Hey y'all! Today's post is another Sunshine State Book review for the book 8 Class Pets + 1 Squirrel Divided by 1 Dog = Chaos by Vivian Vande Velde.
Here is the summary from Amazon:
Twitch, the school yard squirrel, has really gotten himself into a bind this time. While trying to escape from a hungry owl, he roused the principal's dog and got chased into the school. Now he's locked in for a dangerous and disastrous night. Can Green Eggs and Hamster, Sweetie the library rat, and the other school pets save Twitch from the crazed dog, Cuddles? In this uproarious chapter book, a group of small animals manages to turn an elementary school into a real zoo.
I loved this book! It was SO cute! It's essentially a comedy of errors as this squirrel is running through the school, classroom to classroom, looking for help trying to escape an angry dog. As he visits each classroom he also finally meets the class pets he has only seen through the windows. Each chapter is a new class pet and these characters are hysterical! I think my favorite is Miss Lucy Cottontail (the bunny rabbit in second grade). She is very smart, almost too smart for her own good, and doesn't really understand how others are not as smart as her. Needless to say we've all had a kid like this in our class and I just love them! They might drive some people batty and others might think they have bad manners but I don't know what it is, I just like them! So of course, I love Lucy - which is also my favorite TV show ;) Fancy that!
Now, this SSS list is for third through fifth grade but I think this book falls into a much broader category. It is a very short read and a very easy read. Here are it's stats:
You look at that and say, "Besides the small amount of page numbers, what's the big deal?" I think the only reason it got such a high Lexile level is because at the beginning of each chapter it tells some background information about that particular animal: what it eats, where it lives/comes from, habits, sometimes it even goes into their Latin names, etc. I really do think that some second graders could read this independently or it could even be a first grade read aloud. Some of the scientific information and sarcasm might go over their head but they will still understand the story. Now, this in no way diminishes the book in my eyes! This will be perfect for some of my lower readers and might entice them to read more of the SSS books after they finish this one. I did want to give you a heads up that this is not the normal size/readability that we have seen from the SSS list in the past ;o)
Possible ways to use this in your classroom:
Compare and contrast two of the class pets in the book.
Research one of the class pets. You can come up with your own criteria on what you want them to find and how you want them to present it to the class.
Come up with your own class pet! What would their name be? What is their personality?
Divide your class up into roles and reenact the story.
Create a book trailer.
I hope y'all enjoy this book as much as I did! Very quick read but it will bring a smile to your face :o) Next up on the review list, thanks to my friend Alison over at Rockin' and Lovin' Learnin' for the recommendation, Elvis and the Underdogs by Jenny Lee!
It's another year and another set of Sunshine State books! I'm actually pretty excited about this year's line-up. There seem to be a good mix of genres and I think my kids will really enjoy them.
I've joined up with a couple other teacher's from my county and we're meeting weekly for a Sunshine State Book Club to discuss the different books and ways to incorporate them into our classroom. The first book I read was King of the Mound: My Summer with Satchel Paige by Wes Tooke.
Description from Amazon:
When Nick is released from the hospital after suffering from polio, he is sure that his father will never look at him in the same way again. Once the best pitcher in youth league, Nick now walks with a limp and is dependent on a heavy leg brace. He isn’t sure he will ever return to the mound, never mind be the star he once was.
When Nick starts working for Mr. Churchill, the owner of the semiprofessional team Nick’s dad plays for, he meets Satchel Paige, arguably the best pitcher in the world. Not allowed in the major leagues because of his skin color, Satchel teaches Nick that some things can be overcome with hard work and dedication, and that just because you’re down, you are most certainly not out.
As Satchel and his unique teammates barnstorm toward a national baseball tournament, Nick wonders if he can really overcome what seems like the impossible and pitch again.
I really liked this book! It showed what life was like during this time period, not only the injustice against African Americans in the United States and baseball, but also how the American people were effected by the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl. It doesn't come right out and mention these historical moments, so they are something you will probably want to discuss with your class. I also love that the chapter titles are innings, a wonderful metaphor for Nick's life: top of the eighth, bottom of the ninth, etc.
