Poetry is perfect for accomplishing many of your literacy goals. One of the great things about poetry is how short it is. You can accomplish a lot in a short amount of time! This blog post will feature 5 ways I use poetry in my classroom, with links to resources to help you do the same! (The FREEBIE is at the end, so read on!)
Close Reading
One good way to use poetry is for a close reading, especially if your students have not done them before. The purpose of a close reading is to teach students the skills they need to analyze a text deeply. Poetry is perfect for that because poems generally have a literal meaning that is readily apparent, but also a deeper meaning that emerges through close reading. Another reason poetry is terrific for a close reading is because the text is generally short, usually no more than a page. And finally, if a poem has rhythm and rhyme, it can make the text more accessible to students, and also more fun to reread. If your students hate the repeated readings required by close reading, try poetry!
In my classroom, I like to begin the year with poems about school, and our first close reading is of Mary Had a Little Lamb. We read the entire poem, not just the part that is generally known, and we also read a non-fiction text that tells the story of how the famous poem was written. Check out the Poetry Break – Poems about School Resource on TPT!
Vocabulary
Poetry is also perfect for teaching vocabulary. Many Tier 2 words (check out this blog post for more information) can be encountered in poetry. In this example from my Limericks Poetry Break, the context of the poetry helps students learn two Tier 2 words – brute and resembled.
Engagement
The rhythm and rhyme of poetry makes it perfect for getting students up and moving, which can be really important for engaging students who may not love the quiet sitting that often accompanies reading – especially boys. Poetry is meant to be read aloud, in fact, making it perfect for Task Cards like these, also from my Poetry Break – Limericks resource.
Loving Language
Finally, poetry can help your students fall in love with language. Similes, figurative language, hyperbole, alliteration, onomatopoeia…. These poetic devices help students find the beauty of English. And of course, these devices also show up in well written fiction and non-fiction, so learning to love the language and understand it through poetry increases student’s comprehension of other texts. For example, consider this poem, Sick by Shel Silverstein. This is a terrific example of hyperbole, and so fun for students. That poem is featured as a Poetry Break in Poems About School.
The alliteration and repetition in A Ring Upon her Finger by Christina Rossetti make this a great poem for easing in. If you, or your students, are nervous about poetry, give it a try with one of my print and teach units. These units include everything you need to help your student analyze poetry, write poetry, and learn to love poetry!
Poetry Breaks
I love fun and spontaneity in my classroom. One way I do that is with Poetry Breaks. A Poetry Break is exactly what is sounds like. I find a poem that I want to share with my students. Then, when they least expect it, I hold up the Poetry Break paddle, and read them a poem. We talk about it briefly, and then I reread the poem. Then, we return to our regularly scheduled lesson. Eventually, I give the paddle to a student and ask them to plan a Poetry Break. They LOVE it, and it gets them reading LOTS of poetry! Want to try it in your classroom? Download this FREEBIE which includes an overview of the strategy and a Poetry Break paddle of your own – everything you need to bring poetry to your classroom!
Take a Break for Poetry today! You’ll be glad you did!
As I’m sure you know, goal setting and data tracking is an important strategy for raising student achievement. John Hattie found that student self efficacy (what I like to call ownership) resulted in a .92 change in achievement – well over the .4 hinge point that marks a successful educational initiative. And, goal setting leads directly to a feeling of self-efficacy, so it is well worth our time to teach students to write effective goals and to reflect on their growth. (For an overview of all of Hattie’s work, click here, and grab his book, Visible Learning, if you don’t have it already!)
In this blog post, we are going to focus on how to help students make meaningful goals in reading. Click to jump right to the section you need, or read in order.
If you want a resource that will help you do all of that, check out Student Data Binders. There are 110 Student Sheets in all the academic areas plus Leadership and Social Skills!
Grab this on TPT and get everything you need for ALL the academic and social areas!
Writing Meaningful Goals
The first word I want to focus on is meaningful. It has become quite a trend in education to have students track their reading level – AR, DRA, BAS…. Whichever system you use, you may be asking students to keep track of their reading level. You may have them set a goal around their reading level, you may have them make a beautiful graph of their growth….
