If you'd asked me a year ago how my students felt about nonfiction, I would have told you the truth: they tolerated it. Fiction got the excitement. Nonfiction got the sighs. And I get it. A lot of nonfiction instruction can feel like a worksheet wearing a book's costume. That's the problem I was trying to solve when I started implementing what I now call my  Nonfiction Quick Dip  routine, and it's turned into one of my favorite parts of the week in Room 6. What a Quick Dip Actually Is The idea is simple. I take one narrative nonfiction picture book (a real one, with real illustrations and a real story to tell, not a passage cut up for a test) and I spend one week "dipping into" it, one CCSS Reading Informational Text standard at a time. Monday is always the same: we read the whole book aloud, together, just to enjoy it and get the big picture.  That day we always discuss the main idea of the text.  Then Tuesday through Friday, we go back into the book for sho......

One of the units we study in 3rd grade science deals with the climate zones around the globe.  We started learning about the by using the Mystery Science lesson on the very subject.  It is SUCH a great lesson because it takes the kids step by step through the process of completing a world map showing the different zones around the world.  It also taught them all about how location on the globe has a huge effect on the weather and climate.  After we were done with that lesson, which took a few days and was well worth it, I felt like the kids needed just a bit more work with the zones.  So we set about researching them.  Now, depending upon where you do your research, there are anywhere from 3 to 11 different zones :)  That is just too many to tackle, so when we were discussing them, we focused on the following: polar, temperate, tropical, desert, and Mediterranean.  We are really focusing heavily on using sources to gather information for our own ......

Get it??  BACK to school but with a Book since this will be a series about how I use picture books  during the back to school times?? ;)  I crack myself up. This summer, I am going to be spending my time figuring out how I can take my old tried-and-true lessons and reconfigure them for the inevitability of hybrid or virtual teaching.  While we got a taste of it this spring, after school was shut down due to the COVID-19 outbreak, we were at the tail end of school.  We were focused more on survival than learning.  So while what I did in my virtual classroom was valuable (in my humble opinion) it isn't going to cut it for when we go back in August.  So in this series I will be sharing with you how I will use several picture books at the start of school to engage my new students, get them working, and set out learning goals for the year.   First up:   We Don't Eat Our Classmates I used   We Don't Eat Our Classmates  by......

I am always trying to find new ways to get books into the hands of my students.   I have a huge library full of great novels, but sometimes they get lost in the shelves.  Kids just don't notice them all because of the volume of books available.  So this year, I came up with a way to allow the students to notice those hidden books and get their hands on them --- Book Display Chains. The idea is basic and simple.   I have this space under my whiteboard that was empty.  So I bought four of these  Three By Three Seattle Chained-Up Ball with Chain Photo Display, Silver (41108)   from Amazon (this is my affiliate link) and hung them on the wall.  Then, I placed between 5 and 6 books on each chain.  The books just hung there on the chain, prominently on display.   When a student wanted to read the book, they simply walked up to the chain, took it off, and walked back to their seat to read.  I then would replace the book with anoth......

Each year, I try to find unique ways to help my students display their list of books that they have read over the course of their time with me.  This year, I had the students combine their computer skills with their writing skills to create a fun display that was a hit with everyone who came across it!  (not to sound boastful or anything....they just turned out really cool.) This year, my kids created Visual Book Logs.   To begin, I gave my kids a template with a "tablet" on one side and empty space on the other.  Super simple.  (you can grab it here )  Using the Book Record Book Shelf that they have been keeping all year long as a guide, I asked them to search the internet to find pictures of the books that they had read this current school year, either at school or at home.  They then took screenshots of those books.  Since they are using Chromebooks, the screenshots were saved right to their drive.  They then were to insert those s......

One of the nonnegotiables in my classroom is read aloud time.  I build it into my schedule so that every day, rain or shine, I read aloud to my students.  I get quite a few questions about how I actually do read aloud and what it looks like in my classroom, so I thought I would write about it here to give you a clearer picture of what read aloud looks like in my room. At the end of every school day, about 20 minutes before the bell rings for dismissal,  I have my students clean up our classroom using the 60 second clean up , they write their homework in their planners, we pass out papers (homework, flyers from the office, etc...) and then they pack up their stuff to go home.  When the kids are done packing up, I have them join me on the rug.  Since this is an individual process (some kids take longer than others) I head to the rug at this time and sit in my chair.  Kids join me as they finish up and we usually start talking about the books we are read......

I love using picture books in my classroom.  There is just SO much that can be taught with them and through them that excluding them from my fifth grade class just because they are "for younger kids" is a travesty to me.  Picture books can be full of rich imagery, wonderful lessons, complex characters....you name it, picture books have it.   There are SO many different picture books that I use in my class throughout the year, but for this particular post, I thought I would focus on 10 of my favorites and how I use them.   (all of the links to the books are affiliate links on Amazon.) I See You I See You is a book about homelessness. This book literally changed the course of my classroom.  It is a wordless book that I picked up to read to my students the last 10 minutes of class one day.  At the beginning of the book, we see a little boy who notices a woman, illustrated in black and white.  As the book goes on, we see that she is ho......