I would recommend this book for 4th and 5th graders for multiple reasons! I will read it to my 4th graders aloud because there is just SO much to discuss but your fifth graders can probably understand most of it on their own. There is tons of fabulous vocabulary, both robust and historical. There is also an ABUNDANCE of figurative language! That Satchel Paige is just full of colorful similes and metaphors! This would be an excellent read aloud during Black History month as well :o)
Genre: Historical Fiction Grades: 4th - 5th Lexile: 900 Length: 155 pgs. Food: Ice Cream, Coke (glass bottle), Sunflower Seeds, Baseball foods (although none of these were actually ever mentioned in the book)
You might or might not remember, but we usually do a Sunshine State Feast at the end of the year for our kids who read all 15 of the books. Included in the feast are games, scavenger hunts, and a food item from every book. Hence the food choices above (just in case you want to do the same)!
Supplemental Resources:
This is a short (four minute) video about Satchel Paige and his baseball career. I love that this video talks about his "mysterious age" and you will hear Satch himself say some of his famous quotes that your kids will find in the book as well!
A great companion picture book is Something to Prove: The Great Satchel Paige vs. Rookie Joe DiMaggio by Robert Skead. They mention this moment, when Satch plays against Joe, a couple of times in King of the Mound but this picture book tells the actual story of what happened at that fateful meeting.
My kids always love the little side stories and want to know more! This would be a perfect book to introduce the Great Depression, Segregation, and the Dust Bowl. Again, the author never comes out and mentions these events by name (except for segregation) but the things that are happening to the main and secondary characters are because of these events. Here are a few resources if your kids would like to know more about them.
BrainPop Great Depression - The Great Depression was a tough time for everyone. Find out just how tough in this BrainPOP movie, as Tim and Moby introduce you to life during the Great Depression! You’ll learn exactly how many Americans were out of work, as well as some of the ways that people tried to make money and survive. You’ll also find out why the Depression was actually good for unions — and why it was especially bad for farmers in the Great Plains. Plus, you’ll see how people tried to keep up hope, and why things eventually started to get a little better. Even the worst of times pass on eventually!
PBS Interactive Dust Bowl - Students will be able to make their own choices one whether they want to stay and risk it all or move away. They will experience the ups and downs of farming in the 1930's and how the market was at this time.
I hope you enjoy this book as much as I do and stay tuned for the next Sunshine State Book... 8 Class Pets + 1 Squirrel / 1 Dog = CHAOS by Steve Bjorkman.
Today I'm linking up with one of my BBB's Jivey from Ideas by Jivey for her Workshop Wednesday! Today is all about incorporating science into your reading block!
I'm cheating just a smidge here... One of my favorite all time pieces of science literature to use in reading is not actually a trade book but is our SuperScience magazine from Scholastic. I got a subscription this past year through DonorsChoose and it is one of the best things I ever got for my classroom. I will definitely be buying it again for next year (and no, no one paid me to say that)! It is a fabulous source of real-world science that pulls students in with their intriguing pictures, text features, and informational text and gives the teacher STEM & Common Core Connections, video links, games, graphic organizers and quizzes to help supplement the text. Each month we get a new copy that comes with anywhere from 8-10 articles about different concepts. A MUST HAVE for every intermediate classroom!
The Reading Nook has a list of numerous science related children's books grouped by concepts. When you choose which concept you would like, a collection of books that work for that category pop up! The different categories are Oceans, Rainforest, Ecology, Simple Machines, Rocks, Human Body, Weather, Space, Food Chain, Animal & Life Cycle, and Plant & Life Cycle. This is a definitely a resource you'll want to remember. Here is just some of page one for space!
The Science Method Website is another website full of wonderful books to help you incorporate science into your reading block. Downside: the titles are grouped in any way, but most of the titles are giveaways as to what subject it covers. Upside: when you click on the title, you get a PDF of all the amazingness the book has to offer (readability level, observation, classification, science concepts, vocabulary, summary, comments, other books that are like that one and SO much more). Click on the photo below to take you to this list of trade books.
