Category Archives: Reading

Summer Reading Recommendations

Dear parents,

in reading class today, my students made their summer reading wish lists. Tomorrow, they will receive information about their summer required reading project from ACPS middle schools, which will be sent home in their report card envelope at the end of the year.

I just wanted to give you all some of the resources I shared with students today so you can be prepared in case over the summer there is ever a dull moment when your child does not have an inspiring book to read!

Goodreads has tons of recommended books lists. I would recommend using caution with any of their lists labeled “teen” or “YA” as many of the topics are of a nature that may be inappropriate for kids their age. This link takes you to a series of Goodreads lists of books for “tweens” that many were interested in today.

Also, the American Library Association has published this list of recommended reading for “tweens” this summer. 

Not that it’s goodbye yet! Happy book shopping/library hunting 🙂

TAG 5 Reading Update

Dear families,

This post relates to the 5th grade TAG Reading class, first block of the day.

We have begun a new book! We are reading the book  A Long Way from Chicago as an entire class this week and next week, and we are doing some exciting projects with it. Today we created tableaus of the first few chapters of the book. In the coming days students will rewrite the lyrics to the traditional song “Camptown Races” to reflect the main events of each chapter of the song. Maybe your child will sing their new song for you when it’s finished..!

Below are the page deadlines for the book. Please note that we are moving through it quickly because it’s a pretty short book!

 

Pages and chapter title: Be finished before class on…
1-16: Shotgun Cheatham’s Last Night Above Ground Tuesday, March 29
17-35: The Mouse in the Milk Tuesday, March 29
37-59: One-Woman Crime Wave Tuesday, March 29
61-78: The Day of Judgment Wednesday, March 30
79-99: The Phantom Brakeman Thursday, March 31
101-120: Things with Wings Friday, April 1
121-148: Centennial Summer and The Troop Train (end of the book) Monday, April 4

TAG Reading 5 Update

Dear families,

this post relates to my first block TAG Reading 5th grade class.

We are diving in to short nonfiction reading! Students are practicing some important skills as we read shorter articles in preparation for research reading coming up:

  • identifying text features
  • finding main ideas and details
  • identifying and analyzing text structures
  • distinguishing between fact and opinion
  • starting to pick out bias
  • identifying author’s tone
  • summarizing and paraphrasing

Please encourage your child to continue reading a meal book every day on his or her own at home all month, as we do not have assigned books right now.

February has all but ended – please discuss with your child whether or not he/she met his/her reading goal and why! We will be making new reading goals for the month of March in the coming week in class.

Students just took the test on Wordly Wise Unit 7 on Friday, February 26, and that is coming home to be signed. Some students need to re-take the test this coming Friday, March 4 as they scored below 70%. If this is your child, please encourage him/her to study throughout the week as we will not spend class time on the words from that lesson. This week we have just begun lesson 8, on which we will have our test on Friday, March 11.

TAG Reading 5 update

Dear families,

Just a quick update about our TAG 5 Reading class:

  • we are studying the elements of historical fiction right now. Your child is either reading Out of the Dust or Esperanza Rising.
  • Students have had 3 reading deadlines for the books and their final deadline, the end of the book, is Wednesday, January 20. They will have their final book club meeting for that book on Wednesday morning in class.
  • In order to prepare for the book club meetings, students are required to answer a set of questions on a Google Doc that they have been working on.
  • When we finish these books on Wednesday, students will start reading and learning about fantasy, and they will have book club meetings about those books as well. Their reading page deadlines will be given to them on bookmarks that I would like for them to keep in their books as constant reminders.

Hope you all have a great weekend, and as always please don’t hesitate to contact me if you have any questions or concerns!

Reading over winter break…

Hi families,

This post relates to my 5th grade TAG Reading class.

WOW! As I mentioned in my previous post, I was challenging the class to read quite a few pages over winter break. Students set quite lofty goals for themselves….and they exceeded them. Almost every single student read not only to the goal they had set, but way beyond it. The class had set out to read 3,295 pages over our two-week holiday, which came out to about 250 pages on average per student. When all their pages were totaled, they had read an amazing 5,775 pages!  I was blown away that some students read nearly 800 pages in two weeks! Thank you so much for supporting them by giving them awesome books and lots of time to read. It is experiences like that – lots of extended reading time with engaging books they can devour – that are helping your children continue to grow into amazingly thoughtful and voracious readers for life.

We will celebrate next week with an extended recess period which we will share with the 4th grade TAG Reading class, who also joined in our challenge (but our page total was ONLY made up of 5th graders’ reading!).

Thank you!

Update: 5th TAG Reading

Dear families,
this post is for families of students in my first block TAG reading class.

We have just finished studying nonfiction text features and structures. Students have read some very challenging narrative nonfiction about important events in history.

