Book Clubs...They're a Hit!

Today was our first official day of book clubs, and I was so pleased with how they went. We had spent the past few school days setting expectations and discussing procedures for the book clubs. The hardest part for me was actually assigning the books. We laid out all of the choices last week and the students then listed their top five choices on their choice sheet. I was pretty pleased because I only had to place a few students in a group that did not contain a book they selected. 

The highlight though was definitely getting out the iPads for my students to use while they read their book club books. They were so excited! I ordered some Belkin Rock Stars from Amazon so I can plug up to 5 headphones into the iPad. They worked great! Here is a picture of one of my groups that is reading Trouble Maker by Andrew Clements. They made my day when they were listening and all of a sudden I hear a chuckle out of them! 

As I am looking on iTunes for more audio books, I am discovering that some of the titles are not there. Where do you find audio books for your classroom? I am open to using other resources. 

I promise to keep blogging about our classroom journey with book clubs! 

New Year Resolutions and Novel Studies

One of my favorite things about teaching Language Arts is all of the novels that we get to read in my classroom. I really didn't do a great job of this during my first year because the choices I had to choose from were not the best. One of the things that I really worked on this past year was finding quality novels to read with my students as well as growing my collection of novel sets of 6 for book clubs. Right now I am planning on reading The Wednesday Wars and The Giver with my Pre-AP class. I just finished TWW and loved, loved, loved it! I think my kids, especially, the boys will enjoy it too! As for my regular classes I am not quite sure what I want to read with them yet. Even though it is a little easy, I think I am going to start the school year by reading The Best School Year Ever because my kids really liked that a lot last year. I think it is the perfect book to get their feet with and it gives them a positive experience with their first novel as a middle schooler. If you teach middle school, or upper elementary, what are your favorite novels to read as a whole class? What are some novels that you have used for lit circles or book clubs? 

I am also linking up with Amanda Madden for her Back to School Resolutions linky party. Make sure you go and link up over at her blog if you choose to participate. 

One. I need to manage my time after school better. Sometimes last year I would be up there until 6 or 7p.m. This school year my goal is to be gone no later than 5:15p.m. each day. I also really want to limit the amount of work that I take home with me to complete if I can. I think part of the problem is that I am a single 20 something and do not have a family or husband at home so it makes it easy to take things home with me.

Two.Stay organized. Last year I was very organized when the school year began, but it never lasted. I had to do some serious reorganizing at the semester. I think I will do a better job of it this year because I simply know what to expect. I am hoping that I can do a better job of teaching my students procedures about keeping their things organized too in the room which I think will help me stay organized at the same time.

Three.Stay positive. Last year I think I did a good job of this the first semester, but I let others get to me during the second semester. I need to do my part with this too by bringing a positive attitude to my classroom each day and realizing that every day cannot be perfect.There were some changes made to my team as a whole for this upcoming year and I think that the freshness of some new faces will help with this too.

Four. Share what I am doing in my classroom on a weekly basis on my blog. I love seeing what you all are doing in your classroom, so I want to share more of what I am doing too. I am thinking that each Sunday I am going to reflect on what I did during the previous week and hope to share pictures of that too.

On a side note, my campus found out yesterday that we met AYP!!! I could not be more excited since we had not met it in the previous year. 

What We Are Learning in Room 117...

 I have been so excited by the learning that has been taking place in my classroom these past few days. We ended our 2nd six weeks this past Friday and I cannot believe that we have already began the 3rd six weeks. The year is absolutely flying by!

On Monday I introduced the week's vocabulary words and also read part of our class read aloud, The Sixth-Grade Nickname Game to my kids. We also went to the computer lab to pick out our books for our first set of book clubs. I set up a Weebly website with a blog for each of my classes where they commented on a post that I made. They loved it and I loved that it was paperless. The kids seem to be really excited about using technology to learn with. Now if only I could get the other 6th grade ELA teachers on board with me. 

