Let me tell you what I LOVE.
I LOVE tricking kids into thinking working is super fun. 😛
My kids were begging me last week to learn more and write more. Have you ever heard of such a thing???
I shared with you last week that I am working on getting my students to respond deeper using Jennifer Findley’s Rigorous Reader’s Response Letters. We are also working on reading informational paired texts… and we were working on some skills with Stellaluna this past week… so I decided to write some articles about bats for them to use for close reading and annotating, and for them to use for their response letters! The first day, I gave them the first article on Kitti’s Hog-Nosed Bat- the smallest mammal in the world! We did some close reading, then I had them practice their first independent response letter using the same checklist from last week. Seriously, with their excitement level, you would have thought I’d just given them candy. They could not WAIT to write about what they had learned about these bats, and what they could infer. Some of them are seriously impressing me with their inferring skills too! Check this one out:
As I was peeking at some of their responses, a few were still not going as deep as I wanted, so on Friday, I had a few students share (including the one above) and then we did another class shared writing response. Here is what the students suggested I write:
Then, I let them know they were getting another article about bats that day- they cheered! One of my students said, “Ms. Ivey, can we do more articles next week about other animals? This is fun!” I swear, I am not making this up!! (I actually thought to myself at that moment- I can link this up with Joanne!! Ha!!)
They did the same thing as the previous day with their new passage about a megabat- the Spectacled Flying Fox. I will most likely use these responses for a grade since we have practiced a bit now.
I decided to take these articles a step further and add some paired text multiple choice and constructed response questions…. then I thought, if they liked these articles so much, I’m going to need more… so I made some for owls and spiders, too! (‘Tis the season after all!)
And of course, you know I can’t keep them all to myself… you can get them in my TPT store!
For the first 48 hours, this product is 20% off! I hope you enjoy!
