Text Organization

It has been a busy and super crazy couple of weeks. The fabulous STAAR test is coming in less than a month.  Of course when you are needing the students full attention to review, they are all in full blown spring fever mode. 

  Any who, enough venting... onto the good stuff.  In our school district we use the Study Island program for STAAR questioning practice.  One of the lessons on the program is text organization.  Yes I know you are thinking "Why haven't you already taught that this year?"  Well I have been super stressed  excited to make sure that I cover all of the material in the rigor that is necessary for the upcoming tests and there are topics that u usually teach in the 1st 6 weeks or two that have gotten pushed to the wayside.  Text organization is one of them... Here are a few pictures to illustrate our study. 

First, we made anchor charts for the board.  As I was writing them on the chart paper, the students were writing it into their reading spirals and gluing examples to refer to.

The next day we added a chart for clue words.  I added those to our previously made anchor charts.

Then the students had to sort several short paragraphs between the 6 types of text organization. This activity was completed independently.

We also picked a topic in each period and wrote 2-3 sentences following each kind of text organization.  The next day, the students picked their own topics and completed the same activity independently.

Well, it is a super crazy Friday... I can't wait for some peace and quiet this weekend! :)