I hope these resources help you incorporate more science literature into your reading block! Head on over to Jivey's blog and check out what everyone else is reading!
We are starting our new novel, Among the Hidden by Margaret Peterson Haddix (one of my favorites!), and I wanted a unique pre-reading activity to introduce the book. If you haven't read this book, it is a must read! It's about a boy, Luke, who lives in a society which enforces a population law that only allows two children per home. Luke is a third child, one of the Shadow Children. One day when Luke is gazing longingly out the window, because he can't go outside for fear of being discovered, he finds another "third child" in one of his neighbor's home. His new friend would love nothing more than to leave the house and let the world know who she is... But does Luke dare to do the same? From there it is a very suspenseful tale and I'm not going to give any more away! As you can tell for such a good book, I had to have a good hook!
Cue my most recent professional development! One of our county's reading gurus came to our school to tell us all about "text sets" and how to implement them in our classroom. Now I know the term "text sets" has been around for a while and I have always heard a few different meanings for the phrase but this PD showed me text sets in a whole new light. Maybe it's a Common Core thing, but Florida is just starting to semi-embrace CC (we're just calling it something else) so forgive me if you already know this!
The purpose of this text set is to attempt to not just introduce a topic, but issues within the topic, and have students form opinions based on their evidence from many different sources/forms of media. For our pre-reading activity I used video clips, articles, and maps. One of the things that the presenter kept mentioning was that we DO NOT teach during this lesson. This is all about the students teaching and thinking for themselves. Using this graphic organizer (go ahead and grab it, it's FREE!) they fill out each square after each new piece of evidence and write down all their thoughts, then finally form their opinion. I cannot take credit for this organizer. The presenter showed us her version but I created my own and swapped the order of some of the boxes.
Step One: Introduce the Topic and Purpose Question
My topic was about population policy. I started off by just asking some general family questions of the kids. Who was the second child in their family? Who was the third? Who had more than three siblings? Were their parents a third child? Then the "hard hitting" questions came out. What if I said every family could only have two children? Who would still be here?
It was very interesting to watch the faces of the third children. I asked them if there was any way that could ever be a rule, only being allowed to have two children, and they were very adamant that it could not! Then I introduced my Purpose Question: "Is it ever okay for the government to "manage" your family and tell you how many children you can have?" Unanimous "no" ladies and gentlemen.
I introduced the graphic organizer (which I printed on gray card stock and laminated so they would last me longer) and the purpose behind it and told them to only fill out the box I told them to when I tell them to. You can actually go in any order you want but I started from the top and went left to right.
Step Two: This Makes Me Feel/Think
Our first source was a three minute video clip about what exactly is China's One-Child Policy. It was very informative and gave the background as to how it got started and looked into one "invisible child's" life not being able to fully exist. It was very moving. After watching the clip I told them to read the directions and fill out the first box.
Step Three: Stop and Jot
For the last three boxes the students would be using articles that I prepared for them on a key ring. Each pair of students grabbed one article and read it together. I only had two articles, one that showed the benefits of China's population policy and one that was against it. After they read their article and discussed their thoughts and opinions with their partner, they had to read the directions and fill out the Stop and Jot square based on what they just read (not the video).
Step Four: R.E.S.P.O.N.D.
You can have the students swap articles if you would like, but I had mine tell each other what they read about. They did know this ahead of time to help them prepare key points and the main idea. They were also allowed to reference back to the article. After teaching each other about the other side of the issue, students chose one way to respond to what they just learned: R - rephrase, E - explain, S - summarize, P - pose a question, O - opinion, N - note your thoughts, or D - describe. Again, this section is only writing down their thoughts and feelings based on what their partners just taught them. They never read the other article, just learned about it from their table mates.
