Are you ready to RuMbLe??

I'm back tomorrow and I'm ready!  That may be foreshadowing to me saying "I'm so tired!" tomorrow afternoon:)

 

We are finishing up our second information text unit.  My students have enjoyed amazing facts, stretched their minds to question, answer, infer, determine importance and share opinions about informational topics.  Here are some of our charts that we created during lessons. 

 

You will notice that I try to title the charts with our essential question.  It gives the students academic vocabulary and keeps them focused on the purpose of our lesson.  The other thing you may notice is that I am starting to add a rubric towards the bottom.  The students and I discuss the lesson expectations and what they look like at different levels.  Boy, has it ever changed my teaching and the students understanding of the task!  When I listen in I hear things like, "I think if you added the topic you would get a 3 (which means meeting expectations), "  "Oooo, if I add more opinions I will gain a 4 (exceeding)!"

 

Now on to the charts!

 

This chart includes essential questions, language stems, coding, examples and a rubric.

Key details seem to be a bit hard for my little sweets.  This lesson was a reteach.  I took a different approach and allowed the students to throw out a detail first and then we went back to the text for evidence and constructed a key detail that was related to the detail.

This lesson was so vital for my students.  Can they ask questions?  Sure, they will fill up Post-Its. But are they meaningful and dig deep?  Not always.  In this chart you will notice quick drawings, an explanation of beefy and bony question, a strategy for creating a question, and language stems on Post-Its.  The most beneficial part of this chart for my students were the question language stems that they could access by pulling them off and taking to their table.  Do you notice how all the Beefy stems are a bit askew?  That's because the kids use them!!

A second part of our unit is to form opinions.  We are practicing as readers and writers, so naturally the chart needed to meet the needs of both.  This chart has the essential question, sketches to communicate, language stems for opinions (again, they used these all the time), opinion words, and an example of expectation.

This is another opinon chart that gave steps for forming opinions (which was tricky).

This chart is based off of a chart from Pinterest.  I changed the U and S to meet the needs of my students.  I added a rubric with exemplars from students.

This is a chart that gives the process that breaks the skill into steps.  The steps are in pink and the other colors are examples for the step.  At the bottom is a rubric.  Our county uses 4-Exceeds the standard, 3-Meets the standar, 2-Developing, and 1-Emerging.

This is a type of exemplar chart.  I copied student work, cut it out and the students and I figured out what they were doing as a reader and where they can stretch themselves.  It was a meaningful lesson that gave my class feedback so they understand how to obtain the standard.

This is a writing chart that gives an example of how to use a real topic, add key details and give an opinon on the topic.  We also included content vocabulary and a few text features.  (There is another rubric!)

 

 

I love looking at the anchor charts of others!  I really believe that the students should be a part of creating the chart.  That's why they aren't perfection! 

Now that you have read all of that business I have a freebie for you :)

Here are sound cards with spelling patterns.  Can you see how we write words with those patterns on cabinets with a dry erase marker??

Sound Cards for Spelling