Personal Narratives

This is my newest addition to my TPT store! 

This unit of study focuses a study of personal narratives. Through a study of characters' journeys, readers will inquire about how do we, like characters, grow and change. As students delve into personal narratives, they will look at the story's characters, themes, and other literary elements in order to determine the message the author is trying to impart.

The resource is organized around 13 big ideas of narrative texts. 

1. Structure of Personal Narratives 
2. Point of View 
3. Setting 
4. Character Traits 
5. Characters - How Dialogue Informs the Reader 
6. Transitions in Time, Events, and Demeanour 
7. Story Elements 
8. Problem/Conflict 
9. Climax 
10. Solution 
11. Theme 
12. Comparing Narratives with Similar Themes 
13. Celebration. 

Each big idea, or session, has the following:

• Session Synopsis (Lesson Plan)
• Anchor Charts 
• Minds On (Lesson Introduction) 
• Purposeful Task (Individual/Group Activity) 
• Reflection

Enjoy this 89 page learning resource!

More Poetry Fun

Poetry is possible for young students because it is all around them. They read poems and sing poetic language.

I have created a resource, Poetry Anthology, which is organized around NINE elements of poetry and EIGHT poetic forms. An anchor chart has been created for each element and form. The charts can be displayed for student reference or photocopied for students to use at the writing centre. 

This resource is a supplement to my Poetry unit for Reader’s Workshop.

Navigating Non-Fiction In Reader's Workshop

I hope you are having a WONDERFUL winter break! To celebrate the upcoming New Year, I have uploaded my Reader's Workshop unit Navigating Non-Fiction to my store!

The unit of study has 13 sessions for your students to investigate the genre of non-fiction. Each session has a detailed lesson plan, anchor charts, and a group task.

In the first session, students ready their minds to reading non-fiction by identifying features which distinguish fiction from non-fiction.

Each session includes an anchor chart and a group investigation!

I hope you enjoy my new resource! 

Visit my store for this resource and many others!

Building A Reading Life

It is time to begin, to set Reader’s Workshop into motion. The work of utmost importance, the work that unites and underlines the unit of study, Building A Reading Life,  is to help students become avid and reflective readers. 

The purpose of the Building A Reading Life unit is to launch a lifelong passion for reading - to  empower readers with a sense of personal agency about their own reading. This unit of study, based on the work of Lucy Calkins, focuses on ownership for building their own reading life. This powerful message resonates throughout the unit of study as readers self-select books, set reading goals, monitor their comprehension and fluency, and actively discuss their reading with peers. As the conclusion of the three bends in Building A Reading Life, students will have begun to build a reading life by fashioning a literate identity for themselves.

 

Persuasive Texts In Readers' Workshop

My new unit of study, Persuasive Texts In Readers' Workshop, has been posted to my TPT store. Post a comment on my blog or Facebook page to receive a sample freebie.

So excited! My Poetry Unit is available in my TPT store today.

Today, we studied Carroll's poem "Jabberwocky". Students loved inferring the meaning of the poet's nonsensical words.

View a sample of a response from a grade three student below.

Respond in the comment box if you are interested in a freebie - an overview of the session in which I shared "Jabberwocky".

Biographies, Readers' Workshop, and Technology Infusion

Great geniuses have the shortest biographies. - Ralph Waldo Emerson

Biography means "writing about life." There are many reasons to introduce students to biographies.

1. Biographies provide a historical perspective of people who braved challenges in a vastly different time or social period.
2. Biographies provide life lessons gleaned from others' life experiences and behaviours. 
3. Biographies create empathy and understanding of others. The story of someone who may have lived in a different era or with a different background exposes students to things they may never experience. Reading another’s story helps them to appreciate their differences or find comfort in our sameness. 
4. Biographies extend students' view into the future. Hearing about what others have accomplished despite their circumstance encourages them to dream. It gives them hope that they can meet the challenges that come their way. 

There is no shortage of biographies written for elementary students. As the students read biographies, there are many web tools and apps to help students delve into the lives of fascinating people.