Step Five: Citing Textual Evidence
This is where it all comes together. Now that students have seen the video, read the articles, made connections, etc. they write down their final answer to the Purpose Question in the last box using text evidence to support their opinion. It was interesting to see some of their unanimous "No's" go to "well maybe..."
My kids absolutely LOVED this pre-reading activity. They couldn't wait until we started the novel after they found out that this is what it would be about. As I stated in the beginning, I did very little teaching during this time. A couple kids had questions about what words meant and what not and we did end up having a whole group discussion on the two articles at the end but by that point they already knew everything. I wasn't teaching them anything new. It was very satisfying to watch my fifth graders be such independent learners and thinkers!
You could use text sets and the graphic organizer for SO MANY subjects! The Reading and Writing Project has tons of digital non-fiction text sets already set up for you by subject to get you started. It is an amazing way to cover citing evidence, differentiating reading levels, text features, social skills/communication, in-depth knowledge on any subject, and so much more! I keep thinking of different topics I would love to use this with! What are your thoughts and suggestions? I would love to hear any ideas you have in the comments sections :0)
The wonderful ladies and I from A-Classy Collaboration are having a treat filled blog hop starting today and lasting until Halloween!
My treat for you today is my October Word Work pack of activities! Included are three different spelling and vocabulary activities that will promote learning all while celebrating the Halloween season!
One of the things I love about these activities is that they can be used over and over with new spelling words and vocabulary lists. It is geared towards intermediate grades but some of your little kiddos might enjoy the enrichment as well! Included are three different activities: Candy Corn Clues, Spell Recipe, and Witch's Hat. Click on the any of the images to grab your freebie!
I hope you enjoy this little treat! Don't forget to head on over to A-Classy Collaboration to see what all the other lovely ladies are giving away this week!
I'M BACK!!!!! It's been a crazy month with LOTS going on but I'm back now! I was saying to my mom and a co-worker yesterday that I feel like I'm doggy paddling through this year, barely keeping my head above water sometimes... My mom's reply, "At least your head's above water and not under!" Always the optimist mom :o) Must be where I get it from and thank goodness, otherwise I would not have made it this far in life y'all!
On to why we're really here! I found this amazing pre-reading activity around midnight (because I'm the QUEEN of finding amazing lessons at midnight the night before I want to do them) and knew I had to create it for our new novel we're reading, Holes by Louis Sachar. It's called a Silent Tea Party and requires students to read different quotes from the novel you'll be reading and, using those quotes, students must analyze and infer answers to pre-reading questions about the novel. I was amazed by some of the student's insight and answers!
Students travel around the room and "meet" other people in class by shaking their hand. The first handshake indicates that they would like to swap quotes. The second handshake says, "Here is your quote back. Thank you for letting me look at it!" I tell them that there is NO talking because I want to know what THEY think about their new quote, not what their partner thought. I came up with 20 different quotes so that no two students had the same quote. As students read the quotes, they need to figure out which question the quote will help them answer. They will write down their answer and what quote helped them to come up with that answer. Here the video that I got the idea from! She also explains it WAY better than I ever could, lol.
I created one for my Holes Literature Unit that is in creation as we speak/read and will be available soon but here is a little example of what my students answered when they did this activity.
From this quote alone:
My students answered part of this question:
With these different outlooks:
All said it was a boy because it said "his last day"
One student said he was 9-10. This was very telling because when I asked him why he thought that, he said "because he's in school." It was interesting to see that he thought a main character could only go as high in age as he was.
Another student said he was probably in middle school because he has a "math teacher." In elementary school you just have a teacher, but in middle school you start to get specific subject teachers. I had never thought about it that way!
Then I told them my thoughts on that particular quote. I asked my students (fifth graders) to raise their hand if they had learned about ratios yet in school. No one raised their hand. They then realized if they hadn't learned about ratios yet, then our main character must be older than fifth grade but still in school so younger than 18.
