Through Big W Photo Books service! (Australian department store).
Student authored informational texts are a great activity for getting students to write for an authentic purpose. For the past few weeks, the year 4 class I have been supporting has been hard at work on a book about the local community. These students have been highly engaged and are very proud of their work. They are buzzing with excitement to see the finished product. I cannot wait to show them what it looks like!
So how was this implemented?
First, students were introduced to the informational text structure. They were given example texts to read, to identify the structure and features.
The task was then explained to them; they needed to write an information text about the local community for the year 1 and year 2 students. Once the task was explained, the students had to brainstorm and research what services to include in the book. Students then chose what service they would like to cover.
The class jointly constructed the section about the local museum. This was an important step as it gave them practice for writing their own section.
Students then researched their selected service and wrote a piece complete with pictures. This class was very enthusiastic about it, they did some research at home and then posted their work on Edmodo. This made the whole process go a lot faster than if it was done purely at school. I also liked how they would comment on each others' work :D
The work was then edited and then I took their work and inserted it into the online photo book software. It was a bit of a tedious task in terms of positioning the text and making sure everything was coordinated, especially when the website was down and I thought I had lost everything! But the excitement and enthusiasm of the students made it worth it. I completed it on Thursday and according to the website, it is ready to ship! So fingers crossed it comes in sometime this week. They worked very hard on it so of course I want them to see their finished product by the end of the year.
I would definitely do this again. I feel that the authentic purpose boosted student engagement as they were excited to produce an actual book that would be read to other classes within the school. If it were just a piece of work that would sit in their writing book, it wouldn't have been as exciting.
Obviously printing photo books would be quite expensive to do on a regular basis, so to combat this, you could easily whip one up using Microsoft Office or even Photoshop and print it yourself at home. Most schools should have a binding machine in the photocopy room, so you could bind it there. Laminate the pages for durability. Alternatively, you could use a display folder.
For my American readers, I believe you can use the photo books service at Staples - yes, I did actually Google this so you wouldn't be left out :P
I am also working on another school book. A book of poems about the school. It is coming along quite nicely. I have the cover done and quite a few of the poems are typed up. This one is being published at the school, so it has been a lot easier, as I am using good old PowerPoint to create it. I cannot wait until this one is finished as well.
Enjoy what's left of your weekend!
Showing posts with label books. Show all posts
Showing posts with label books. Show all posts
Sunday, 23 November 2014
Saturday, 9 August 2014
A Week on Year 4
This week I was lucky enough to have one class for the entire week! I had a lot of fun. It's nice when you can plan a series of lessons that connect, rather than just turn up and do random, one off lessons.
So this post will be about my favourite lessons of the week, because if I write about everything, this will turn into a TLDR post.
Which, automatically lent itself to Text to Text Connections. Similar theme as the original; nice guy gets influenced by the bad guy to do the wrong thing and so he learns his lesson to not listen to the bad guy.
We also did some Reciprocal Teaching. I got to use my Reciprocal Teaching Pack (don't you just love shameless promotion?).
The text we used was Possum Magic by Mem Fox. To start off I went through each of the roles, the class was already familiar with this strategy, so it was a quick recap. Then as we read the text, students practiced using the roles. The text was good for the clarifying strategy, as it involved a lot of Australian terms and since some students were from different cultural backgrounds they didn't know what some of the things were. The internet was used to help with the visuals.
Another great Literacy lesson was about the book, A Little Election by Danny Katz.
After we discussed the story, I gave the students the task;
Imagine you want to be the 'Prime Minister of (insert school name here)'. What policies would you introduce and why? Develop a campaign to convince your teacher and peers to vote for you.
Students were allowed to work in groups or individually. They were allowed to develop their campaign however they wanted. Some students wrote a speech and some designed a poster. They used paper, computers and iPads to present their ideas.
I was pretty impressed, they came up with a lot of good ideas as well as justifying the reasons behind them. Was pleased to see that no one came up with the 'We will just play all day' idea :P
Our Art topic was 3D Illusion Art. Last week, I did the 3D hand activity and they were pretty impressed, so I did some research and found two more activities. On the Monday we did this one;
So this post will be about my favourite lessons of the week, because if I write about everything, this will turn into a TLDR post.