If so, please STOP! Reading levels are not meaningful to students. When I was teaching 3rd grade in a building that was highly focused on data, we had a training on goal setting, and were encouraged to have our students set goals based on their reading levels. Something felt weird to me about it, but I believe in goal setting and I believe in using reading levels to drive instruction, so I went along with it and had all of my students set goals to improve their reading levels by at least 3 levels during the year.
My son went to kindergarten in the same district that year. I will never forget the day he came home with a paper from his teacher that said he was a Guiding Reading Level J. That is 2nd grade reading level, so I was understandably excited! He wasn’t. He was pretty disgusted by the whole thing because his teacher told him he could only read books out of a certain tub, which was mostly filled with Little Bear books. He was not a fan of Little Bear. He felt restricted by his reading level, and just wanted to read books about Cars (the movie, which he loved!)
As a teacher, I learned an important lesson that day. Reading levels are for teachers, not for kids, and not for parents. I finished the year with my 3rd grade students and their goals about reading levels. I bet you know what happened. Not much. Kids don’t know what it takes to move from a level M to a level N. So, the goals weren’t meaningful to the students, and little progress was made. My students certainly felt no ownership of their learning. It was almost like their goals were being done to them instead of with them – just like my son.
If you don’t believe me, trust the experts. Fountas and Pinnell have written and tweeted extensively on this in the Reading Teacher, EdWeek, their blog, and other places. They are pretty clear that reading levels are for teachers, not students or parents. The link to their blog includes some really helpful phrases to use with parents. Check it out!
So, that was a really long intro to goal setting. 🙂 If we aren’t having students set goals around reading level, what does that leave us? Well, what is meaningful to students and in their control? These are some areas that make meaningful goals for students.
Genre/Wide Reading
Number of books read
Fluency
Increasing reading stamina
As you get to know your students individually, you will probably find other areas, unique to each reader, that are meaningful and worthy of a goal. You, the teacher, bring your expertise and knowledge of what it takes for students to move to the next level. The student brings the interest and motivation. And in the space between, a meaningful goal will emerge.
“You, the teacher, bring your expertise and knowledge of what it takes for students to move to the next level. The student brings the interest and motivation. And in the space between, a meaningful goal will emerge.”
For example, you know that a student who cannot read a grade level text fluently is likely to struggle with decoding so significantly that they lose track of meaning and are unable to comprehend a text. You also know that strategies for increasing fluency include close reading practice decoding multi-syllabic words in context. So, together, you and the student might write a goal like this:
“By the end of October, I will increase my fluency from 84 words per minute on a fifth grade level text to 90 words per minute on a fifth grade level text. I will use my Menu time to complete the Multi-Syllable Words Task every week in October and I will reread our close readings one extra time each week.”
This goal is SMART – Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Time-Based. And it is meaningful because it is entirely in the students’ control, and it will help them achieve. Just make sure that the idea comes from the student and that they feel excited to use their menu time to complete those tasks. If you impose the goal, you will find a far lower rate of growth than if the student chooses a goal that is important and fun for them. Choice is a key motivator, so give kids choices!
This Goal Setting Sheet is included in Student Data Binders, which you can grab on TPT!
Tracking Data
Once your students have meaningful goals, you will need to find a way for them to track their goals, and also the time for them to do that work. If students don’t reflect and track regularly, they will lose motivation and the goal will lose its power.
I have a weekly time on Fridays for students to reflect on their goals. Students grab their data binders and track their data from the week. These are some of the data tracking sheets that I use. One way I differentiate in my classroom is with student goals and data tracking. All students track their books read on either the Weekly or Monthly form (depending on which one helps them be successful). All students track projects and tests on the Standards-based form. The other forms are given to students only if they match their goals.
How often to change the goals
I have experimented with this a lot. Yearly goals are way too big for most students. They lose motivation and falter over time. Weekly goals take too much class time and are so small that they don’t result in much growth. Quarterly goals are not bad, but for me, monthly works the best.