Yesterday I got to school and was not really sure what I was going to do. I knew that I was going to have my students act out their vocabulary words and review with them about main idea, but I wasn't exactly sure how I was going to review with them. I started to look at my stash of picture books which is quite extensive and found Duck for President. Since it was election day, I thought it would be perfect and a great way to tie in some Social Studies into our LA lesson too. I ended up reading the book to them and we talked about what a main idea is and then worked together to come up with a main idea for the book. It was perfect and the kids loved it! In my 1st and 2nd period class, we even got into supporting details. I have also become an anchor chart junkie. I am going to have to be sure and budget for some of the giant sticky pads for next school year. Here are the ones we made yesterday in my 3 classes. 

I also invested in some Sharpie Flip Chart markers and I love them! If you have never used them and you use anchor charts in your classroom, you are so missing out! 

I fell bad because I have just been throwing away my anchor charts because I do not have anywhere to store them. What do you all do with yours? I have been taking pictures of them and I am hoping to put them all in a binder that I can reference each year.

Today I assigned my kids to their book clubs and they are all asking me when we are going to start. I am so excited that they are wanting to do them. I am hoping to get a whole unit together and will be posting to my Teacher's Notebook store.

I am in search of a great writing activity for my middle schoolers that has something to do with Thanksgiving. If anyone has a great suggestion for me I would love to hear it!

Book Clubs

I know that I have mentioned before that I have been wanting to do Book Clubs with my 6th graders. Well that reality has gotten one step closer. I already had all of the books ordered and labeled, but I was not sure how I wanted to have the studnets choose their books. I turned to the web. I created a Weebly site that has summaries for each book as well as some blog pages. You can see the website I created for it here.

Students will read the summaries first and then choose their 3 favorite books that they would like to read for their Book Club. Then they will go to the blog for their class and they will write a comment about their top 3 choices. I am excited about integrating the technology into this aspect of the book clubs. I also created a page for each book that includes a blog. I am thinking that each week on Friday's I will reserve the lab and allow my students to go and comment on that week's post. They are also going to have to meet at least twice a week with their group.

Have you ever done something similar in your classroom? My plan is that once I get all of my documents together when I get my own laptop back, I will make a mini-unit and put it in my store. I am so excited to try something new with my kiddos. 

It is going to be a busy one!

This coming week is going to be a crazy one for me because I have...

Progress Reports due on Monday at noon

a Manifest ARD Monday during conference period

a meeting with a potential student and parent Monday after school who want to hear about the Pre AP classes

working the middle school volleyball games at 5 and 6 Monday evening

sign painting practice for cheerleading Tuesday afternoon

my PDAS observation Thursday during 2nd period

middle school football game Thursday night

Grad school class homework

but I think that is all. :)

Teaching sure is crazy, but that is exactly what I signed up for. Even as busy as I am every day of the week, I cannot imagine doing anything else with my life.

 I am super excited about the things that my students are doing in class this week. My Pre AP kids are going to begin filming their news casts for their mini research projects that correspond with our book The Giver that we just completed in class this 6 weeks. I knew I wanted to do something different with them, and the kids have loved it so far. The had to have a rough draft of their scripts to me on Friday and they were amazing! I cannot wait to see all of the finished projects next week! My 2 regular classes are going to be doing a fun spooky writing assignment this week that I cannot wait to do with them. I hope that their stories will turn out as great as I am picturing in my mind. We are also going to have several mini-lessons this week to prepare them for our book clubs that we will hopefully be starting on Halloween.

 I also got an e-mail from our school librarian about a teacher in Michigan who she worked with last year. She is wanting to do some type of project together with us and Mrs. Z picked my students and I to partner with this teacher. I am so excited about it and cannot wait to see how it turns out. Have you ever done something like this before with a teacher in another state? Any good tips for me?

This past week I also got my first donation for my Donors Choose Project. I am so excited, but I still have a long way to go. Fingers crossed that I am able to get it funded. You can find my project here.  Have you ever done a Donors Choose Project? 