For Literacy, I focused on The Gizmo by Paul Jennings.
I love his stories, I remember reading them as a kid and would spend hours reading them in one go. The Gizmo is a great story to do with the older grades as the story is interesting and has themes the students can relate to. If you haven't read this book before, it's about a boy called Stephen who is pressured into stealing by the school Bully, Floggit. Stephen feels guilty about stealing so he tries to make it right by returning what he stole. However he can't, so he tries to rid himself of the item in different ways. Along the way he faces a few entertaining mishaps and by the end of the story he has learned his lesson.
I had only read the first chapter, when the students started to ask and answer their own questions about the story (by themselves! I didn't even have to ask them to!). The main question; "Why would Stephen hang out with this Floggit guy when he is such a jerk?". So that started a big discussion on how sometimes people hang out with people they don't necessarily like because they don't want to be an outcast or seen as a loser.
Throughout the week we did a few activities around the book such as; coming up with excuses to tell Floggit to avoid stealing the Gizmo and character profiles. The character profile activity produced some great responses. I let the students design it however they wanted. So some of them did it as a wanted poster, some as a profile and one student drew a picture of Stephen and wrote paragraphs about his personality around the picture.
We finished the book on Thursday and I told the class that if they liked the story they could go to the library and check out other books by Paul Jennings. I also mentioned how he wrote a few other books about The Gizmo, so they begged me to bring them in for Friday.
On Friday I read The Gizmo Again.
I had only read the first chapter, when the students started to ask and answer their own questions about the story (by themselves! I didn't even have to ask them to!). The main question; "Why would Stephen hang out with this Floggit guy when he is such a jerk?". So that started a big discussion on how sometimes people hang out with people they don't necessarily like because they don't want to be an outcast or seen as a loser.
Throughout the week we did a few activities around the book such as; coming up with excuses to tell Floggit to avoid stealing the Gizmo and character profiles. The character profile activity produced some great responses. I let the students design it however they wanted. So some of them did it as a wanted poster, some as a profile and one student drew a picture of Stephen and wrote paragraphs about his personality around the picture.
We finished the book on Thursday and I told the class that if they liked the story they could go to the library and check out other books by Paul Jennings. I also mentioned how he wrote a few other books about The Gizmo, so they begged me to bring them in for Friday.
On Friday I read The Gizmo Again.
Which, automatically lent itself to Text to Text Connections. Similar theme as the original; nice guy gets influenced by the bad guy to do the wrong thing and so he learns his lesson to not listen to the bad guy.
We also did some Reciprocal Teaching. I got to use my Reciprocal Teaching Pack (don't you just love shameless promotion?).
The text we used was Possum Magic by Mem Fox. To start off I went through each of the roles, the class was already familiar with this strategy, so it was a quick recap. Then as we read the text, students practiced using the roles. The text was good for the clarifying strategy, as it involved a lot of Australian terms and since some students were from different cultural backgrounds they didn't know what some of the things were. The internet was used to help with the visuals.
Another great Literacy lesson was about the book, A Little Election by Danny Katz.
Imagine you want to be the 'Prime Minister of (insert school name here)'. What policies would you introduce and why? Develop a campaign to convince your teacher and peers to vote for you.
Students were allowed to work in groups or individually. They were allowed to develop their campaign however they wanted. Some students wrote a speech and some designed a poster. They used paper, computers and iPads to present their ideas.
I was pretty impressed, they came up with a lot of good ideas as well as justifying the reasons behind them. Was pleased to see that no one came up with the 'We will just play all day' idea :P
Our Art topic was 3D Illusion Art. Last week, I did the 3D hand activity and they were pretty impressed, so I did some research and found two more activities. On the Monday we did this one;
(Image credit; http://www.frubilledkunst.dk/)
On Tuesday, when I came back (on Monday, I had no idea that I would be back on that class for the rest of the week), a few of them had taken them home and completed them to show me. So, I knew that I had to find another one to do with them on my last day. We did this one;
(Image credit; http://www.teachkidsart.net/)
The thing I love about 3D Illusion Art is that it looks complicated, but it's actually quite simple and the kids just love it! It kind of makes me want to start up some kind of Art Club if I get a job next year...
