Global Read Aloud

This week I kicked off our classroom participation in the Global Read Aloud.  I chose the book Fish by L.S. Matthews for my middle school classes.  I am so happy to finally be doing some literature-based activities. Our focus up to this point has been strictly informational text.

We’ve been reading and writing a lot about refugees in the first few weeks of school, so my students have a pretty solid background on refugee camps and current refugee situations.

The GRA is designed to connect classrooms around the world.  While we haven’t made any contacts with other classrooms yet, I created a Twitter account so we could participate in some of the “slow chats”.  However, our school doesn’t allow students to access Twitter, so I am going to need to come up with some creative ways for us to use Twitter as a class.

My 8th graders are already asking if they can tweet questions and comments.  I quickly made this simple exit ticket where students can record their thoughts each day and submit them to me for review before I tweet them. I know there are several versions of Twitter Exit Tickets on Pinterest and TPT, but I figured something simple was fine.

Click here for a free PDF of my Twitter Exit Ticket

Literary Element Graphic Organizers – Simplified

Speaking of simple, I decided to revamp some of my graphic organizers and teaching tools.  Considering I have some of the same students for a few years in a row, I needed some variety.

I will admit, I used to spend a lot of time making graphic organizers and making them “pretty” and “perfect.”

I realized recently, simple works too.  I spend far too much time worrying about the alignment and formatting of my handouts.

It’s time to simplify my life and my classroom a bit and put the creativity into my students’ hands.

As we started our novel, I had students glue each of the organizers below into their reading journals. They glue one on the left hand side and skip the right hand side, because that is where they create their own rendition.

This past week, I gave them three separate pages to glue in.  We will be adding to each of them as we work our way through the exposition of the novel.

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Clicker here to download the free PDF of my  POV, Plot Diagram and Conflict Graphic Organizers

I’ll be sure to share some student samples in the next post.  If these aren’t quite what you are looking for, try my Easy Access page with an entire bank of free graphic organizers and teaching tools.

**If you are reading Fish now too, leave a comment! Maybe our classes can meet up online and talk about the book!