Who knows when I will make it back to the blog this week, but hopefully I will be able to. I am planning on taking my camera to school this week to get some pictures of a few of the anchor charts that we have made as well as my revamped classroom library. 

Scholastic's Best Customer

Do you remember my big Scholastic order that I blogged about last week? The one where I earned over 5000 bonus points for it? Well it came in today! Luckily the boxes came during my conference because I would have had to stop teaching and open them because I was so excited. 

Yep, that is over 100 books that I have sitting on my small group table right now. The best part is that they will get to go with me wherever I go since I paid for them with my own money.

I cannot wait to start book clubs with my students! I hope they will be as excited for them as I am!

Daily 5 Update and Book Clubs

I am so glad that I decided to integrate the Daily 5 into my classroom. The kids have loved it and I am loving the more individualized instruction that I am able to give to my students. The only thing that we have really struggled with is using an appropriate voice while they are working in their various stations. 

I am using 5 stations in my room. The ones that I have integrated are Read to Self, Read to Someone, Work on Words, Work on Writing, and Meet with the Teacher. My biggest class has 22 so it has been quite nice for my groups. Right now I have my groups as mixed-ability, but I love the idea that I could make these ability based groups if needed.

1. Read to Self- This is where students have an opportunity to read their self-selected book either from the school library, our classroom library, or a book of their own. I allow the students to sit where they choose in the classroom as long as they are not disturbing others who are working at a different station. I will also be requiring my students to write a reading response letter to me each Friday. Over the weekend, I will then respond to their letters. A lot of work on my part, but I have a feeling that with my response my students will know that I truly care about what they are reading. 

2. Read to Someone- This is just what it says. Students will be reading to and with someone else. What they are reading and doing will vary from week to week depending on what we are studying. This week they are reading "The Prince and the Pauper" from their interactive reader with their group. Next week they will be reading The Best School Year Ever with their group. I am also hoping to get a few books on tape or CD that they could also use at this station. 

3. Work on Words- This is where I have my students work with their weekly vocabulary words. This week they made a foldable with their words on Monday, today they wrote acrostic poems with 4 of their words, and tomorrow they will be illustrating their words. On Thursday I will have a review game for them to play to help them practice their words before their quiz on Friday. Time to time students will also have some time to work on their spelling homework if they get finished with all of their other work in this station.

4. Work on Writing- Students have an opportunity to work on their writing at this station. This week they have been looking at a picture and then practicing some descriptive writing. Later this week they will be working on using the writing process to edit their writing that they did. Sometimes this will also be doing a writing response activity to our weekly story or their own literature. 

5. Meet with the Teacher- This is personally my favorite of all of the stations. I love meeting with small groups and having a chance to conference with students in a 1 on 1 setting. During the past two days we have been talking about the writing process. Tomorrow we are going to be working together to create a paragraph as well as edit our writing that they have done the past two days. This is where I will also be teaching mini-lessons that students will use throughout the year to respond to literature. This week I am meeting with every group every day, but I know that as they become more independent I will also be conferencing with them more. 

I am really thrilled about how this is going and I have also got great responses from the administration about my changes. I am so grateful to have a principal who is open to new ideas. She has encouraged me to try my best and not be afraid to change the way Language Arts has always been taught in 6th grade. 

I am also super excited to introduce book clubs to my students. I am really trying to move away from using our Literature book because it does not interest my students. I may now be a broke teacher after pay day Scholastic's best customer for the day. I managed to earn over 5,000 bonus points to day with my order that I placed. I ordered several sets of 6 books each of titles that my students have mentioned that they enjoy. I am going to then allow them to "shop" for their books that they would like to read for the book club. I am still in the planning stages of this, but am super excited about the possibilities it has. Have you done anything like this before in your classroom? I am thinking that one day a week when they are supposed to be teaching with me we will discuss the book that they are reading. 

I am planning on posting some updated pictures of my room tomorrow. I have done quite a bit of rearranging!