First, a month is not a huge span of time. It’s long enough to create a lofty goal, but not so long that students lose motivation. Also, monthly goals can be seasonal. Frequently, students write goals in October around reading a certain number of spooky books. In February we talk a lot about kindness, students sometimes make goals around reading and recommending books to friends as an act of kindness. Monthly gives these fun options and helps keep the goals varied and interesting.
Second, if a student does not meet their goal, they get 10 chances each year to try again. When we set yearly goals, I found that students often realized in January that they could not meet their goal under any circumstances, and so they stopped trying. With monthly goals, students get a do-over every few weeks! That really fits the growth mindset that I try to help students build.
Finally, monthly goals give students lots of practice with goal setting and reflecting. By the end of the year, students will set 9 reading goals and 9 math goals in my classroom. They will set 8 writing goals and 8 leadership goals. And they will set 6 Science goals, 6 Vocabulary goals and 6 Social Studies goals. (As you probably noticed, I don’t have students set all the goals in the first month. We increase the number of goals as the year progresses.) My students will be pretty good at writing SMART goals by the end of fifth grade!
Goal setting and data tracking are important tools that help students take ownership in their learning and achieve at higher levels. I hope that this blog post has given you some ideas and that you bring goal setting to your classroom. My resource on TPT can be helpful, so grab that, or make your own, and give it a try!
In the past year and a half, I have grown to love Google Forms. They are so versatile – you can include text, videos, photos… There are tons of different ways to ask questions, and they save me time because they are self-grading. What’s not to love? I use them for all the time. For more information on how to use them, be sure to check out this blog post.
Why digital instead of physical?
One of the things I most enjoy creating with Google Forms is Escape Rooms. I used paper Escape Rooms in my classroom before discovering the digital version, and I will never go back! Escape Rooms are so fun and engaging for kids – they forget they are learning! The key advantage of Google Form Escape Rooms is no prep. With the paper version, you have to print, cut, laminate, assemble, distribute…. You get the idea. Once a digital Escape Room is created, there is NO PREP! Just assign it through your Google Classroom, put the kids in groups, and away they go! For more about assigning Google Forms in Google Classroom, check out this blog post.
Escape Rooms teach content
Of course, an Escape Room is only as good as its content. My bestseller, Escape from the Lab uses texts and videos to teach students about the states of matter and to increase their comprehension skills of non-fiction text. It is a straightforward Escape Room that includes all of the information that students need to escape. Each section has a new lock, and the answers to the questions give students the code. I labeled this Escape Room B for Beginner because students do not need to solve difficult riddles and crack codes to be successful. Use this type of Escape Room if you haven’t done them with your students before or if you want the focus to be only content, and not include the extra layer of codes and ciphers. If students get the right answers to the questions, they will also have the codes and solutions for the riddles. These Escape Rooms are a similar challenge level – the content is on grade level, the codes are simple and all the information is clearly presented to the students
The Pet Nabber – an Escape Room type adventure about Number Sense
If your students are more experienced with Escape Rooms, I just finished creating Escape from Ireland, an adventure about the stories of Ireland. It’s perfect for St. Patrick’s day! The focus is on reading comprehension, so students read embedded texts and answer questions about them. The Escape Room includes a biography of St. Patrick that you can download for free on TPT! It also includes a retelling of the Legend of Finn MacCool, a fictional story about the Leprechaun King and 3 short descriptions of famous castles in Ireland. When you put those texts together with the storyline of the Escape Room, kids will be doing a lot of reading! The codes and riddles require some background knowledge, so this is rated I for Intermediate. I have filled this Escape Room with high quality photographs of Ireland, interesting texts and opportunities for critical thinking and problem solving. Plus, there are leprechauns and magic! What’s not to love!
You Decide Escape Rooms
Another type of Escape Room adventure is the choose your own adventure style. This is by far the most complicated type of Escape Room to create. It is not straightforward because the students make decisions during the activity, and each decision leads down a different path. These are incredibly engaging for for the kids, and I find that they play them over and over because they can have a different outcome each time! Escape from Plymouth Colony and Adventure in the Chocolate Factory are both this type of Escape Room.
