The Crazy Schoolteacher

📝 5 Writing Lessons EVERY teacher NEEEDS!📝

30 July 2019

What if I told you the first five writing lessons are the most important lessons you will teach all year?

Setting up classroom expectations and teaching strategies for our students to use while working is an essential part of a well-run classroom.

Think about it this way, do you think your favorite basketball team practices their plays before game day?

Yep, I can almost guarantee they spend hours and hours practicing.

Throughout the 5 writing lessons, you will introduce and practice 4 different writing strategies that your students can use all year long.

Want to get your free lesson plans? Click the image below! 👇🏻

What is Close Reading?

24 July 2019

What the heck is this "Close Reading" thing, anyway?

Close reading is an instructional routine in which students critically examine a text. It encourages readers to examine the deep structures of the text.

When I introduce this instructional routine to my students, I compare it to what healthcare professionals do when they are learning more about a patient. They hear what the patient has to say, make a list of the important details, then they order "tests" to see what is going on inside their body.

I start the conversation by asking students this question, "Do you know of anyone who has fallen and gotten hurt?" After a few students share responses, I share about a time I fell off my bike. It resulted in a trip to the E.R. and an x-ray.

Close reading is basically like giving your book an x-ray!

1^stRead – Key Ideas & Details

The 1^stread should be without the teacher building background knowledge. Students will integrate their background knowledge as they read.

Set the purpose for reading and have students read text as independently as possible. Depending on the text complexity and the readers, the first read may be done independently, as a read aloud, paired reading, or shared reading.

Following the first read, have students turn & talk to assess what they have learned from the text. As you listen to the students share, you can determine the focus of the first read.

Facilitate a small group discussion that focuses on the key ideas and details in the text, making sure that readers know the main idea, story elements, and key details that the author includes.

2^ndRead – Craft & Structure

For the 2^ndread, choose a portion of the text that is “close read-worthy.”

Use a text-dependent question to focus or set a purpose for the close rereading.

Have students reread a section that includes complex elements or ideas that they should explore to gain a deeper understanding of the text.

After rereading, students discuss the text in a small group or turn and talk with a partner.

Facilitate a small group discussion that focuses on the author’s craft and organizational patterns. This may include vocabulary choices, text structure or text features that the author included.

Ask groups to share their thinking to assess understanding.

3^rdRead – Integration of Knowledge & Ideas

The 3^rdclose read should go even deeper, requiring students to synthesize and analyze information from several texts or media.

Students are encouraged to record their ideas on sticky notes, graphic organizers or a thinking sheet.

After the 3^rdread, students turn & talk

Facilitate a small group discussion about text evidence.

To assess understanding, have students journal a response to a text dependent question.

Sign up for my newsletter and you can download this free close reading guide. I printed it on card stock and keep it right next to my small group table. It is especially helpful when I have a volunteer in my classroom that I would like to work with a student!

Head on over to my TpT store to find some free close reading passages!

Black History Month Activities

30 January 2019

I love finding great multicultural literature to integrate into my reading instruction. When I’m teaching making predictions, I use Ruby’s Wish as a mentor text. Teaching Theme or Point of View? White Socks Only is one of my all time favorites!😍

One of my favorite reading skills to integrate with science and social studies is nonfiction text structures and features. Here in Indiana, February can be a LONG month. My kids and I need AND enjoy a nice change of pace by focusing on nonfiction during cold winter months.

Here are a few of my favorite mentor texts!

Back of the Bus is about A boy and his mother are riding the bus in Montgomery, Alabama like any other day—way in the back of the bus. The boy passes time by watching his marble roll up and down the aisle with the motion of the bus…Until a big commotion breaks out from way up front.

Let the Children March is set in 1963 Birmingham, Alabama. Thousands of African American children volunteered to march for their civil rights after hearing Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. speak. They protested the laws that kept black people separate from white people. Facing fear, hate, and danger, these children used their voices to change the world.

28 Days: Moments in Black History that Changed the World Each day features a different influential figure in African-American history, from Crispus Attucks, the first man shot in the Boston Massacre, sparking the Revolutionary War, to Madame C. J. Walker, who after years of adversity became the wealthiest black woman in the country, as well as one of the wealthiest black Americans, to Barack Obama, the country's first African-American president.

While learning to identify and understand nonfiction text structures, my kids love using paired texts! They are like little sponges absorbing all the things and I can't get enough of it! These paired texts are from 28 Days: Moments in Black History that Changed the World and Black History Month Activities. This book is definitely where I get the most bang for my buck. Lets face it, building your library of great mentor texts is expensive! This book allows for several opportunities to use paired texts with your class. I would definitely put it at the top of your list!

From a young age, I was extremely fascinated by The Little Rock 9. I think it is because my uncle was actually bused from a "white school" to a "black school" when Indianapolis began integrating their public schools. Then, I could not imagine the bravery that it would have taken for the Little Rock 9 to do what they did. Now, I think about the teachers and staff of the school and how that impacted the students.

Let the Children March can be paired with more than one passage, but my favorite is the Nonviolent Protest passage. I would recommend reading the passage first, as I have found that providing the background information first helps the students have a deeper understanding of the book.

She Persisted is about women in American history, who have spoken out for what's right, even when they have to fight to be heard. This book includes Harriet Tubman, Claudette Colvin, Ruby Bridges and many more inspiring women.

Hidden Figures Dorothy Vaughan, Mary Jackson, Katherine Johnson, and Christine Darden were good at math…really good. They participated in some of NASA's greatest successes, like providing the calculations for America's first journeys into space. And they did so during a time when being black and a woman limited what they could do. But they worked hard. They persisted. And they used their genius minds to change the world.

Little Leaders: Bold Women in Black History educates and inspires as it relates true stories of forty trailblazing black women in American history.