ThingLink allows the creation of interactive images by adding video, music, and text to uploaded images. Take pictures and video of events within the historical era which impacted the subject's life. Once media has been collected, hotspot areas on the ThingLink to provide more information.

Blabberize
Blabberize is a web tool which creates a talking picture of person’s face. Upload a picture of the subject of the biography and add a hotspot to move with the recording. After customizing the picture, record a short biography assuming the role of the historical figure.


Timeline Interactive

This interactive from Read Write Think creates a graphical representation of a subject's life by displaying items sequentially along a line.

Adobe Spark Post
Adobe Spark Post is a free online and mobile graphic design app. Create beautiful images that help tell the subject of a biography's story by highlighting infamous quotes.

 

Bio Cube
This interactive tool from Read Write Think allows students to develop an outline of a person whose biography they have just read. Specific prompts ask students to describe a person's significance, background, and personality.



View a detailed unit of study on Biographies. Students will examine the big ideas of narrative and expository biographies and develop skills and strategies to enhance reading fluency and comprehension. Students will explore cause-and-effect, sequence, language cues and conventions, visualization, determining importance, and synthesis.

Biographies

Biography means "writing about life." In my newest unit of study entitled Biographies, readers will apply their knowledge about reading narratives, and apply these understandings to a different structure called narrative nonfiction. Readers will read to learn not only about the significant character, but also the group of people that person represents and the groups of people that person impacted. That is, readers read biographies not only to learn about specific famous figures, but also to learn about the world in which they live and to extract life lessons. 

The unit is divided into three bends: 

1. Connect their knowledge of fictional story structures to focus on the deep comprehension and synthesis of story elements of narrative nonfiction.
2. Examine the unifying idea or message behind a life story, learning that a biography is often a commentary on society at large. 
3. Apply their understandings about biographies to ease them into understanding the structures and patterns of other forms of narrative nonfiction. 

The primary goal of this unit of study is to help students become stronger readers. The main objective is not to learn content, but rather to learn how to read the genre of biography. Reading skills, rather than the details of a remarkable person’s life, are the emphasis. Readers will use story grammar to determine importance, to synthesize, and to analyze critically across long stretches of text, ultimately growing theories about them.

Throughout the twelve sessions, readers develop the ability to find connections, explain the meaning of unexpected actions, and make arguments about the significance of the person's accomplishments or life activities.  

I hope you enjoy the study of Biographies as much as my students!

Procedural Texts in Readers' Workshop

Students love to make, build, and design things. A study of procedural texts allows student to explore different types of procedural texts: recipes, experiments, and rules, and heighten their desire to experiment and create! 

Students examine the big ideas of procedural texts. Attend to the text elements common among procedural tasks:

• Gather details necessary to understand the task. 
• Analyze how the organization impacts the reader’s ability to understand and follow the text.  
• Recognize that word choice (adverbial phrases, adjectives, and action verbs) enhances comprehension.  
• Notice how the author conveys the common purpose among procedural texts. 

Most importantly, students will develop skills and strategies to enhance reading and comprehension. Students will explore cause-and-effect, sequence, language cues and conventions, visualization, determining importance, and synthesis. 

Historical Fiction

Finally! I have finished compiling my Historical Fiction unit of study. As part of Reader's Workshop, this resource is organized around twelve big ideas of historical fiction. Each big idea is developed in the resource to include the following:

• Session Synopsis - teachers guide learning through a mini-lesson based on Lucy Calkins' work
• Anchor Chart - students document their learning through construction of referent material
• Purposeful Task - students delve into their reading to deepen understanding of the story, the historical context, and their own lives
• Response Prompt - students complete a quick write to reflect on their noticings and wonderings.

Through mentor texts, the teacher models thinking deeply about the text. Students apply these skills when reading their self-selected historical fiction novel. This resources aims to foster the role that historical fiction plays in forming connections with the past. By relating historical events to people who were there, real or imaginary, readers are provided a deeper understanding of that period. 

Enjoy!