Summary
Escape Rooms are versatile and easy to use, and kids love them! The varied formats, videos, texts, images, and adventure will hook them, and you will love the content and important strategies and skills that students can practice. Check out these digital Escape Rooms today and give one a try in your classroom. You will be glad you did!
This post was originally written to solve a problem – poor attendance and engagement during virtual learning on Zoom. Thankfully, we are now back in physcial school,
Maybe you don’t have this problem, but one challenge that I am facing is attendance during digital learning. For a whole host of reasons (technology snafus, motivation, family situations….) some kids struggle to attend our Zooms. And they tend to be the same kids who struggle academically. In my experience, one thing that motivates this population, and all of my students, is videos. The visual and auditory components are engaging, and if they are between 3-5 minutes, attention doesn’t lag. I’ve started pairing short videos with Google Forms as asynchronous learning so that all students, even those that don’t attend regularly, are receiving instruction. Pairing the video with a Google Form gives students an immediate opportunity to put what they’ve learned to use. When we return to in person instruction, I still think these will be invaluable tools to help remediate and extend students. I can see so many ways to easily differentiate by assigning students the video instruction and Google Forms that move them to the next stage.
In my TPT store, you can find many of the videos I’ve created with Google Forms. I’ve focused on upper elementary math, especially fractions so far. Be sure to check back because I’m always expanding this part of my store, mostly as I try to help my students regain lost ground. I teach fifth grade, so that’s why the content is mostly upper elementary. If this is something that you want to use often, I encourage you to look at this Growing Bundle focused on Fractions and save money!
In this blog post, I want to walk through one of the free resources on my TPT store so that you can get an understanding of how it works and whether this type of resource is a good choice for your classroom. The resource we will be exploring is Mixed Numbers and Fractions Greater than One (Improper Fractions). At the bottom of the blog post are links to many other similar resources that you might find helpful.
This resource includes a Google Form and an embedded video. If you’d like to preview the video, you can find it on my YouTube channel here.
When you download this free resource, TPT will automatically add it to your Google Drive. Make sure that you have signed in with the Google Drive where you want the file to be saved – usually your school account. If you are assigning the Google Form through Google Classroom or another district LMS like Seesaw, this is essential!
To preview the assignment and video, you will want to open the Google Form and view it as a student. The video does not play in the teacher view. To see the student view, click on the eye in the upper right hand corner, which I’ve circled in red in this image.
Once you are in the student view, you will be able to play the video. You can also give the Google Form a try and easily see what your students will experience. One of the things I love about Google Forms is the immediate feedback that students receive! And the teacher does too, so no grading!
Once a student completes the Google Form and submits their answer, they will be able to see their score immediately and also receive feedback about anything they missed. Learning theory tells us that just-in-time feedback is so important for learning, and Google Forms are one of the best tools I know for providing that just-in-time feedback. In this example, you can see that the student identified the fraction greater than one as 4/6, but the Google Form would accept either 7/6 or 1 1/6 as the correct answers.
One limitation on Google Forms is how exact the students have to be. Again, in this example, you can see that I’ve given exact instructions for leaving a space between the whole number and the fraction if students write a mixed number. Google Forms will count it incorrect if there is no space. As the teacher, you are able to modify the score if you need to. For example, if you don’t care about the space, you can easily go back and change the points.
To see the students’ results, and change the points if you want to, you will need to go to the Response View. Begin by clicking Responses, which is the top middle of the screen, circled in red in this image.
In this view you can easily see how your students are doing with this standard. Google breaks the data down into a class summary, which is fantastic for planning next stages for the whole class. Google also gives you question by question data and individual student data. To change points or grade a question, click “Question” in the center of the screen.
As you can see, in this example, 1 student left out the space, so that 1 1/6 looks like 11/6. If you would like to give that student credit, just click the green check mark and then save your changes with the red save button. Google Forms will automatically update the student’s score. If more than one student made that mistake, it will update all the scores with two clicks. Easy breezy!
