Wrapping Up Historical Fiction

We made it! What an amazing unit that was! The kids impressed us with their passion to learn new information and how they could connect the "dots of history" from book to book! We just finished up our Historical Fiction unit in Reader's Workshop. You can read about how we launched it HERE. 

This unit has been so much fun! We loved meeting with the book clubs each day. To help manage our time in Reader's Workshop, we used a rotation system for this unit ONLY. Now, we are not "centers" teachers. That being said, in a book club unit, kids will talk FOREVER if you let them! Not that that is entirely a bad thing, we wanted to make sure they still had time for independent/choice time during this unit. Due to this, we created three, 15-minute rotations to support this work. This allowed for book clubs to meet every day. It also limited the noise level in the room to not have every club meet at the same time! :) Below is an example of a daily rotation chart:

This was made in a simple Google Slide Presentation. We had a different slide for each day of the week...why, you might ask? Because we met with groups on different days. You might notice the letters in the book club rotation are black and some are red. The red letters are the groups that meet with an adult that day. We are fortunate to have 3-4 adults in our classroom during our Reader's Workshop block. This allows us to have much smaller groups to provide much more tailored support. Some groups meet with us every day. Some groups meet with us every other day. And a few group only met with us twice per week. It was all based on the individual needs of  our students. You might also notice that Group B meets with an adult for two rotations every day. They are our neediest ELL readers that benefited from extra vocabulary and graphic organizer support each day.

Topics we tackled in this unit included: Character development and tracking, Theme development, Power struggles, Secondary Characters, Literary point of view, Character Perspective, and even Connecting nonfiction topics to our historical fiction texts. Kids created double timelines to show where their books fit within the actual historical timeline.

Kids tracked their thinking in multiple ways throughout the unit. We provided them with a packet "template" that had various ideas, etc. They could house their sticky notes in there and find helpful graphic organizers. Some groups chose to use it daily. Other groups created their own way of tracking their ideas. Some through Google Keep, others through Google Slides, and even a few through Google Docs. We allowed them to choose the best way to document that met the needs of their groups/individual learning styles.

Again, we also utilized Google Forms as a formative assessment check-in system. About every week and a half, we sent out a new Google Form that targeted a skill we had been learning about. This allowed kids to have time to come across a part in their book(s) where this might be applicable. So often, when we teach a new skill, kids aren't at a perfect point in their books to apply it. This gives you that "guarantee room" to have had it come up!

A sample of one of the Google Forms we used. 

The nice thing about Google Forms, is that we set it up to have every weeks' responses go to the SAME Google spreadsheet! This allowed us to view our unit in one glance. It also allowed us to score the responses right in the spreadsheet using a simple 4,3,2,1 system. This let us sort them lowest to highest (or vs. versa), and immediately pull strategy groups or have immediate 1-on-1 reading conferences with kids to address needs!

We always give kids multiple days to complete the form, as well. Due to this, we encourage our kids to type a "draft" in a doc first. If they don't finish in one day, they can continue the next. If they try to type it in the Google Form directly first and don't finish, as soon as they close their computer, they lose their work! Word of caution to prevent tears/frustration! :)

To wrap up our unit, in addition to the Paper Pencil Teacher's College assessment we use, we give kids the opportunity to show their learning in any way they would like to using a Learning Model style. Now, this was the first literacy Learning Model that our students completed. The format is very similar to our Math Learning Models, but definitely requires more typing! I started it off by providing every kiddo with a copy of this GOOGLE DOC:

I also shared with them my own example that I made using emaze.

We went over the expectations on the rubric with them, answered questions, then the kids then got to work! I have to say, we were super impressed with their final products! Here are a few kid examples:

EXAMPLE USING EMAZE

EXAMPLE USING GOOGLE SLIDES

This was such a fun unit! We had a blast, and so did the kids! How do you teach Historical Fiction? We'd love to learn from you!

Happy Teaching,

~Angela

Reading Formative Assessments

We have officially wrapped up our first unit in Reader's Workshop that focused on characters! Our kids really grew so much, especially in their written responses!

One of the things that Kate and I have been reflecting upon as we continue our Personalized Learning journey is how we can implement more immediate strategy groups within our Reader's Workshop block. Due to the skill-based nature of our math workshop, it is easy to have a "bull pen" using our daily exit slips. In reading, we try not to have daily tasks, allowing the students more freedom to apply the different skills they need as they naturally come up in their self-selected text. In addition, increasing class sizes means that it takes about 2+ weeks to get through the entire class with individual or small group conferences. These don't help our issue of needing more immediate strategy groups.

Due to this, we decided to implement a form of formative assessment approximately once per week (sometimes every 1.5 weeks). One of the simple ways we do this is through a sticky note check in. Students have the opportunity to submit their best "character thinking sticky note" from that week (since we were in our character unit). They stick their sticky to a laminated class poster that is filled with numbers. Each of our students is assigned a number, so they each have their own "home." We ask them to put their name/number SOMEWHERE on their sticky note, because they will get mixed up later.

We collect the entire batch at the end of Reader's Workshop and can easily sort the sticky notes into "got it" or "don't got it." This allows us to quickly be able to organize a strategy group for the next day.