I really enjoyed my week on the class. I've always seen myself as an Infants Only teacher, but I think I would quite enjoy having a year 4 class. I kind of wish I had put different preferences on my EOI for 2015. The kids kept asking me if I could be their teacher next year, lol. I wish!
Next week, I have work on Monday and then I am back to waiting eagerly by the phone. I seriously think I am the only nutter who is up at 5am each morning so I can be all ready to go if I get a call after 6am :P
In TPT news, I have uploaded a bunch of new products and revamped a few of my older ones. I'll write about them next time.
Enjoy what's left of your weekend :)
Thursday, 31 July 2014
Casual Teaching on Years 3 & 4
So far this week, I have been working with Stage 2 (years 3 & 4). It has been a fairly good week so far.
On Monday, I had a year 4 class. It was a really great day, everyone was well behaved and enthusiastic about the tasks. That made the day go by smoothly and quickly. Sometimes, with the older grades you get the few students who like to test you by acting up and complaining about everything. Not the case with this class :)
Here is what we got up to;
* Literacy - Point of View with Dear, Mrs. LaRue.
Okay, I admit that I recycled the lesson I did with year 5 a few weeks back. However, when the text is this good can you really blame me? :P My favourite part of the lesson is the part where students have a discussion about why the illustrator has divided each page into two parts; b&w pictures and colour pictures. Some of the great responses were;
* the b&w shows the sad parts and the colour shows the happy parts
* the b&w shows what the dog is thinking about because you can see the thinking bubble
* the b&w shows what the dog is writing about
I'm always amazed with what responses students come up with!
We did not get time to do the reading response part as we had library at 10am. I had something really awesome planned with the iPads, but I can always do that next Monday :D
* Maths - Coordinates
I introduced this lesson with the question; What are coordinates and why do we use them? The most common answer? Minecraft! To help introduce this topic, I showed a map with no grid on it and asked students to find a street. They struggled. Then I put up the same map with a grid on it, and asked if they could find it by going to the grid reference. They found it within seconds. We then went through how to read coordinates and played a game on the IWB.
After that it was time to play Treasure Battleship! This is a fun game that allows both students to get some practice in using coordinates. One player places their game pieces on the grid and other player (who can't see the grid) asks "Do you have a piece on ________?". The student with the board, then checks that coordinate. If they have a piece, they must remove it off the board. Players swap when all the pieces have been discovered.
We finished off the lesson with a worksheet and marked it as a group afterwards. I like group marking because you can always clarify anything students are still unsure of :)
* Art - 3D Hands
I have seen this on Pinterest for a while now and have been dying to try it out!
If you have no idea what I am talking about, check out this YouTube Video;
The students were impressed with the images I showed and were trying to work out how to do it. Some of them couldn't believe that the paper was completely flat!
A few of the students finished and theirs looked great! The rest who didn't finish kept asking me if we could finish it next Monday when I have them again. I will have to find another awesome art activity for those who finished.
On Tuesday, I was called in last minute to cover year 3. I was thankful that I had had year 4 the day before, so I recycled the same lessons. I only had 30 minutes to eat breakfast, make lunch, get ready and pack my bag! It was an interesting day, with some challenging behaviours at some points.
When I first started teaching, I used to take these days rather personally and as a reflection on my ability to teach. Now I have a more positive take on it and I chalk it up as experience. I think it's good to have to handle challenging behaviours because you learn pretty quickly as to what works and what does not.
Yesterday, I covered two classes. The same year 4 class and a year 5 class. For year 4, they did genius hour. I had read about it online, but never seen it in action. I ended up sitting with a group who were working on their drawing skills. We found a cool website that showed how to draw cars, step by step. I had a go at it too :P
Year 5 involved playing Multiplication bingo and taking them to the library.
Today I have a day off. Will spend it relaxing, scootering and swimming :D
Enjoy the rest of your week!
On Monday, I had a year 4 class. It was a really great day, everyone was well behaved and enthusiastic about the tasks. That made the day go by smoothly and quickly. Sometimes, with the older grades you get the few students who like to test you by acting up and complaining about everything. Not the case with this class :)
Here is what we got up to;
* Literacy - Point of View with Dear, Mrs. LaRue.
