Each year, I try to refine what I have taught in the past to help make it more meaningful or standards-based than the year before.  I find that by making small tweaks to lessons I have taught before, I am able to better reach my students. Such is the case with a lesson on setting that I did with my class this year.   You can read in full detail how I taught setting to my students here , but in this post, I wanted to share with you a tweak to the writing assignment that I found successful, and just a bit more rigorous. In the story we are reading, Gregor The Overlander (Underland Chronicles, Book 1) by Suzanne Collins, there are two main settings that are in stark contrast to each other, New York City and the fictional Regalia.  The author explains in detail the various components of both of these settings to lay out for the reader just how different each are.  She does this to give the reader a sense that the character "isn't in Kansas anymore" when he fal......

I have been teaching a long time.  Because of this, I tend to get bored with what I have "always done" and I find myself venturing out and mixing things up every once in a while.  So when it came time to review character traits with my students,  I tried out something new....we used a screencast! Ok...so before you ask what a screencast is, here is an example. Cool right???? There are so many different ways to use this technology in your class, but here is what we did.  Don't limit yourself to what I describe, but this is a good jumping off point for you. For our character trait project, the students had to go through a few different steps.  The students gathered into groups of 3 or 4 students and divided up the 6 major character groups in our class novel Gregor the Overlander.   They thought about the various character traits embodied by those character groups (i.e.: the crawlers/roaches are very loyal and would give up their lives to s......

To introduce the students to our new novel, AND to get them looking at the various text features found in fictional text, I did something a bit different than I had done before and I wanted to share it with you. I told the students the name of our book, which happens to be Gregor The Overlander (Underland Chronicles, Book 1) by Suzanne Collins.  JUST based on the title, I wanted the students to draw a conclusion as to what the story would be about.  I didn't show them the book.  I didn't tell them anything else.  I just wanted them to use the title only.  I then gave them a sticky note and they each wrote their thoughts down.  They then shared with a partner what they thought, and we placed it on our anchor chart. Next, I showed them the cover of the book. I placed in on my ELMO, as I didn't want them to see the back just yet.  I zoomed in, so they could really see the detail and then asked them to pair share some ideas about what the story cou......

This week we began our new class novel, Gregor The Overlander (Underland Chronicles, Book 1) by Suzanne Collins (the fact that this is the same person who wrote The Hunger Games is a HUGE plus for the kids...they were so excited!) This is a fantasy novel and, so far, fairly easy of a read for the kids.  It gets right into the action, and has hooked the kids from the beginning.  So far, so good!  (and a big thank you Jen for recommending it!) I wanted to share with you a few of the response activities that we have done so far.  While they are specific to Gregor the Overlander, they could definitely be adapted to fit any novel that you are reading in your class. Novel Folder This is SUCH an easy thing to do, but the kids loved it.  We just created a folder (using a 24" by 18" piece of construction paper folded up) and the kids decorated the cover.  They had to include details that came from the first five chapters (that we had already read.) ......