The school year has started out wonderfully. After a little bit of hectic move into our new building, it was so nice to have students show up and remind me why I love to teach...because of them. As a parent, I know the standard response I get from my kids when I ask them "what did you do in school today?" is "Nothing," and I know this is not true. :)
As you might have figured out by now, I see my students on day 2 (Tuesdays and Thursdays and rotating Mondays). Everyday I see them, they get 20-30 minutes for silent free reading time. I feel very strongly about letting them have choice in what they read during this time, and I hope I can help them find books that really engage them and cultivate a love for reading.
When I meet with my classes on Monday, I like to pick books that are available for checkout at our UMS library and show the book trailers (movie trailers for books) for these books. My hope is that at least one of the book trailers will interest each of the students and help them find the next book they want to read. After watching a few book trailers, we go to the UMS library and students get a chance to either check these books out or find their own books for checkout. If you haven't gone to the University Schools Library web page, I encourage you to check it out. Mrs. Budzynski has a lot of great resources for our students.
I have started the school year with a focus on non-fiction articles. We began by discussing why reading with a purpose is so important. To demonstrate this, I had students read a passage about a house, and I asked them to highlight everything they thought was important. I was not surprised to find that most of the students didn't highlight anything and many kept looking around to see if they could tell what other students might be highlighting. The purpose I gave them for reading the passage was too vague, so I asked them to reread it and highlight everything that would be important if they were to burglarize the house. This time students were able to highlight with a specific purpose and most of them highlighted parts such as "the side door is always unlocked." Next, I had students reread the passage again and highlight everything that would be important if they were thinking about buying the house. This exercise showed the students that having a purpose when you read is extremely helpful. We made a list of purposes for reading such as for entertainment, to form an opinion, to learn new information, and for application.
After our reading with a purpose lesson, we moved on to CLOSE reading which is reading closely for deeper comprehension or understanding. We practiced CLOSE reading by reading our first article of the week which was an informational article about 9/11. We read this together and as we read, we each wrote our impressions (thoughts and reactions) and wonderings about the article. After we were finished, we found the main or central idea of the article. This was introduced to them with a video from Brain Pop. We also wrote down what the author's purpose was for writing the article and we supported our answer with evidence from the text.
After closely reading a few of the article of the weeks together in class, I will start assigning them as homework. I will be posting each of the articles on this blog, so if it is necessary students can print them at home.
If you have any questions, please feel free to e-mail me at ahaas@universityschools.com
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