* the b&w shows the sad parts and the colour shows the happy parts
* the b&w shows what the dog is thinking about because you can see the thinking bubble
* the b&w shows what the dog is writing about
I'm always amazed with what responses students come up with!
We did not get time to do the reading response part as we had library at 10am. I had something really awesome planned with the iPads, but I can always do that next Monday :D
* Maths - Coordinates
I introduced this lesson with the question; What are coordinates and why do we use them? The most common answer? Minecraft! To help introduce this topic, I showed a map with no grid on it and asked students to find a street. They struggled. Then I put up the same map with a grid on it, and asked if they could find it by going to the grid reference. They found it within seconds. We then went through how to read coordinates and played a game on the IWB.
After that it was time to play Treasure Battleship! This is a fun game that allows both students to get some practice in using coordinates. One player places their game pieces on the grid and other player (who can't see the grid) asks "Do you have a piece on ________?". The student with the board, then checks that coordinate. If they have a piece, they must remove it off the board. Players swap when all the pieces have been discovered.
We finished off the lesson with a worksheet and marked it as a group afterwards. I like group marking because you can always clarify anything students are still unsure of :)
* Art - 3D Hands
I have seen this on Pinterest for a while now and have been dying to try it out!
If you have no idea what I am talking about, check out this YouTube Video;
A few of the students finished and theirs looked great! The rest who didn't finish kept asking me if we could finish it next Monday when I have them again. I will have to find another awesome art activity for those who finished.
On Tuesday, I was called in last minute to cover year 3. I was thankful that I had had year 4 the day before, so I recycled the same lessons. I only had 30 minutes to eat breakfast, make lunch, get ready and pack my bag! It was an interesting day, with some challenging behaviours at some points.
When I first started teaching, I used to take these days rather personally and as a reflection on my ability to teach. Now I have a more positive take on it and I chalk it up as experience. I think it's good to have to handle challenging behaviours because you learn pretty quickly as to what works and what does not.
Yesterday, I covered two classes. The same year 4 class and a year 5 class. For year 4, they did genius hour. I had read about it online, but never seen it in action. I ended up sitting with a group who were working on their drawing skills. We found a cool website that showed how to draw cars, step by step. I had a go at it too :P
Year 5 involved playing Multiplication bingo and taking them to the library.
Today I have a day off. Will spend it relaxing, scootering and swimming :D
Enjoy the rest of your week!
Saturday, 26 July 2014
Scooters, teaching and etc!
This week has been busy!
On Sunday my boyfriend and I bought scooters. The area we live in has a lot of outdoor areas, so it seems silly not to have an outdoor activity. Bikes would have been too bulky to store in the apartment and I don't think that I would be that great at it. Scooters seemed like the most practical option. We went to a whole heap of stores to find a scooter that would be appropriate for an adult. We were not having much luck at first, everywhere seemed to stock the Razor scooter, which was way too small. We were about to give up, when we found The Commuter Scooter at Kmart. It's a lot bigger and sturdier than the Razor as it's made for teenagers/adults. I was a bit wobbly at first, but after a while I got the hang of it. It's so much fun and a good work out too. My arms and legs were feeling the burn after the 2hr ride. We did attempt to go riding after work during the week, but I was too tired. I think it will be a weekend/no work day activity :P
On Monday, the technician from the internet company came out to fix the connection. Turns out the people who lived here before us took a cable out of the network cupboard, so that's why it was not connecting. There was also a cable that needed to be swapped in the building's cupboard. So we were not charged a fee as it was not our fault. Win!
On Tuesday, I had a year 3 class. I was originally told that I was on a year 5, so I had come prepared for that, but then it was changed. The teacher left work so I did not have to do any last minute emergency planning. It was a good day, especially because I had a bunch of students from my 2012 class :)
On Wednesday, I had the same year 1 class as I have had previously. It's nice to come back to the same class because you learn their names and get a picture of what their abilities are. Here are some of the lessons that I did with them;
* Reading Response - I love Dr. Seuss books, my all time favourite book is "I Wish That I Had Duck Feet". If you haven't read it before, it's about a boy who wishes for various animal parts because they would benefit him, however along the way he recognises that they would also cause problems for him. In the end he just wants to be himself.
