4th Grade Theme and Main Idea

The past few weeks have been lots of collaboration with the 4th grade ELA teachers. Our latest co-teaching endeavor has been over main idea and theme. We started with main idea, reviewing how to find the main idea of a selection.

At each table, I placed a short passage that had the title cut off. Students were given post-it notes and were asked to write the main idea in a sentence, and to give the passage a title. When the time limit was up, they covered their answers and moved to the next table. At the next table, they did the same with another passage.

On the last rotation, students then uncovered all the other answers and chose what they thought was the best written main idea.  It helped them to see that the main idea is not copied straight from the passage, but is in your own words.

The next week, we read SNEETCHES AND OTHER STORIES, by Dr. Seuss, which is a great book for comparing themes. I read the first story, SNEETCHES, to the whole group. We came up with a theme all together, then found the text evidence. At their table groups, students made a chart with each story, the theme, and the text evidence. They had the other stories from the book at their tables. This collaborative lesson took two days of 4th grade coming in. This is one reason why it is so important to be on a flexible schedule if you are collaborating with the teachers. 

On the second day, after groups found the theme of each story, students had to compare the themes of all 4 stories. This led to a discussion of the events that were happening during the time period that this book was published. We had some very thoughtful discussions. 

Text Structure with 4th Grade

Informational text structure is one of my favorite lessons to teach. There are so many activities that you can have students to in order to learn about informational text structure.

What are text structures?

Text structure is the way that an author organizes the information in a book. Is the author comparing two topics, describing a topic, etc... The message that the author is trying to get across goes hand in hand with the text structure the author is using.

• Description
• Sequence
• Compare/Contrast
• Problem/Solution
• Cause/Effect

Students have heard these words over and over throughout the school years, but have been asked to identify the sequence or identify the problem/solution, for example. Today, we took it farther and asked students to identify the way the author is organizing the information. 

Lesson

First, the teacher had been going over one text structure a day for the past week. The lesson in the library started as a review. I used these free images created by Deb Hansen to create a slide show for students. You can get these posters on TPT for free. 

I hung the text structure posters around the library, similar to 4 corner, but we had 5 corners. Each table group received a paragraph and had to decide which text structure the author was using. Once the group decided on a text structure, they moved to their corner with the matching poster. 

Once everyone was in their place, about 3 - 4 minutes, groups had the opportunity to read their paragraph while the rest of the class agreed or disagreed with their decision. Students had to say "I agree because..." or "I disagree because.... I think the author uses this text structure..." 

Students observed that all the paragraphs I gave the groups had something to do with ice cream. So, then it was their turn. Students chose their own topic, then wrote a paragraph using each text structure. I placed a Google Slides template in their Google Classroom, then they started writing. After writing students were given the option to add pictures. 

Speedy September in the Library

The month of September has come and gone, and what a whirlwind it was! We started the school year with construction throughout our entire building. Construction is still going on, and I can't wait to see what our school will look like once all the construction is finished. I know it will be amazing!

CyberSafety

I spent quite a bit of time in September collaborating with the 5th grade teachers on the best ways to teach cybersafety and digital citizenship. With the increase in technology use, especially the ability to add comments to Google Classroom, we thought it would be a good idea to start off the school year with discussion. 

The first week we talked about bullying and cyberbullying with the students. I use a PearDeck presentation and placed several discussion points for the 5th graders. They were able to add their thoughts on several different situations, and see others statements as well. 

The following week, we decided to look at the positive aspect of the internet and how we can control our digital footprint. Students traced their foot, then wrote/drew what they want to have in their digital footprint.

Book cover reveal

One of my favorite parts of my job is getting our students connected to people around the world. We had an amazing opportunity to connect with the author of one of my students' favorite series, FENWAY & HATTIE. The author, Victoria J. Coe, hosted a Google Hangout, and we were one of the schools chosen to participate. Victoria J. Coe talked about her series, then revealed the cover of her new book coming out in 2019. We cannot wait to read the 4th book in the series!! After she talked about the upcoming book, our students were able to ask her questions. It was an amazing morning for our second graders.

Dot Day

One of my favorite days of the year is Dot Day, which falls around September 15th each year. It all started with the book THE DOT by Peter H. Reynolds. If you have not read this book to your students, do it today! It has an amazing message of how we can make our mark on the world, no matter how insignificant we think our talent is.