I don’t have room in this blog post to go through all of the fantastic data that you get from Google Forms. Be sure to play around with it and explore. All this great data frees you from grading so you can do what you do best – plan for amazing instruction!
After you have analyzed your data in Google Forms, you may want it in a spreadsheet so that you can easily enter grades in a gradebook. That’s easy too! Let’s explore a few more options from Google Forms.
In the upper right hand corner, you will find a green icon that allows you to easily export your data as a spreadsheet. When you click the green icon, you will see this message, which allows you to merge the data with an existing spreadsheet or name it and create a new spreadsheet. The default name is the name of the Google Form.
Simply name the spreadsheet and then click create. That’s it!
Some other great features are embedded in the three dots to the right of the spreadsheet icon. When you click them, you get this menu. Again, you can download the responses from here. You can also set a time for the Google Form to stop accepting responses. This is really a great feature if you are using a Google Form as a quiz. Probably the feature I use most often is Delete All Responses. Once I have downloaded the data, I delete the responses so that the Form is clear and ready for the next class.
One final piece of troubleshooting advice. By default, the Form is set to receive responses. However, below the three dots you will see an option to toggle the Form’s ability to Accept Responses. If that is toggled to the off position, your students will not be able to complete the Form. That is probably the question I receive most often, so when you are having trouble, check to make sure your Form can Accept Responses! You will know it is toggled to “On” when it changes color.
I hope this post helps you know whether Google Forms are a good choice for your classroom. For more information on this topic, check these blog posts:
I highly recommend that you use Encounter by Jane Yolen if you are a teacher of the intermediate grades. This book is perfect to use for Columbus day or as part of a unit on The Age of Exploration. The rich illustrations and simple story will capture your students’ attention, and give you the opportunity to reinforce several important literature standards while also teaching about history. I love a two-fer! Read on for some insights into how to use this book in your classroom!
Why Teach About Columbus?
This book feels especially timely because Columbus has been folded into the ongoing conversations that we are having about race. The other day I overheard a fellow teacher explaining that she understood why we were pulling down the statues of Confederate soldiers, but why pull down statues of Columbus? If you (or your students, or your students’ parents) are wondering the same thing, this is the book for you.
The arrival of Columbus in the Americas led to the Columbian exchange, which caused the genocide of the indigenous people. I know that word genocide is harsh, but I looked it up in the dictionary. It is the correct word for “the deliberate killing of a group of people”. This book uses the scant facts we know about the Taino people (mostly from Columbus since the Taino people are extinct) and the author’s imagination to paint a picture of the beginning of that extinction.
I have loved this book since the first time I read it. Told from the point of view of a Taino boy, (the Taino were the indigenous people who first encountered Columbus), it is a new look at some old history. Definitely, put it on the top shelf! The words are lyrical and there is a rhythm, and a feeling of music, to many of them. David Shannon created absolutely marvelous illustrations that connect you to the long-gone Taino culture. Which brings us to our first teaching point.
How Illustrations Enhance the Mood or Tone of a Story
The final illustration is very powerful. It shows the narrator, now an old man. At first you notice his posture and the setting. As you look more closely, you notice that parts of the setting show through him, as if he is transparent, and his feet fade into nothingness. This is definitely a magic-paper worthy illustration! (What! You don’t know about magic paper? Read on!) Put the illustration under the doc camera and ask students to start with what they notice. No inferences yet, please. As they share the things they notice, hold a piece of white paper (cardstock if you have it) about a foot out from the projection and it will be magnified. Ta da! Magic paper! After students have noticed, I would ask them to turn and talk to share their wonders. Again, no inferences yet. Just questions. Finally, I would ask, “Why did the illustrator draw the final illustration this way? What is he trying to say?” Then, using their observations as evidence, and their questions to guide them, they will make some inferences about this. Along the way, you will probably have a very rich conversation about tone and mood!
