Tag Archives: #GRAFish

Week 8-10: A Blur

By melanie on | Leave a comment

Week 8 and 9…and 10  were a total blur.  These weeks consisted of sports, my first IEPs of the year, PT conferences, our spirit week, a huge presentation at work, and very little sleep.

So now I’m moving into Week 11 which is the first week of the 2nd nine weeks.

We have been continuing with Fish and working a lot with the vocabulary, as well as an annotation strategy that the kids really enjoyed.

Throughout the chapter, as we read aloud, I would say STOP and they would have to write a question in the margin of the book.   We then shared them, many of which were very good questions. A few of my kids even think the Guide could be a bad guy leading the family into a trap. I heard some pretty insightful questions too. One of my favorites because it had the vocabulary words “reluctant” in it:

If the wolf mistook Tiger for her cub, why was she reluctant to approach Tiger?

We continued to work on vocabulary as well.  One Friday we did two stations with our vocabulary. The first was a matrix where students had to choose combinations of words and write sentences using both words. I loved overhearing their conversation during this activity.  Fish Vocabulary Matrix

The second was a Tic-Tac-Toe board where they had to choose a set of three prompts to answer by next Wednesday.  Each prompt required brainstorm, restatement of the question, and an answer.  Ideally, I planned on having them do all three in the one period, but realized it was far too much for them to do in the allotted time. So for three nights in a row they were assigned a “tic,” a “tac,” and a “toe.”  Fish Vocab Tic Tac Toe

I’ll leave you with the rubric/checklist my students used for self-evaluation of their Tic-Tac-Toe. Tic Tac Toe Writing Checklist Rubric  Students had to complete this checklist prior to turning in their writing notebooks. It definitely saved me some time on grading and their final products were better when they knew what I was looking for!!

Hope you had a good week or two…or three!

Happy November!!

Resources to download if you are reading Fish by L.S. Matthews

 

 

 

 

 

Posted in: Language Arts, Life as an Intervention Specialist, Teaching | Tagged: , , , , , , ,

Week 7: Global Read Aloud #GRAFish and Literary Elements 2.0

By melanie on | Leave a comment

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.

Twitter Exit Ticket

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!

 

 

Posted in: Graphic Organizers, Language Arts, Life as an Intervention Specialist, Teaching | Tagged: , , , , , , , , ,

Materials for Fish by L.S. Matthews

By melanie on | 3 Comments

Fish by L.S. Matthews was my pick for the Global Read Aloud.  We are only a chapter and a half in, but so far, so good.

I’ve been making some vocabulary squares for my 7th and 8th graders and thought I would post them here in case anyone else could use them. Even if you aren’t reading Fish now as part of the GRA, maybe you will in the future.

At this time, I have three sets you can download.  I’ve also linked my Quizlets for each set.

Pre-Reading Fish Vocab Squares (PDF)
Quizlet – Fish (Pre-Reading Vocab)
Quizlet – Pre-Reading – Using Words in Context

Fish Vocab Squares Ch.1-2 (PDF)
Fish Vocab Squares Ch.3-4,  (PDF)
Quizlet – Fish Ch. 1 and 4 Vocab

Please leave a comment if you are doing the GRA! I would love to connect with others who are participating!

Posted in: Language Arts, Life as an Intervention Specialist, Teaching | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , ,
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