The art teacher and I collaborate on this day every year, and we come up with grade level activities. She brings her art classes to the library where I read the book, discuss the theme, and then students participate in activities having the do with dots. 

Start with a dot and see where it takes you.

Our first graders received a framed page where they started with a dot anywhere on their page. Then, they changed their simple dot into their own creation. We had dinosaurs, snowmen, cars, flowers, and ducks just to name a few! 

Every student in the school was given a dot to decorate any way they wanted. Thanks to some amazing parent volunteers, the dots were all put together into a school wide collaborative art creation that is now hanging in the library for all to see! Isn't it BEAUTIFUL!

I can't say no to a fun Breakout EDU activity! I found a Breakout that was based on THE DOT, so I set it up in the library for our 4th grade classes. We did 4 Breakout sessions in just 4 hours! MAN was I TIRED!!

In the hallway, we hung up another school wide collaborative art project. Each student in the school received a dot sticker to place anywhere on the poster. This project was based on Yayoi Kusama's Obliteration Room. The kids had so much fun with this! 

Whew! September was busy busy busy!! Now we are into October, and I just recieved 7 boxes of brand new books. I cannot wait to get these books ready, and I know I have some students that are patiently waiting to get their hands on these new books. 

Many more activities are coming in October, so stay tuned!! 

STAAR Review Stations Part 2

STAAR testing is finally over for our building. Three straight days of administering the test has made me go brain dead.  I have one of those brains that is hard to turn off, so monitoring a quiet room where I cannot talk is really hard on me. 

You may have read my post on the 5th grade STAAR review stations back in April. Our 5th graders have to take the test earlier in the year. 4th grade and 3rd grade teachers heard about the stations, and wanted me to set it up for them as well. The ELA teachers and I looked at data to determine what skills the students needed to review to prepare for the test, then we scheduled days for the students to come. We decided that 2 days would be best. Perks of a flexible schedule! 

Main Idea vs Theme sorting station 

Making Inferences Station

Summarizing Nonfiction 

Text structure sorting station

At this station, students had paired passages. A poem and a nonfiction
text.  They then had to roll 2 number cubes, add up the number, then
answer the question corresponding with that number. 

Types of Context Clue sort

The students really enjoyed the stations. A few students even mentioned that they were a fun way to review.

The best thing about these stations is that once I had them set up in the library, the teachers were able to bring the students through to complete them. I kept them set up in the library, no moving stations around to different classrooms.

Creating Citations and a Bibliography

Last week, 4th grade practiced notetaking skills with the Social Studies teacher and me. The classes came down to the library so the teacher and I could go over the skills and have them practice. You can find that lesson on my blog.

This week, the students are continuing their research over an event from the Civil Rights Movement. Students have already chosen an event, so it is now time to choose our sources and start taking notes. I created a Destiny Collections with sources I had already viewed that students could use during their research. Students could use outside sources as well, however, the SS teacher wanted them to use the online encyclopedia and the sources I curated before using an outside source. We threw in a mini-lesson over reliable sources. SNEAKY :) 

Student looking through the Destiny Collections to find a good source. 

Citations 

One of my favorite features of our Britannica online encyclopedia is the citation is provided for the students. So, the students know how to copy and paste this citation onto their bibliography. Well, the websites that we had students using as their second source did not provide this citation. So, the teacher and I decided to use Citation Machine with the students to create the citations. We practiced this using the website, then the book they are using in class. 

In order for the students to easily find this, and not accidently type in citationmachine.com, which takes you to a different website all together 😲, I added the actual website into Google Classroom. To check for understanding, students had an assignment to paste one of their citations into a Google Form. 

S.S. teacher helps groups of students create their citations.

Students paste their citaiton into a Google Form so that the
teacher can check for understanding.

Bibliography

The following day.... YES, the classes came two days in a row to finish the lesson!! That is the BEAUTY of a flexible schedule. 

Classes can come two days in a row, and more, with a flexible schedule!! 

Anyway, the following day the classes came back to finish up their bibliography. They created a Google Doc, and titled it so that they would easily find it again. Then, they copied their citations for all 3 sources into their bibliography.  After this was complete, students were free to begin taking notes on their notecards. The second day went much smoother, since students had used Citation Machine the day before. 

My favorite part of the day was when the classroom teacher told them that this didn't exist when we were in school. We had to know the exact format each time we cited our sources. This was the look on their faces! 