I absolutely LOVED this as a pre-reading activity because it front loads students with background information going into the novel and requires them to analyze and synthesize new information. I also like that it can be used for ANY novel. Once my kids got the hang of how to answer the questions using text-based evidence, they started to see more possibilities than what they had originally answered. The video talks about using this for complex text but I noticed that you can make a simpler text complex just with this activity alone!
Sorry I have been away for so long but I am glad to be back! I really appreciate you all sticking by me and the wonderful words of encouragement and wisdom from everyone, especially some of my BBB's, you know who you are! Without y'all this wouldn't be possible. So thank you and until next time... Which won't be in another month, I PROMISE!
This week's "must have" is a very simple creation that I started doing after I was ready to pull my hair out. Every week when my students had to do their cold read, I would have a particular student (it never failed) come up to me and run his fingers through his hair, stressed out saying, "I looked everywhere! I can't find that answer! It's NOT in there?!" My response? "You're absolutely right. That's an inference question. The answer is in your brain." Now this boy was actually one of my smartest students but every week this stumped him! I had to do something or I was going to turn into one of those teachers on TV y'all, lol.
So I came up with the Types of Questions Stoplight sign. I taught it to my students and reviewed it every time we did a reading comprehension passage. It worked wonders! A miracle worker I tell ya! Once my kids got the hang of the strategies, their scores went up because they were really decoding the questions and finding out what the author was actually asking them to do. And all I wanted was one kid to stop asking me the same question every week, haha! Who knew???
The spotlight method is very simple and I'm sure I can't be the only teacher that does this in one form or another. There are three types of questions: red light, yellow light, and green light questions.
Red light questions = STOP and think. Your answer will not be stated explicitly in the text. You will need to use clues from the text and your brain to come up with your answer.
Yellow light questions = SLOW DOWN and search! You might need to look in multiple places to find the information that will make your answer.
Green light questions = GO back in the text and find your answer.
You'll notice along the sides of the poster we having graffiti looking writing. As we introduce or review skills, we write down where they would fall on the Types of Questions Stoplight. For example: drawing conclusions and inferring falls into the red light category whereas setting would be green light or cause and effect would be yellow light. Now some skills can fall into all three (ex. context clues) it just depends on how the question is asked and what information is given in the text.
Once my students get their paper they read the questions first and label each one in either G, Y, or R. This helps them understand how much time should be spent on each question and which ones they can go back and underline to prove, etc. I always tell my students that sometimes your labeling might be wrong and that's okay! You won't know until you read if it should be a different color.
Now I'm not saying this is the end all be all. There are always hiccups but usually once my kids get this strategy down and actual implement it, they very rarely ever make below a high B. And that student never had that weekly problem once he learned this strategy. Life is good again!
What is a "must have" for you in your classroom or life? Link up below and let us know! Don't forget to leave some comment love on two other bloggers posts :o)
Teacher Appreciation Week is starting and I wanted to have a little Pin It and Win It Flash Giveaway for all the fantastic teachers out there. This will only last until midnight tonight!!! Prefix Parlor is a super cute game that I use with small groups and during Daily 5 at one of the literacy stations. There are three different sets (sets 4 and 5 coming later tonight or tomorrow). Each set contains five different "prefix cones", 15 "root word scoops", three blank scoops (so you can add other root words of your choice), a Prefix Parlor Menu, and ten Enrichment Cards to further expand their learning!
It is a wonderful review after we learn the different prefixes but can also be used as an exploration center. Even if your students have never learned these particular prefixes, they will be able to use their context clues and dictionary skills to decode the vocabulary terms and understand and master what each prefix means.
Three sets are available at the moment! Pin one of the images back to this post and leave these three things in the comments section below to receive your set:
1.Link back to your pin
2. Your email
3. Which set you want
Once that is done I will email you the set of your choice!
Set 1: un-, re-, pro-, pre-, mis-
Set 2: anti-, dis-, ex-, non-, under-
Set 3: bi-, de-, en-, co-, tri-
I would REALLY REALLYREALLY appreciate it if once you received your Prefix Parlor set, you would head over to my Facebook page and leave a comment about what you think under this post!