After reading the book, students had to draw a picture of themselves with an animal part that they would like to have. Once the picture was drawn they had to label it and then write about why they wished for it. Students used iPads to look at pictures of animals to help them with their drawings. In the end students shared their response with the class.
* Time - Years ago, I bought one of those educational clocks. It's been very useful for casual teaching and even in my own class. I brought that in with me and we did o'clock times. After I did several examples on the clock, I picked students to come up and make some times for the class to read. Then we played a whole class matching game, matching pictures to the correct time label. Then they worked independently on a worksheet and then we finished off with a game of bingo.
* Comprehension, Summarising - Elmer books are always popular with students, so I brought in Elmer and Wilbur. The version I have comes with a CD reading off it, complete with sound effects. After hearing the text, students summarised the story by completing a story map. They then used the story map to help them retell the story orally.
During the day I used GoNoodle. I love this site and the kids do too. It's very useful for brain breaks between lessons and the kids love watching the character grow after completing a few activities. The Frozen song was the most popular activity. If it were up to the kids, we would have sung Frozen all day :P
On Thursday, I was on Kindergarten. The teacher left me work. It was tiring, but a good day overall.
On Friday, I was called in to cover classes while teachers went to help prepare for the big school celebration. I ended up on Kindy for 2 hours and then spent the rest of the day making displays. It was a lot of fun. If I wasn't a teacher, I would be a graphics designer. Taking requests and fulfilling them made me feel like I was working as one :) I'm pretty happy with the way things turned out, they looked fabulous! I will make a modified version of the pennant bunting and upload them to TPT at some point.
I have also been working on new resources for myself, which I have added to my TPT store. Here are some of my latest products;
This activity pack contains 11 activities that can be used with any fictional text. This is pretty useful for me at the moment because I always use fictional texts on my casual days. Some of the activities include; designing a different cover, book review, creating a character, character profile and writing tasks.
I love doing the morning routine on the SMART board. This file includes your typical pages; days of the week, calendar, number of students, weather chart and days at school.
This activity pack contains resources to teach recount writing to your students. Alternatively it can be placed in a folder as part of a writing center. Includes a poster explaining what a recount is, an example text and word wall cards.
Check out my TPT store to see the rest of my new resources.
So far I have one day of work next week. I have a year 4 class on Monday. I have almost finished planning my work for the day. I like having the older grades because you can do more independent tasks with them. I am going to be using the iPads as part of one of my literacy lessons. Should be fun :)
Enjoy the rest of your weekend!
This activity pack contains 11 activities that can be used with any fictional text. This is pretty useful for me at the moment because I always use fictional texts on my casual days. Some of the activities include; designing a different cover, book review, creating a character, character profile and writing tasks.
I love doing the morning routine on the SMART board. This file includes your typical pages; days of the week, calendar, number of students, weather chart and days at school.
This activity pack contains resources to teach recount writing to your students. Alternatively it can be placed in a folder as part of a writing center. Includes a poster explaining what a recount is, an example text and word wall cards.
Check out my TPT store to see the rest of my new resources.
So far I have one day of work next week. I have a year 4 class on Monday. I have almost finished planning my work for the day. I like having the older grades because you can do more independent tasks with them. I am going to be using the iPads as part of one of my literacy lessons. Should be fun :)
Enjoy the rest of your weekend!
Thursday, 26 June 2014
Casual Teaching on Year 1: Rhyming Words, Summarising and 2D Shapes
Today I was on the same Year 1 class as last week. Once again I had a pretty great day with them :)
Here are some of the things we go up to...
Rhyming Words
We reviewed the concept. Students were able to tell me that they are words that sound the same AND have the same sound/letters at the end of the word.
We did a choral read of Hop on Pop by Dr. Seuss. This book just lead perfectly into it as it states the rhyming words before putting them into sentences.
After that I gave students a word and they had to brainstorm as many words as possible that rhymed with the word.
To end the lesson we played a whole class game; rhyming word dominoes. The dominoes joined by finding the pictures that rhymed.
Summarising
I introduced the concept of summarising by explaining that we take the most important ideas and say them in our own words. I related this to giving news, how we don't give EVERY single detail.
The text I was was Giraffes Can't Dance.