Notetaking with 4th Grade

4th grade has a major biography project coming up. Their wax museum research starts soon, so the 4th grade teacher asked if I would help her go over notetaking skills.  I always love the wax museum, it is one of my favorite projects of the year. Students choose a famous Texas, past or present, to research. They can find out anything they want about the person, but on Wax Museum Day they dress up as the person and give a speech. They even pause/freeze in between just like at the wax museum. It is so much fun!

Anyway, they are currently working on a Civil Rights Movement unit in Social Studies, so the teacher and I decided to use that as a practice. This week we started on just notetaking. 

I made this buncee to have on the screen to review, and also as a visual to help them remember while taking notes. I chose an article from Newsela about a Civil Rights Activists named Medgar Evers. Most of the students had not heard of him, so it was an interesting read.

Each student received the article and a note card. Since this was practice, I wanted them to focus on a certain question instead of everything about his life. I told them the question, then they looked for keywords. Then created a heading and a bullet point list on their notecard.

Learning is fun in the library. 

Stations and Google Hangouts

Someone once told me that a flexible schedule wouldn't work on their campus because they wouldn't be busy enough. Their principal wanted to see them busy, so a flexible schedule would not work.  

Well, let me tell you, a flexible schedule does not mean not busy! I am busier now than I was when I started at this campus and we were on a fixed schedule. Our library stays very busy with all sorts of activities. And I love every busy moment!

Figurative Language Stations

The third grade teacher approached me last week and asked about doing an activity in the library with figurative language. They had been learning it in class, but needed some extra practice. So, she taught the skill and reviewed in the classroom, and I set up stations for the students in the library.

Each station focused on a certain type of figurative language: simile, metaphor, personification, hyperbole, and onomatopoeia. At each station I placed a photograph with examples of figurative language. Students were tasked with matching the figurative lanugage with the photograph, then writing their own. For example, at the hyperbole station, they had to locate the sentence that contained a hyperbole describing the photograph.

Each station also contained a paragraph that students read and located the types of figurative language. There was a lot of great conversation at the stations. I especially loved that some of the students felt safe enough at the end to ask the teacher and me to go over some of the stations again. 

Two of the stations were a little different than the rest. At the Onomotopeia station, students had book to look through and find examples. Then, they added to a graffiti poster examples of onomotopeias with pictures. Someone drew a stormtrooper with the words "pew pew" beside it. It was greatness!! 

I added a station for comparing similes and metaphors. At this station, students had to look at sentences and really analyze them by telling what two things were being compared, if it was a simile or metaphor, and why. 

Guest Meteorologist

One of our fourth grade teachers connected with a meteorologist, Tim Brice, in El Paso that works with NOAA. The fourth grade classes had just completed their unit on Weather Changes. All fourth grade classes came to the library to listen to the meteorologist speak. He showed them types of weather maps, satellite images, and their workstations. My favorite image he showed us was a slow motion video of lightning. I never realized lightning was so beautiful! 

After his presentation, students were able to ask questions. It was an amazing experience to be able to connect and interact with another professional through Google Hangouts. 

Nonfiction with 4th and 5th grade

A couple of weeks ago, I was sitting in a vertical planning meeting with 4th and 5th grade teachers. They mentioned that they needed to do more with nonfiction.  That is where I come in! We started planning immediately.

4th Grade

The 4th grade teacher mentioned that her students were specifically having trouble making inferences with nonfiction text. We scheduled a day/time for each of her classes, then started planning our lesson. We decided to create a Nearpod lesson, which is an edtech tool where teachers can create interactive lessons. The lesson shows on the students device screens (we use Chromebooks) and the teacher can give immediate feedback. 

I was in charge of finding the nonfiction passages and the questions. We reviewed making inferences, then we practiced together. We used text clues + schema to come up with our inference. 

I made a note taking sheet for students to fill out while they found clues in the story, plus writing down their schema. 

 

At the end of the lesson was a short quiz that students completed. I was able to send them their scores immediately after completion, and students could see what they answered correctly or missed. 

5th Grade

The 5th grade ELA teacher mentioned that she needed her students to have a better understanding of:

• the different types of nonfiction 
• text features
• purposes of text features

I decided to pull books and magazines to allow the students to have examples in their hands. We reviewed the types of nonfiction, and in groups, students sorted out their books/magazines into types of nonfiction. We discussed features of biography, procedural, magazines, newspapers, and informative texts. 

