They have seen me model enough to embrace and share their thoughts and such great conversations come from it!

You can find the reader's response sheets in the pictures above in my Reader's Response to Literature pack in my TpT store.

A Game of Contraction Toss

Who's kids love to get up and moving?

I know mine do and boy do they need it. We require them to sit, listen, be quiet, whisper.

Lord knows sometimes it's okay to make a little noise when learning!

We have been tuned into contractions the past few weeks. 

Here is a fun way to review or even assess your students.

Prep is easy: paper, marker and something to throw (we used a bean bag).

Each student had the chance to toss the bean bag onto the paper. 

They were to read their contraction and tell us the two words that made it.

They then chose a friend.

From this activity, I could pretty much tell who my strugglers were.

My other firsties listened intently and helped their friends when needed. 

This game is SUPER versatile and could be used across any content area:

compound words

categorizing nouns/verbs/adjectives

phonics/word families

rhyming words (read and generate)

fact fluency

This may just become a staple game in our classroom!

Teaching MLK in a Mini-Unit

It seems like January starts the beginning of the never.ending holiday celebrations. First, there is Martin Luther King Jr. day, followed by Groundhog's day, the 100th day of school, and Valentine's Day.

 {Holy holidays!} 

 Uhhh, can anyone say PTL for Spring Break!

Since there are SO many things SO close together to touch on, I figured a day or 2 for each would just have to do. Therefore, I made a MLK mini-unit to kick things off!

This mini-unit is the perfect way to teach MLK in a day (or two)!
 All you need is a non-fiction book to accompany the pages in this unit and you are set!

Here is what the unit includes:

*Who Was MLK? {describing graphic organizer}
*MLK was/had/wanted facts organizer
*MLK 3 facts and a fib {students produce & record 3 facts and a fib)
*Comparing MLK and Me! {Venn diagram}
*MLK: Fact or Not so Much {cut and paste fact activity}
*I Have a Dream, Too! {creative writing prompt}
*I Have a Dream {writing paper}
*MLK ABC order

It's now available in my TpT shop .
It's on sale this weekend only!!

  

I also saw this amazing idea on Cara's blog to show kiddos the difference between races, good ol' equality as MLK would call it. You need 2 eggs (1 white and 1 brown). Talk about how the eggs are different, the only big difference being color. Then, break the two eggs (removing the shell from sight) and ask the kids if they know which egg came from which shell.

Hopefully this is what they get from it “So…the eggs are like people. Dr. King knew that everybody was really alike and the only thing that was different was the color of our skin, so that’s why he thought that things were unfair.”  TOTALLY GENIUS, right!?!?  Such a great way to show the concept for those visual learners!

January Print and Practice Pages

Living in Texas, getting "snowed in" doesn't happen often ever happen So sometimes I have to pretend like I'm snowed in with the rest of the country on dreary cold (like lows in the 40's) days. That's cold for us folks! On days like these, I like to envision myself sitting at my computer with a cup of coffee starting at the snowfall out the window and creating great products for my kiddos. So instead of "snow days" on occasion we have "ice days".

So while I was iced in a couple of years ago,  I created this little gem and am revisiting it for my own version of "Throwback Thursday"!



his "snowed in" creation features easy printable pages that are great for morning work, independent practice pages or homework during January.

Included in the pack:
Grammar Practice Pages
Noticing Nouns
When It Snows I Can... (verb practice)
Describe that Snowman
Describe that Cocoa
Snowball Nouns and Verbs
Winter Wonderland ABC Order
Snowy Sentence Punctuation

Phonics Practice Pages
Assorted Snowmen (silent E practice)

Reader's Response Pages
Text to Text Connections
Inferring
Predicting
Beginning/Middle/End



Click on the picture below to get a FREE page from the pack!

As always, I like to give my products to my avid blog followers so the first 3 of you to leave a comment with your email address will win the pack for free!

If you don't happen to snag it, find it in my TpT shop!

Ring in the New Year with a Freebie and Sale!

 Time to ring in the new year...on the blog of course!

If you are like me, you return to your littles next week.

Part of me is excited (I've missed them).

Part of me is sad (I'll miss "me time").

But despite my emotions 2016 is continuing.

 

Here is what I prepared (a short 2 weeks ago) for us to learn about when we return tomorrow!

Resolutions OR in terms of 1st graders Goals.

 

This book does a great job at explaining what a resolution is in first grade "terms".

{If you don't have the book, find a great read aloud HERE on YouTube}

 

We read it Monday and make our own resolutions after learning how and why we make them.

Together, we make two class resolutions or goals. We also made a personal goal we could keep during this new year.

 

{Last year's example} 

 

We like to get artsy so we will create our first craftivity of the new year with our new goal!

 

This year my goal is to promise to take care of others.

To reach my goal I am going to giving them more medicine.

 

Precious.

 

This year my goal is to promise to exercise.

To reach my goal I am going to play football.

 

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We normally don't spend too much time talking about the new year.

In the past I have also used this sheet to briefly discuss why we celebrate the new year.

This quick little sheet your kiddos can fill out that helps them look back on last year and forward to the coming new year!

 

 

 

Find it in my TPT store where you can download for FREE!

Make sure to look around while you are there because everything in my store is 20% off today and tomorrow!

 

Happy New Year to you and your family!

Holidays in the Classroom Recap

Now that Christmas has come and gone, let's recap how the last few days before the holidays looked in the classroom!

Our most fun day of the entire year has to be Polar Express Day!

What's better than:

Jammies

Donuts

Hot Chocolate

Santa Letters

Bells

Even our elf got in on the fun!

After watching the movie we tend to craft it up!

We did some addition with our leftover marshmallows that we didn't put in our hot chocolate.

I gave each student a hand full of marshmallows. 

They had to count them and come up with their own addition sentence. 

We described our hot chocolate using adjectives. 

Mid December we wrote our letters to Santa and sent them to the North Pole.

The best part of the last week was receiving our letters from Santa!

Each kiddo received a personalized letter from Santa and a bell just like off of his sleigh in the movie The Polar Express! 

 {Here's how it's done...}

The last few days in the classroom are always the most patience-testing but also the most magical and fun days we will experience all year!

Gingerbread Maps

While doing our unit on gingerbread this past week, the artist in me really really wanted to let my students design a gingerbread house, because who doesn't love decorating gingy houses!?

But I knew I had to incorporate it somehow into my instruction to make it meaningful!

So I found mini paper sacks at Hobby Lobby...because I was not about to wash out milk cartons from lunch! Germs and hot milk just don't jive.

We spent 2 days (20 minutes each day) assembling our houses.

The first day we "built" them. The second day we decorated them.

We had been studying maps, their features, and cardinal directions.

Brilliantly, I decided we should make a Gingy Neighborhood!

So we created a class map for our houses.

We named the streets and added a compass rose.

We played a "game" to place the houses on the neighborhood map.

I started off by choosing a student & telling them where to place their house based on my directions.

"Put your house north of Peppermint Lane."

That student then got to choose a friend and told them where to put their house using directions.

Our neighborhood filled up quickly!

This was also a great assessment tool to tell whether students were able to give directions using a map and follow directions using a map!