After reading the text I introduced the 'Somebody, Wanted, But, So, Then' strategy using my retelling pack, which you can find over here.
As a class we went through each step;
Somebody? Who was the main character? Gerald.
Wanted? What did he want? To dance.
But? What was the problem? He couldn't.
So? What did he do to fix the problem? He practised.
Then? What happened at the end? He was able to dance at the Jungle Dance.
Then students filled out this graphic organiser, which is from my Super 6 Activity Pack on TPT. You can check it out by clicking here.
Students could either draw or write in the boxes.
2D Shapes
To start this lesson off, students brainstormed a list of all the 2D shapes they could think of. I was pretty impressed that they already knew of nonagons and decagons. We then played a game where students had to find things in the classroom that were a given shape.
After that, students made a shape pizza. In the morning I had cut out a whole heap of shapes from coloured paper. Students had to grab a handful of shapes from the bag, arrange them on their pizza and then count how many of each shape to complete statements about their pizza.
Tomorrow is the last day of term 2 and then we have a 2 week holiday. My goal for the holiday is to go through all my teaching resources and sort them out a bit better. At the moment I have bits and pieces all over the place.
Enjoy the rest of your week! :)
Here are some of the things we go up to...
Rhyming Words
We reviewed the concept. Students were able to tell me that they are words that sound the same AND have the same sound/letters at the end of the word.
We did a choral read of Hop on Pop by Dr. Seuss. This book just lead perfectly into it as it states the rhyming words before putting them into sentences.
After that I gave students a word and they had to brainstorm as many words as possible that rhymed with the word.
To end the lesson we played a whole class game; rhyming word dominoes. The dominoes joined by finding the pictures that rhymed.
Summarising
I introduced the concept of summarising by explaining that we take the most important ideas and say them in our own words. I related this to giving news, how we don't give EVERY single detail.
The text I was was Giraffes Can't Dance.
After reading the text I introduced the 'Somebody, Wanted, But, So, Then' strategy using my retelling pack, which you can find over here.
As a class we went through each step;
Somebody? Who was the main character? Gerald.
Wanted? What did he want? To dance.
But? What was the problem? He couldn't.
So? What did he do to fix the problem? He practised.
Then? What happened at the end? He was able to dance at the Jungle Dance.
Then students filled out this graphic organiser, which is from my Super 6 Activity Pack on TPT. You can check it out by clicking here.
Students could either draw or write in the boxes.
2D Shapes
To start this lesson off, students brainstormed a list of all the 2D shapes they could think of. I was pretty impressed that they already knew of nonagons and decagons. We then played a game where students had to find things in the classroom that were a given shape.
After that, students made a shape pizza. In the morning I had cut out a whole heap of shapes from coloured paper. Students had to grab a handful of shapes from the bag, arrange them on their pizza and then count how many of each shape to complete statements about their pizza.
Tomorrow is the last day of term 2 and then we have a 2 week holiday. My goal for the holiday is to go through all my teaching resources and sort them out a bit better. At the moment I have bits and pieces all over the place.
Enjoy the rest of your week! :)
Tuesday, 24 June 2014
Casual Teaching on Year 5; Point of View and Persuasive Writing
Today I had a year 5 class. It's been a long, long, long time since I've taught one of the older grades. I spent 2011 and 2012 on Year 1 and in 2013 I did support on Kindy and Year 1.
I had a great day. I had planned my own work but the teacher had left me work. In the end I'm glad I had my own plans as there was a slight technical glitch and I had to fall back on my own work for part of the day until things were fixed. I'm just going to blog about the lesson I had planned which took up the whole morning session.
I got to use my latest resource which I specifically created for today; a Persuasive Writing Activity Pack. Click on the picture to check it out on TPT :)
We started off this morning with the story Dear Mrs. LaRue: Letters From Obedience School.
This was a great find a couple of year ago. I only paid $2 for it at a book store liquidation sale. For those not familiar with the story, it's about a dog called Ike who is sent to obedience school and writes letters to his owner. His letters are full of exaggeration and pleas for her to take him home. The illustrations are done in a clever way. There are two parts; b&w showing the exaggeration and the coloured ones showing how it really is.