Another project that I have been tackling is becoming more familiar with the new Teacher's College Reading Progressions, as we utilize Teacher's College materials for both reading and writing workshop. While these are truly amazing tools, as with many other Teacher's College materials, they are incredibly "wordy." The entire Narrative Reading Progression is approximately 20 pages, which doesn't always lend itself to 4th graders that have the attention span of a fruit fly! :) Due to this, I modified them into bulleted tables. This format allows the entire Narrative Reading Progression to fit onto 4 pages (2 pages if you copy them back-to-back). I also made them for the Informational Text band, as well.

In addition to the entire document, I also saved each, individual band as smaller, PNG files. This allows us to insert these images anywhere we would like them (SMART files, Google Slides, Docs, or FORMS!) You can even print them out when working with strategy groups or individual students that you feel need to focus/reflect/set goals on one particular area.

We have also introduced individual bands of the progression as they pertained to our Character Unit of Study. This sparked the idea of self reflection for our students against the progression bands. We aren't using them as an exact rubric, more for reflection, discussion, strategy group work, and goal setting. We also decided to implement an alternate form of formative assessment. We used the applicable reading progression bands that we had been discussing the most that week, and created a weekly response/self-reflection tool using Google Forms. 

(Click to view actual form)

This allowed our students to create one "long and strong" about their best character thinking that week. It also asks them to reflect on their work against a specific band in the narrative reading progression. After reflection, they can go back and revise their response prior to submitting. The best part of Google Forms, is that all of your student responses (in our case...51 of them!) all feed into one, beautiful spreadsheet that you can now tweak, sort, and view in multiple ways!

There are many benefits to the spreadsheet! 1. Having ALL of your kid responses in one place! This is such a gift for a teacher to not have 51 sticky notes or papers to sort through (or lose!). 2. I set my responses to feed all into one place, making my entire unit of thinking all in one document! 3. I added a column called "score" to my spreadsheet, where I can easily give them a score against the band they were focusing on. This is super helpful, because you can then SORT your entire spreadsheet lowest to highest (or vs. versa depending on your needs). Now I can see all of my lowest responses in one chunk, making them my first strategy group that I will meet with the next day!

Now, I'll be honest, Google Forms can have their "downsides." The first being that not everyone is as familiar with them as other Google Tools. Due to this, I will try to put a blog post together about some of my favorite "tricks" having to do with Google Forms. I recently presented PD about this Google Form Reflection Tool to other teachers in our district, and I found that the majority of them needed more support in creating/manipulating Google Forms, than the actual progressions! :) So, I definitely recognize the "need" in that area! Another downside is from the student lens. If a student does NOT finish their Google Form Entry by the end of your reading block, there really is no way to save their progress (that I know of, at least? If anyone out there has a solution to this sticky problem, I would LOVE to connect! :) To alleviate this issue, we encourage our students to write their "long and strong" in their digital reading journals FIRST, then "copy/paste" it into their Google Form when they are ready. We also have a few students that use the new "voice type" option in Google Docs to "speak" their response, then "copy/paste" it into the Form when they are ready (really amazing accommodation for your students with special needs or ELL needs!). If you are an iPad classroom (we use Chromebooks), that speak option should be readily available directly within the Form. 

How do you use formative assessments in your reading workshop block? Have you been using the new Teacher's College progressions? We'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments below!

Happy Teaching!

~Angela

Classroom Response Systems!

Classroom Response Systems (CRS) are a great way to increase student participation and promote active learning in the classroom. Students can submit answers to questions anonymously via some sort of "clicker". A CRS is not only interactive, it's downright fun! I love them because the students do not feel pressure about getting the right answer, plus the students are provided with immediate feedback. You can use a response system, across subject areas, to activate prior knowledge, maintain student attention throughout a lesson or assess comprehension of a concept after the lesson.

Kahoot!: If you're looking for FUN, this is the option for you. Angela and I recently taught a class about personalized learning, and one of the men in our class introduced us to Kahoot! He created a question set and our class had a ball answering the questions on our own device. Teachers can create quick quizzes/surveys or more in-depth questions. The best part of Kahoot! is that the question sets are easy to make and even easier to respond to. When you launch Kahoot! on your classroom whiteboard, students go to kahoot.it, enter their game pin and start playing! They can do this from any device (iPad, iPod, Chromebook, laptop, etc.) There is no need for kids to create an account to play. Students can take on the leadership role by creating their own Kahoots! to share with fellow classmates. Teachers can use the formative assessments to track student understanding and differentiate instruction accordingly. This game-based learning is highly engaging and a ton of fun for students and teachers! It can be timed, untimed, and they have other options, too, to truly differentiate the learning for your students (we all have those kiddos that take a little longer to process that this could be frustrating for otherwise!) Use this at your next PD and your teachers will have a ball!

Senteo Interactive Response System: I have had a set of these "clickers" in my classroom for years. The kids love using them. SMART Notebook allows you to create question pages within a SMART Notebook file. Students can play anonymously or with a log in option. SMART Exchange also allows you to download a variety of question sets all ready for classroom use.

ExitTicket: This was another great "find" from teaching our class this summer! This app is available through the Google Chrome Store and iTunes. In order to respond students need their own technology. Classroom teachers can create question sets for their students and share them with colleagues. As students answer, their responses are tracked without importing or exporting data. They have different types of question sets depending on the teacher's need. I have not personally used ExitTicket yet, but will definitely be playing around with this option this year.

Do you use a classroom response system with your students? If so, share your thoughts, tips, tricks or favorite ideas! If this is a new idea for you, give it a try. You won't be disappointed!

~ Kate