Point of View or Perspective – Columbus v. Taino
This is a great text to talk about different perspectives. I like to contrast the boy’s view of the explorers with Columbus’ own writings about the Taino people. His journals are readily available online, and at the bottom of this post I’ve put the excerpt that you can use. It is from his first meeting with the Taino, and there are clear comparisons between what he actually said and what the narrator of Encounter says. Make sure to download the excerpt. Using primary sources is an important part of helping kids learn to be historians. And, it will spark fascinating conversations when compared with the illustrations and text!
Symbolism
On the first page the narrator dreams of large winged white birds that descend upon the village. The illustration helps even the most concrete thinker understand that the ships are the birds. It is a great symbol to explore, and it carries the narrative.
This book is a really great addition if you are looking to bring new perspectives to your tired, old explorer unit. I recommend it for students in grades 3 – 6. Younger than that will miss some of the nuance, but it is a great book to bring that Age of Discovery unit alive.
If you don’t already have the book, check it out from your library or grab a copy here. (As an Amazon Affiliate, if you click on the link and make a purchase, I make a small commission, at no charge to you! Thanks for supporting this teacherpreneur!)
Be sure to check out some of my other recent posts about great resources to use with kids to help them understand other perspectives.
As you know, teaching vocabulary is near and and dear to my heart. And I love to do it in a playful way whenever possible. I’m always trying to figure out a fun way to engage my students in word play, and Wander Words is the newest craze in my classroom.
Wander Words is pretty simple. The word “wanders” around, and students have to decode it. The word can start anywhere, and can travel horizontally or vertically in any direction. Each word comes with a sentence to give context. For example:
Everyone knows that Ms. Cotton’s favorite cookie is a _________.
Students would connect the letters to spell Snickerdoodle.
I’ve been using these cards in my classroom to help students step up their writing by using more scholarly transitions, and they are having a blast!
This is a really fun activity that exposes students to lots of Tier 2 words. I’ve created sets of task cards, with and without QR codes, that give students practice with lots of great scholarly words. My March 2020 freebie is a great set of these cards to practice scholarly transitions for writing. Be sure to download them today!
I am really fortunate to have a principal who supports me in attending a national or regional conference every year. This year, my whole team got to go to the regional NSTA (National Science Teaching Association) conference, and I was really inspired to jump into STEM! I had dabbled before, but the conference helped me see how to take the next step. What I really wanted was something that tied to my required curriculum, and also intentionally taught my students about Engineering Design Principles. I was looking for something more than an opportunity for kids to play around with cardboard and gadgets. Here’s what we did.
Students built background knowledge with a Gallery Walk.
I decided to incorporate required social studies standards about Native Americans, required math standards about subtracting and multiplying decimals and required science content about climates. We began with a Gallery walk including maps and pictures of traditional Native American Homes. Students worked in teams of 4 to look at a group of 2-3 pictures and record things they notice and things they wondered. After a few minutes they rotated to a new group of pictures. We also read an article about the First Americans to arrive that focused on the land bridge theory and the ways different cultures adapted to different climates. I wrote the text at three different levels so that all of my learners could access the information. We used a close reading protocol , so spent three days working with the vocabulary and ideas in the text. You can get the text and the Gallery walk maps and pictures in my TPT store here.
After my fifth graders had developed an understanding that people have adapted to different environments by using the available resources, we learned about the Engineering Design Process. We had gone through it before, but I created these posters so that my students could begin to internalize the steps. (The posters are free on TPT!) Then I put my students in groups of three. (I use an Excel spreadsheet to randomize the groups.) Each group randomly chose a climate card and a lifestyle card. The climate cards match the standard climates (Mediterranean, Tropical, Tundra, Arid, Temperate). They have two choices for lifestyles: permanent and nomadic. The challenge is to build a shelter that matches the climate and the lifestyle. So, a group might be building a permanent shelter for an arid climate, or a temporary shelter for a Mediterranean climate.
After we had explored the challenge together, each group got additional research materials: a short description of the climate including some of the natural resources, an analysis of each available building material’s Pros and Cons, and a list of the cost of each resource. The cost varies by climate because some resources are more difficult to get in different climates. The groups took a day to take notes from their research materials.
