Finding Evidence in Reading Passages

This school year is over for me and it's only February! Being home on maternity leave has given me the opportunity to keep my 3 1/2 year old daughter, who's been in preschool since she was 2, home with me and the newest little one.  Since my leave backs up into summer we will have a good amount of time altogether. Some have called me crazy but so far so good on the newborn/preschooler front. (And I get my teaching fix working with my little girl on her sight words, seasons, handwriting, math, etc, etc.)

I did however make the mistake of sending her to school for one day before deciding to keep her home with us and boom! she (and I) caught a cold. Nothing new to a #teachermom amirite?! Having a newborn and a cold is a new plot twist though. Imsotiredhelpme   

Being on maternity leave has also given me a head start on thinking about what I want my classroom and curriculum to be like next year.  Okay, obsessing over what I want my classroom and curriculum to be like next year. I have created a new word wall (and word wall activities), and homework club printables.

I love my purple ombre word wall!

Something I did find pretty effective this year compared to my first was using more passages for students' independent work instead of a book from their book baggies.  I still made sure they had plenty of access and time to delve into Diary of a Wimpy kid for the 42nd time, but these days, kids really need exposure to articles and passages. They need to search the text, reread, site evidence... and all the other testing buzz words we're sick of hearing. Sad but true, these babies need to be comfortable with the fact that you aren't always reading for enjoyment. You won't always be reading content that you're interested in. Sometimes you're reading just for the straight up knowledge. 

Don't get me wrong. Reading for enjoyment is what I hope all of students are doing at school and at home! I love the idea of Flashlight Friday for reading time, buddy reading in the classroom library, and of kids building memories with books. {I will always remember and love Sideways Stories from Wayside School!} The reality is though, that they also need to be comfortable with printed articles and passages. But hey, finding evidence is passages can be fun too right? Right? ... RIGHT? Anyone? *this is when you desperately bust out the highlighters, glitter pens, colored pencils, and balloon animals for students to underline their answers in the article*

 

At my school, my amazing team and I have created all of our unit tests for reading. This gave me pretty great practice with creating relevant (to common core) and rigorous test questions. The kind a student might see on a standardized test (ew). I wrote ten passages with text-dependent questions to use in my small groups, as assessments for standards, and as test prep in my own classroom. If you're looking to build your students' reading response skills this resource might be helpful for you too. Check out the bundle HERE or by clicking the picture below.  Four FREE passages are available in the preview.

 

Do you use reading passages in your room or mostly books?
 

Parts of Speech White Board Challenge {FREEBIE}

I love Scattergories. It's one of the things in life that I can say I'm reeeeeally good at (see also: napping, whining) which is probably why it's a favorite.

This parts of speech game, or as we like to call it in my classroom, White Board Challenge, reminds me a lot of my favorite pastime of total domination = Scattergories. It's essentially a review game. I divided the board into two sides and then (in this case) into four rows because we covered adjectives, adverbs, action verbs, and nouns (both common and proper in one row).

The teams line up in two lines and the marker gets passed to the person behind you. When you're up, you get a part of speech and a letter of the alphabet called to you and your opponent. The team with the most correct responses at the end of the game wins! Like Scattergories, if the teams have the same answer, neither get a point.

 

How I keep track of what part of speech/letter combo I called: I lay out my parts of speech cards in a column and stack the correlating letters next to them. When I am reviewing for points at the end, I just look at my stacks and go through them, checking off what the teams have as I go. Take a look at the freebie I created to go with the game to get a better idea!

I can see that my kids need to work on adverbs and adjectives and that we need to cover both topics a few more times. 

I created this freebie to go with the game.

 

 

 

Get the Parts of speech White Board Challenge game for FREE here.

 

If you like this idea, check out my previous post on how we do our Vocab Challenge in my classroom.

White Board Vocabulary Challenge

My students love this game.

This timed vocab game gives them the outlet they're looking for all day.

A race against the clock. 

A group activity on their feet!

Use of the teacher's markers.

Allowance to be loud/cheer when their team wins. 
The opportunity to challenge their classmates.



Here, students are thinking of words associated with the skeletal system.

The concept is simple and doesn't require anything you don't already have in your classroom. Students are given a topic and they have 2-6 minutes to write as many words per team that relate to the topic at hand. They can write one word at a time each time it's their turn. 

We've played a couple of different ways:

If BOTH teams have the same word written then it doesn't count as a point for either (think, Scattergories). This alleviates some cheating and it can also be used as a strategy to use against the other team - I don't tell my kids that though! 

I've also rolled my anchor chart stand in between the two teams so they can't copy each other and count every applicable word per team. Whatever works for you and your kids!

This game can be used for any subject to review. It also gives you a good idea of what your students know. It can also be beneficial to do this challenge before you've taught anything about a topic to give yourself some insight on your students background knowledge.  

Divide your board, line up your teams, set the clock, and go!