Then, I showed examples of types of text features commonly found in nonfiction texts. This part was a review, but then we went deeper and discussed how each type of text feature helps us comprehend the nonfiction text. 

The final piece was for the students to find examples of text features in their books and magazines at their tables. They added the examples to a collaborative board in nearpod, but had to include specifics on how that text feature helped them as readers. This was the hardest part, and many students had to go back and add specifics. In the end, they got it! 

Collaboration

If you aren't already collaborating with your teachers, please start! Start small, and your collaborative partnerships will grow. 

Start off by asking to sit in on a PLC or a vertical planning meeting. These are perfect places to offer to help out on a skill that the classroom teachers mention their students need more help. 

Co-teaching and collaborating with the teachers have done wonders for our students on my campus. They have 2 teachers in a lesson to help them, monitor, and teach them.  

Theme and Character Change

One of the highlights of my job is collaborating with teachers on my campus. Collaboration is easy, you just have to start small! There are so many things that you can collaborate with the teachers about and have co-teaching happen in your school library.

While ELA is not the only subject that librarians can collaborate about, it seems to be the most popular. I am always collaborating and planning with the ELA teachers. One great lesson we did recently was over theme and character change.

I created a template in Google Draw and added it to Google Classroom. Each student had their own copy, and filled in how the character changed throughout the story.

The next week, we discussed theme! I wanted to make it fun and let the kids move around. There is so much more room to move around in the library than in the classroom. The teacher used an app called Chawzi, which groups students. 4 - 6 students put their fingers on the iPad and a colored dot comes up under their finger. This lets them know which group they are in.

Each group received a folder with their mission. The mission was to identify the theme in a story using clues.

Inside each folder was a set of clues to look for, as well as a list of common themes found in literature. Students then had to search the library for their assigned story, and start hunting for the theme.

The students had loads of fun, and learned a lot about finding theme.

Powered Up Week #poweredlibraries

This past week, October 1-7, was Power Up Week, a week where libraries across the state showcase innovation and dynamic leadership. I was excited to participate this year and showcase some of my programs this year on twitter. Powered Libraries even used one of my pictures and tweets in one of their daily highlights! 

Advocacy Monday

I try my best to advocate for my library everyday! This year I sent out a smore showcasing everything that had happened in the library in the month of September. 

This was sent to my administrators, as well as the teachers on campus. This helps them to see what is done with all the grade levels, not just what I do with their classes. 

I also started the week with a collaboration project with the 5th grade teacher. They have been studying the US Regions, so she brought them in for a quick lesson on citing sources and using Google Drawings to create a poster and share with the group. Since they used Google, students were able to work on this at home together, using the comment section to collaborate. 

Tinkering Tuesday

Tuesday was probably my favorite day of the week. Kindergarten was introduced to the MakerSpace materials, which I will pull out once a month for them. It was the quietest they have ever been in the library, they were so involved in their building. 

Web Widget Wednesday 

Wednesday was another collaborative project, this time with the 4th grade ELA teacher. We worked together to review the genres, and for Wednesdays lesson I created a Kahoot for the kids to play.  Feel free to use this kahoot in your class/library to review types of genre. 

 

The best part of collaborative teaching and my flexible schedule, is both myself and the teacher work together to ensure that the students understand. The teacher tells me the skill they want and the end product, and we plan together. I created the Kahoot and she went over the concept and did the checking for understanding. 

Powerful Partnership Thursday 

This year, I decided to participate with the second graders in the 2017 Global Read Aloud. We are reading books by Mem Fox and connecting with other classes around the world. This week, we read KOALA LOU by Mem Fox, then looked at Australia on a map to see how far away it is.

We connected with other classes through a padlet created by Mrs. Ockey to connect with others. We added our favorite parts of the story, and answered some of the questions asked by other 2nd graders. We also looked at where the other students were from on the map compared to where we live. 

The students thought it was fabulous that other kids their age around the world were reading the same book. 

Another way we partnered up this year was with the author/storyteller, Mary Brooke Casad. Even though it took place on Friday, it still shows our partnerships with people in our community. Mary Brooke Casad is the author of the books Bluebonnet the Armadillo, and she lives not far from our city. She came to speak with our 4th graders this year about her stories and how she became a writer. Her message to the students is to "Keep reading and keep writing!" 

 

  

It was a fabulous week, and I can't wait to see what our school will do next year for Powered Up Week!! If you did not participate this year, I highly encourage you to get out and advocate for your library and all you can do for your school!