The two types of illustrations provide a great discussion point about why the illustrator would do this and how it helps tell the story. From there, the discussion can easily lead into the topic; Point of View.
We completed a table comparing the point of view of Ike and what the pictures show.
After that students were given the task to write Mrs. LaRue a letter persuading her to come and take the dog home. Students could either be Ike or themselves.
Before sending them off to write, we talked about what a persuasive text was. Then we talked about the structure and what to include in each paragraph. We looked at an example text and looked at the features. Then students were giving a planning sheet to jot down their ideas before writing the letters.
Here are some of the pages that we used from the persuasive writing pack;
Reading their letters was entertaining. I was very impressed with their reasons for collecting Ike. They combined reasons from the story as well as their own ideas.
I would say that this lesson was a success. Students were able to talk about the different points of view presented and were able to write a decent persuasive letter.
The rest of the day was good. Did some place value and got to experiment with circuit boards and light bulbs.
I had a great day. I had planned my own work but the teacher had left me work. In the end I'm glad I had my own plans as there was a slight technical glitch and I had to fall back on my own work for part of the day until things were fixed. I'm just going to blog about the lesson I had planned which took up the whole morning session.
I got to use my latest resource which I specifically created for today; a Persuasive Writing Activity Pack. Click on the picture to check it out on TPT :)
We started off this morning with the story Dear Mrs. LaRue: Letters From Obedience School.
This was a great find a couple of year ago. I only paid $2 for it at a book store liquidation sale. For those not familiar with the story, it's about a dog called Ike who is sent to obedience school and writes letters to his owner. His letters are full of exaggeration and pleas for her to take him home. The illustrations are done in a clever way. There are two parts; b&w showing the exaggeration and the coloured ones showing how it really is.
The two types of illustrations provide a great discussion point about why the illustrator would do this and how it helps tell the story. From there, the discussion can easily lead into the topic; Point of View.
We completed a table comparing the point of view of Ike and what the pictures show.
After that students were given the task to write Mrs. LaRue a letter persuading her to come and take the dog home. Students could either be Ike or themselves.
Before sending them off to write, we talked about what a persuasive text was. Then we talked about the structure and what to include in each paragraph. We looked at an example text and looked at the features. Then students were giving a planning sheet to jot down their ideas before writing the letters.
Here are some of the pages that we used from the persuasive writing pack;
Reading their letters was entertaining. I was very impressed with their reasons for collecting Ike. They combined reasons from the story as well as their own ideas.
I would say that this lesson was a success. Students were able to talk about the different points of view presented and were able to write a decent persuasive letter.
The rest of the day was good. Did some place value and got to experiment with circuit boards and light bulbs.
Monday, 16 June 2014
Technology You Should Try : BooksApp
Want an easy way to keep track of all your books? Need a way to keep a portable list that doesn't involve tons of paper and time to create/maintain? Then I have the App for you!
Today I bring you this wonderful App called BooksApp. Click here to get it from the App Store. It's free for the basic version :)
When you first open the App it looks like this;
From here you can view your books as one big list or in more organised lists; series, collections, author, publisher or by subject. You can even track books you have loaned to your friends.
To get started click on the Books menu, it will take you to this screen.
Click on the plus to add a book to your library. You can choose a few different ways, the easiest is to use the Barcode Scanner. Though if the ISBN is not listed with the barcode it will not work and you will have to manually enter the ISBN.
When you first open the App it looks like this;
To get started click on the Books menu, it will take you to this screen.
Click on the plus to add a book to your library. You can choose a few different ways, the easiest is to use the Barcode Scanner. Though if the ISBN is not listed with the barcode it will not work and you will have to manually enter the ISBN.
As you can see, once the barcode is recognised, the title will appear. Click on done and the book will be added to your library.
If you click on a title, you can see detailed information about the book.
Once your books are added you can start adding them to series, collections and categories. Click on the pencil icon and this is what you should see...
Add in the categories you want and your collection will be a whole lot more organised!
This app does require an internet connection to add your books so I would recommend you use it with wi-fi and not a cellular connection as it can chew up your data.
If you like the app you can upgrade to be able to export your list to Google Drive.
I Love this app, makes keeping track of things so much easier. Give it a go, you won't be disappointed!
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