Then I guided students through the Engineering Design Process using the Student Guide. They completed the first few steps together, and then I met in a five minute conference with each group. The conference is essential! I used that as an opportunity to make sure that each student was involved in the planning process and understood the essential content about the climate.
Many groups had designed a traditional native home based on what they had learned about, and had not taken into account the climate and/or the lifestyle. For example, one group had chosen the tundra with a nomadic lifestyle. They initially planned to build a tepee, which was great for a nomadic lifestyle but a tepee in the tundra is not a suitable match! By meeting with that group, I was able to ask questions that helped them uncover that difficulty and they changed their design. Flexibility is a key attribute that I try to teach my students any chance I get!
Then, it was time to build! I gave students one hour to create their shelters. The next day I gave them one hour to test their design and improve it. All of the groups improved their design, so I felt really good about that! The final day of the project we invited parents and key staff (like my principal – always good to let him know that his PD dollars paid off!) to come to our presentations. Two students presented while one student from each group rotated to see the other groups. Then we switched, so after 3 rotations, everyone had seen the other projects. Each student left feedback for the other projects and then the projects went home.
Each student turned in an individual reflection, budget and self-assessment of their Habits of Mind, which I used to grade the project. I did grade the actual shelter, although you could. I focused my grading and feedback on the individual analysis of the features of the building and the individual student’s assessment of the design.
Students came up with innovations like hanging leather on the walls to add warmth in a temperate climate, building a grass covered awning for shade over a tepee in an arid climate, and weaving saplings (pipe cleaners) combined with grass to create a rainproof roof in a temperate climate. None of these building techniques were taught to them.
My students really loved this project, and so did my parents and my principal. I loved the way we brought together essential content and Habits of Mind like flexibility, innovation and problem solving. I purchased or found these materials for this project: clay, pipe cleaners, styrofoam, cardboard, hemp string, leather remnants and glue. My total cost for the class was under $20.00. All of the resources you need to complete this project are available at my TPT store. If you try this project or have suggestions for how to improve it, please leave comments.
Hop over to TPT to grab this Reader’s Interest Survey today! It will help you build relationships and plan reading instruction, and it’s no prep!
Read on to learn more!
Start the year right with a quick survey to get to know your readers. As you plan for effective reading instruction, a reader’s interest survey is a quick investment of time that pays off BIG! It gives you the data you need to ensure that your students are motivated to read, read, read! And as you know, the key to improving reading achievement is…. reading!
Read on to find out why spending 15 minutes on a Reader’s Interest Survey is the perfect way to get set up for strong reading instruction!
Read-alouds are a key reading instruction strategy for motivating readers. The first read-aloud of the year sets the tone, so you want to get it right – and all the read-alouds that come after as well! A Reader’s Interest Survey helps you find books that will resonate with your students and lead them to new reading discoveries of their own. It is important for intermediate students to read book series, and your class read-alouds are key for helping students discover new series to explore.
One year I was debating whether to read “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe” to my students or “City of Ember”. both books are terrific, and lead students to keep reading because they want to discover the rest of the books in the series. I took a quick look at the data from my Reader’s Interest Surveys, and noticed that two students had listed “The Giver” as a favorite. That made my decision easy! I chose “City of Ember” and watched with delight as several students in my class devoured the rest of the series!
Reason 2 – Matching Individual Readers with Motivating Books
One of the greatest joys of teaching upper elementary is matching students with that perfect book that motivates them to love reading. We know that motivated readers read, and that key to motivation is student choice and voice. A survey will help you listen to your students and guide you to start with titles they already love, and then stretch them to new titles, new genre, and new authors.
