Hi friends! Today is my FIRST day back to school (with students)! :o) Today is also the LAST DAY of my 8 Days of Giveaways! Have you entered?? Only one more chance to win! Head over to my facebook page to see the great prize available to you today! (After you read this post of course!)

Soooo, today’s post isn’t going to be totally exciting since the pictures I have are still pre-kiddos because I am publishing before the school day actually starts…… but I hope you will still get some great ideas that you can use in your classroom!

Remember, since everyone’s start dates are so different, the topic for August AND September will be Getting Workshop Started in the Classroom. Please write about only one workshop in your post so that you can link it up accordingly below, and then please come back each week to share! (In other words, if you use Reading, Writing, and Math Workshop and you want to share about all three, please link up in three different weeks.) Today, I’ll be sharing about Reading Workshop, but feel free to link up with Writing or Math if you’d like! 🙂

Getting started with Reading Workshop in my room on the very first day looks a little something like this:

My classroom library is super organized (even more so, now that I have Fourth Grade Flipper’s adorable labels!!) so one of the very first things we do is talk about how the books are organized, and rules for my classroom library. (Only one book per student at one time, the “class librarian” reshelves books in the return bin at the end of the day, books should be listed in their reading log, my books don’t leave the classroom, and books are stored in their browsing boxes ONLY – not in desks or bookbags.) Can you tell I’m anal about my books?? But as far as I know, I haven’t lost any! (But then, really, would I know?? Ha!) One day, I’ll invest in matching book baskets- I just keep accumulating baskets as I accumulate more books, and I can’t get rid of my old ones!

Anyway, onto the students’ browsing boxes- all the students have one. This is where they keep their reading notebooks, AR folder, sticky notes, and books they are reading. But they all look the same:

So another first day “thing” we do is decorate a tag for the side that faces out. I cut poster board to fit the front of the boxes (4″x3″) and the students will write their name and decorate the tags. Then, I laminate them and hot glue them to the front.

Last, before I let them actually go get a book to read, we talk about ways we choose books- what makes them good books for us or interesting to us- and we create an anchor chart! Oh and PS, when you look at this next picture, please know….. my name is Jivey, and I am a magnet hoarder. 😛

So, that’s my first day in Reading Workshop! It’s about the only thing I get through besides rules, lunch, and getting home on the right bus, but it’s an absolute MUST to get the kiddos in the right frame of mind for reading in the classroom!

I hope you’ve gotten some ideas to use in your own classroom…and I hope you’ll share your own! Link up below to Reading Workshop, Writing Workshop, or Math Workshop and tell us how you get started! Make sure to go under the correct label to link up! That way, we can look through the links by subject later. 🙂

Remember, since everyone’s start dates are so different, the topic for August AND September will be Getting Workshop Started in the Classroom. Please write about only one workshop in your post so that you can link it up accordingly below, and then please come back each week to share! (In other words, if you use Reading, Writing, and Math Workshop and you want to share about all three, please link up in three different weeks-or more if you’d like!!)

Today I want to share with you how I start using sticky notes in the classroom.

I talked about them not too long ago at the END of my school year last year here, but I can finally show you how I start using them in this post! I also teased you in my Five For Friday last week when I shared about reading The Raft.

It took me two days to read the book because I was showing them how to write their thinking on sticky notes by modeling and doing think-alouds. Most important, I showed them how we don’t need a sticky on EVERY page- only when my thinking is truly important to understanding the book… that good deep thinking.

Most of them are doing a really good job with it already! I gave them their bookmarks (which you can still grab here if you want!) to help prompt their thinking…..

At the end of each day, they need to take their sticky notes out of their book (to keep them from “forgetting” where they are) and put them in their reading notebook. They write the title at the top of the page, and stick all their notes on the page, staggering them so they can flip through them easier:

Once a week, they need to write a response. They should use their sticky notes to find a common theme- maybe about characters, or maybe it’s about events leading to a problem… there are lots of options. They should use those sticky notes to help them write their response in their second paragraph. I stress to them, they are not writing all of their sticky notes in their paragraph! Their first paragraph will always be a summary of what they have read.

This student chose to write about the character’s feelings in the book, and give evidence to support the feelings! :o) I was one proud teacher!

I will be introducing my BBB Joanne’s awesome reading response menus very soon to help them write their responses!

How do you have your students show their thinking in reading? I hope you’ll link up! I’m always eager to see and hear other ideas! If you’re not ready to share for Reading, you can link for Writing or Math, too! :o)

Happy Wednesday! :o)

Time to share how workshops are going in your room! I think at this point, everyone is back in school…? I think? So no excuses! Come link up! :o)

The topic for the rest of September is: Getting Workshop Started in the Classroom. Please write about only one workshop in your post so that you can link it up accordingly below, and then please come back each week to share! (In other words, if you use Reading, Writing, and Math Workshop and you want to share about all three, please link up in three different weeks-or more if you’d like!!)

Jennifer Findley’s Close Reading Mega Kit

I decided to go ahead and tackle Greek Mythology and context clues first using these strategies. {My state standard: Determine the meaning of words and phrases as they are used in a text, including those that allude to significant characters found in mythology (e.g., Herculean).} The students do not have to “learn” Greek Mythology… they have to be able to understand how to read them and understand the allusions, and being exposed to some myths will help.

I figured starting first with the myth that is ACTUALLY mentioned in our standard was a good way to go. Before we read the myth of Heracles together (FYI: his Roman name is Hercules… I guess “Heraclean” didn’t have the same ring?!), I played this video on YouTube:

We talked about how Disney wanted to portray Hercules in this movie trailer. Many of them had seen the movie, too, so that helped. They were able to tell me he was a hero, he was strong, he had to do “weird” and dangerous things… they already had an idea of who Heracles/Hercules was before we read the myth! This helped them identify the theme pretty quickly, too.

 

As we read the story of Heracles together the first time, the students circled any words they found interesting, unusual, or were unsure about. The second time we read it, we used context clues (and Ms. Ivey’s brain when there weren’t context clues LOL) to figure out what the words they circled meant and how they were important to the myth. We also spent some time talking about the word, “Herculean.” It was not in the story, but we talked about when we might use this word, and who we might describe using the word. This was when I explained the meaning of an allusion. They seemed to really understand!

We’ll see how the rest of this week goes… we’ll be reading about King Midas and Pandora’s Box.

How are things going in workshops for you? Please link up and let us know! Don’t forget to peruse the link ups from past weeks as well- there are some great ideas and resources that you could easily incorporate into your workshops, even if you’ve already started!

PS Don’t forget to enter My Favorite Things Giveaway!!! 🙂