For our winter vacation, the class has set a goal for themselves of reading a whopping 4,350 pages! Each student has considered his/her habits and the time that they will have during vacation to read and has set an individual goal (that is part of our whole class goal) of total pages to read over break. We have established a big reward of extra recess if everyone in the class manages to meet his/her goal over the vacation, but we need your help! Please would you initial your child’s reading log each day to acknowledge/vouch for the reading that he/she reports doing over the break, then sign the log at the end of break as an acknowledgement of the entire effort? All the students have identified books that they want to read toward this goal (but if you need more ideas, please see the previous post that includes a Padlet with book recommendations from classmates). Thank you in advance for your help!

I hope you all have a restful and joyous break full of seeing lots of loved ones and eating your favorite treats!

 

TAG Reading 5 Update

Dear families,

This post pertains to 5th graders who have me as their TAG reading teacher first block in the mornings.

We are reading nonfiction books right now. We are sharing a few *excellent* books written by Jim Murphy: Blizzard, A Young Patriot, and The Great Fire – all narrative nonfiction accounts of some major events in US history.

Students have completed one of the books and have written summaries independently and collaboratively, and just today they began their second of the three books. I have shared a document with them on Google Classroom that is a template for taking notes, although some students said they would prefer to write notes on post-its, which is also fine. I am asking them this time to succinctly state the main idea of each chapter in one sentence, as well as to find and define 5 new words in each chapter. These books are a treasure trove of amazing new vocabulary for the students, so I am sure they will find many more than 5 words! I have attached a Word document version of the note-taking template I created (meant to be filled out online) for your information.

I am asking students to read over the weekends, but only about 25 pages for the entire weekend – per the ACPS reading policy that students read every day, including over the weekend. I know your lives are busy, though, so we are working flexibly around busy travel schedules!

I encourage you to look at the book with your child and discuss the main events – these books are written at a high level and they are challenging for the students!

As always, please don’t hesitate to get in touch if you have any questions. Thank you for your continued support!

NotesonNonfictionBook

TAG 5 Reading Update

Dear families,
it has been a while since I gave you an update! Apologies for the long delay.
Last week, we finished the book Fish and wrapped up all of our thinking about the character of Tiger, the symbolism of the fish, and the theme of the book. I was so impressed by the connections that the students made! I encourage you to take a look through some of the thinking work that they did that I have posted here on previous posts on the blog.

This week, we are beginning a new unit in nonfiction. Students are reading a few different (quite well-written) narrative nonfiction books about some key events in US history, and at the same time they are comparing and contrasting the structures of expository vs. narrative nonfiction. I encourage you to ask them to talk to you about some of the differences between those two sub-genres that they have explored so far.

Since we now have Chromebooks and access to Google Classroom (yay!), I have posted on our class’s Classroom page their reading assignments for their books. I am asking them to read and take notes on about 1/4 of their assigned book each night between now and Tuesday, which equates to about 25 pages a day. I have said they may write their notes on stickies or on a Google Doc – whatever format works best for them. If you ask them, I’m sure they can show you the Nonfiction Reading Guide page on the Classroom website so you can see their assignments and deadlines as well. Please note that while I always want them to have a good book of their own to read, I don’t expect them to read their 25 pages in addition to other 30 minutes of reading each day – the 25 pages can count as their daily at-home reading.

As always, please let me know if you have any questions!

 

TAG Reading and TAG Writing Update

Dear families,

in our Global Read-Aloud this week, we are discussing symbolism and how the author of Fish creates symbols in her book. We are making connections with the symbols in the books A Long Walk to Water and Inside Out and Back Again. Students have been coming up with some insightful ideas about what symbols are and what the symbols in the books represent. I recommend asking your child about this concept – you’d be surprised with what he/she has come up with!

In writing this month, we are excited that NaNoWriMo has begun! It’s not too late to register your child! Here’s the website. We will be having mini-workshops on Mondays throughout the rest of the month to guide kids, but as I have mentioned most of their work will be at home on this project. Happy writing!

In writing today, we started a new program for spelling and vocabulary that has a higher level of challenge than the spelling lists that we were using before. The list is attached below; students will be asked to complete 1-2 activities per night and tests will be on Mondays as before. In these tests, though, students will be asked to use the words from the list in context instead of merely spelling them correctly as before.

Root of It Unit 1 Water words

Setting: Comparing and contrasting our independent books with Fish

This week, students started reading independent books which have strong connections with our global read-aloud book, Fish.  Some students are reading the book A Long Walk to Water, a book based on a true story that narrates the harrowing experience of a boy who has to escape southern Sudan in 1985. Others are reading Inside Out and Back Again, about a girl whose family has to flee their home country of Vietnam in 1975 to escape the violence of the Vietnam War.

In class last week, we discussed the three levels of setting in Fish. This week, students are finding elements of the three levels of setting in their independent books. Students: please reply to this blog post with a comment that compares and contrasts the three levels of setting in Fish with those in your independent book. In your reply, state the name of your book and use text evidence to explain each similarity and difference that you write.