Several years ago, I was teaching 4th grade. At our back-to-school night, Riley’s mother expressed her concerns that her son didn’t like to read and asked for my advice. So, I read Riley’s Reader’s Interest Survey carefully. And she was right. He did not like to read…. The only book he had ever enjoyed was “Nate the Great”, which he had read 2 years previously. I decided that “The Bad Beginning” might be a good place to start, and it is one of my favorite read-alouds for the beginning of the year. And it worked! Riley had never encountered another book like that, and he devoured the rest of the series in sort order. By December, I was recommending the Nathan Hale books, and then a few months later “The Mysterious Benedict Society.” By the end of fourth grade, Riley was a reader.
Reason 3 – Buying Books That Will Fly Off the Shelves!
Choice is an essential component of motivating readers, especially struggling readers. The Reading Interest Survey will help you make wise choices on how to spend your hard-earned money. Looking carefully at your students’ responses helps you find the books that are engaging and effective for your readers. You don’t want to clean up at the end of the year and find books that have never had the cover cracked!
I will never forget Grace. Two years behind grade level, she was firmly convinced that she was not a reader. At the beginning of the year, she did not like reading. One of the questions on my Reading Survey is, “What do you like to do on the weekends?” She said she enjoyed babysitting her cousins. So, I dusted off “The Babysitters Club” series and gave her one to try. She loved it, and then made her way through many of the books in the series that year. At the end of the year, she proudly told me that she had read 18 books during the year – which was a huge improvement of the 5 she read in fourth grade. She had also made 2 years’ growth on the Reading STAR test! The Reader’s Interest Survey helped me match her with the perfect series.
Reason 4 – Enhancing Reading Instruction with Small Groups
As you know, small group strategies like Literature Circles and Book Groups help your students love reading and learn the skills they need to grow as readers. Reading is a social activity, especially in the intermediate grades. The survey results will help you match students with other students, building a community in your classroom and growing the reading conversation! Not only will you improve reading comprehension and motivation, you will also help your students make connections with each other. Loneliness and anxiety are a growing problem for adolescents, so any way we can bring them together provides a huge emotional benefit. How many times have you made a new friend, or deepened an existing friendship, by discussing a good book? Use your survey results to match students with similar interests and connect them with the perfect book!
Reason 5 – Personalizing Reading Instruction by Getting to Know Your Students
Strong relationships are key to building a vibrant classroom community and managing student behavior. A Reading Interest Survey is a great tool for helping you quickly get to know your students. A few minutes spent reading the answers will help you have great conversations with your students – the building blocks of the relationships that will set you up for success.
What do Teachers Say?
“I use this at the beginning of the year to get to know my new students and what interests them. It allows me to be on the lookout for books that match up with student interests, throughout the year.”
-Tamara B.
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 5 out of 5.
“Well laid out, easy to use and easy for the students to understand.”
Fifteen years ago, my dad told me that personalization was going to be the name of the game in education. As usual, he was right. What he calls personalization, we call differentiation. And it’s hard to do well. One of the things that I’ve struggled with is making differentiation easy for the teacher but not blatant to the student. We all know those students that shut down when they realize they are not at the same level as the others. That’s why I’ve started writing resources that look the same, but are at different Lexile levels. As Fountas and Pinnell have said repeatedly, a level is a teacher’s tool, not a child’s label. Read their blog post for more on that. https://fpblog.fountasandpinnell.com/a-level-is-a-teacher-s-tool-not-a-child-s-label
My goal with these resources is that you will easily be able to teach essential and/or interesting content while simultaneously differentiating the reading level for your students. And, they will be practicing on-grade level comprehension standards at the same time. Give them a try, and let me know what you think. Also, what other topics would you like to see? I’m working on one about the Northwest Native Americans right now, and have a couple of other ideas, but I’d love to hear from you about what you need!
Click here to go to my TPT store where you can buy leveled texts. If you follow me on TPT, I will email you whenever I post freebies on my blog! In the meantime, please enjoy this freebie Biography about Neil Armstrong (only available here – on TPT, you have to pay!). There are three Lexile levels – 800, 900 and 1,000. In the Common Core State Standards grade bands, 800 is about the middle of fourth grade, 900 is about the middle of fifth grade and 1,000 is about the middle of sixth grade. I hope this helps you teach essential and interesting content and differentiate at the same time!
