This week our 5th grade train has been moving right along... We covered author's purpose and context clues.  All of the things we have covered so far this year SHOULD are a review. 

 

Of course we added items to our Reading Spirals... We put our author's purpose foldable into out reading spirals and talked about that each purpose meant and gave examples.  The students had a lot of fun with this and were surprised how often they use persuade at home.. lol!  We also did an author's purpose scavenger hunt.  I know, I know, scavenger hunts with every topic?? We won't be doing another one for a while and the kiddos just LOVE them.  We also rolled our author's purpose dice on a daily basis and pull a random item out of the mystery bag to have the audience guess the purpose. Fun, fun, fun and my students have it down!

 

 

For context clues, we glued our context clues guidelines into our Reading spirals and went over them to circle and make note of important words.  We also took made up words and  sentences and fill out our context clues chart.  I also went over appropriate highlighting.  ( 5th graders LOVE to highlight the entire page to make it pretty...)  We also did a reading passage with lots of "big" words and used our context clues to figure out the meanings.  I know we didn't do too much, but this is a skill we will use everyday for the rest of the year. 

 

 

Yay, for Friday and our football game at home tonight... now if we could just get a win!! (lol)

 

 

 

If you have any ideas for author's purpose or context clues, let me know!

All of the items that I used for context clues are either from teacher resource books or other bloggers.  I cannot send you a copy of them, but would love to send you in the right direction.  I an also going to try and upload the author's purpose foldable to my new teacher's notebook store Monday morning.
 
The context clues guidelines came from .  The context clues sentences used with the chart (from Katie at Adventures of a 6th Grade Teacher) came from another book.  I will have to look it up at school Monday.  Sorry about all of the confusion... I am trying to upload anything that is my original to my teacher's notebook store. :)

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Sandy

Things have been crazy over here in 5th grade... The students are learning and loving their Reading spirals.  It has also helped me make sure to teach the essentials at the beginning of the year.  Last year I thought my kiddos would remember some of the basics that they had been learning from their primary grades.... and I was wrong!  Its like when they come to the middle school for 5th grade and have to rotate for classes their little minds lose everything previously learned.  Sorry about that... got a little off topic!

 

Last week we reviewed/retaught genres.  We many things with these which we put into our Reading spirals.  We started off the week with a PowerPoint and sheet to be filled out & placed into their Reading Spirals.  We also did a fiction & non-fiction sort and a literary genre sort, which were both placed in their spirals.  We ended the week with a genre scavenger hunt and the students had fun working in their small groups.

 

The end of this post is picture heavy so beware.... If you should have any questions, please let me know! Also, if you have some awesome genre ideas... feel free to share! :)

 

I am in the process of uploading all of the genre materials that are my originals to my Teacher's Notebook store.  This should be done by Mon or Tues.... so if you want a copy of something you will be able to find it there.

 

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Sandy

Wow... time has been flying by!! I am trying to keep my head above water, but I am loving the quick pace.  Last week I said I was going to share what we did with prefixes and suffixes.  I had pictures on my camera and everything, but life got in the way. (By life I mean lesson plans and grading papers... lol!) 

 

Well last week we covered prefixes and suffixes... I was nervous, but the kiddos has a lot of fun.  Of course we had to put some tools in our Reading Spiral.

 

 

First, we put in a chart of the commonly used prefixes.

(Sorry about the sideways picture.)

 

Then, we put in our commonly used suffixes.  We also added 2 envelopes for flashcards.  The students had a blast using these to study.

 

 

We also made some fabulous circle maps.  Each student got a prefix and had to write it's definition, give 5 examples, use one of the examples in a sentence with CONTEXT CLUES, and then illustrate it.  (I forgot to take pictures of these, which I will do tomorrow and upload for you to see!!)

 

We had a lot of fun... this week we are onto genres. Hopefully I will have time to post all about that tomorrow! :) 

 

If you have any resources to share for prefixes & suffixes or genres, please let me know!! Leave a comment or email me... :)

I am in the process of uploading all of the prefix and suffix materials that are my originals to my Teacher's Notebook store. This should be done by Mon or Tues.... so if you want a copy of something you will be able to find it there.

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Sandy

The students did such an amazing job last week putting together their spirals and collaborating with each other to come up with out Real vs. Fake Reading anchor chart.  I have 3 groups of kiddos that are soaking everything up like sponges, so the next couple of days we built on what we had talked about with the Real vs. Fake Reading. 

 

On Thursday, we continued with Comprehension Connections techniques.  We made an interactive real reqading salad as a class and then I finished the book with the students making a real reading salad in their reading spirals.  Not only is it absolutely adorable, but the students really got behind the text/thinking that happens while reading.

 

On Friday, we did the text/thinking graphic organizer that can also be found in Comprehension Connections.  The students automatically knew what went where and why... SCORE!! Then we learned a new BIG word... metacognition.  Finally, they practiced making thinking marks on a short story that also had several short answer and multiple choice questions.

 

My class is full of REAL readers and they are loving it!!  They ask me everyday why reading class goes by so quickly and I tell them... time flies when you are having fun!!

 

Hope everyone has an amazing Thursday.. next post will be on the exciting prefix and suffix activities we have been doing this week! :)



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Sandy

Its that time already... September is here and currently has arrived!

 

 

Go on over and link up...

Don't forget the rule of 3!!

 

 

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Sandy