Starting the Year with Self-Monitoring

One of the main challenges of the beginning of the year for me is keeping my focus on reading and thinking. It is easy to get wrapped up in classroom decoration ("I must buy more sparkly fish!") and administrative details ("I must print out at least 10 class lists and set up my substitute folder and make a spreadsheet for intervention groups!").

But I make a conscious effort in these first few weeks to save two slots in my working memory. (It's hard!) One slot I reserve for students--for the kids who are in front of me, right now, at this time. The other slot I reserve for deeper thinking about what the kids are doing and how they are processing. What materials am I giving to students? What do these materials say about the classroom and the work that we will do here together?

So this year I want to begin with really strong instruction in self-monitoring. To me, self-monitoring is the heart of reading comprehension. I love to think about reading as world-building, with readers processing text at various levels--surface, textbase, and situation model--as they read.  (This view of reading is based on work by van Dijk and Kintsch--this website summarizes the theory and provides more references.)

The best way that I have found to help readers self-monitor is to use the "click" and "clunk" strategy. (Here is an article that explains it nicely.) This strategy is perfect for the start of the year because it focuses on micro-level understanding. Do I understand this sentence? If the answer is yes, the sentence "clicks". If the answer is no, it "clunks". Then, readers can try to put together the meaning of the entire passage.

Here is a little graphic organizer that I created to help students think about clicking and clunking. As you can see, every clunk leads to some kind of action on the part of the reader.

Click or clunk from Emily Kissner

The next step is to put this into action with a passage. This year I'd like to try to use the first few paragraphs of The Story of the Amulet by Edith Nesbit. (If you're not familiar with E. Nesbit, find her books online...they are over 100 years old, but so influential in the world of children's fantasy!) After students read it and monitor their clicks and clunks, they will draw and share pictures of the world that they built in their minds.

My husband, who teaches third grade, found the passage to be a little hard for his students, so I wrote a new passage for him. He has a robot/space theme going on in his classroom this year.

Whatever passage you choose, start with something that provides a bit of challenge for students. Talking about their clunks and how they solve they will help students to realize that reading takes risk--but that the risks can be rewarding.

Good luck as you start your school year! Wish me luck as I attend my first rounds of meetings and try to save slots for students and deeper thinking.

News and Notes
This week I finally finished a new September reading homework packet. Four more weeks for October are on their way.

For more texts that focus on visualizing, try out the Visualizing PowerPoint and Activities packet.

If you are finding that your readers are having lots of clunks, try out the Making Inferences with Transitional Readers packet for focused work on inferences and visualizing.

On classroom decorations and caramel floats

I spent today working in my classroom. The week before school often brings a dizzying mix of grandiose planning and practical abandonment. "My classroom will be the most beautiful classroom ever," I think at the start of the week. By midweek, as I have sorted boxes and boxes of books (and culled the classroom library so the books will actually fit on the shelves!), my ambitions are less grand: "I want to have a classroom that does not have every inch of space covered by boxes and random debris."

In the last few weeks of summer, I've been working on creating some new reading packets. In my house we've been listening to Harry Potter on CD this summer, which has led us to trying out some different butterbeer recipes. I decided that a fun kids drink would be a good procedural text, so my sons and I experimented with a caramel apple float.

We were trying to get the taste of a caramel apple without the stickiness--our recipe turned out pretty well! And, of course, I was able to turn the whole thing into a procedural text that kids might enjoy.

Tomorrow--more work on my classroom! I will probably change my theme from "Under the Sea" to "This Is A Classroom Where People Learn". And there aren't boxes everywhere.

Choosing and Using Video for the Classroom

   As I've been working on putting together texts for the Frolyc Activity Spot app, I've been watching lots and lots of online videos--the good, the bad, and the ugly. These kinds of videos have amazing potential as classroom resources. As I watched, I thought back to how I started out with adding video to the classroom and what I am thinking now.

The Highly Produced
I must admit that when I first started looking for videos for my classroom (back in 2011, when I first had access to wireless), I was drawn to highly produced video clips. I wanted to be very careful about what I wanted to show in the classroom and I gravitated toward video clips created by familiar companies.

Small Scale Productions
But as I've combed through more videos, I've come to value the smaller scale productions by museums, labs, and other groups. While these videos don't always have the fancy music or clever titles, they do feature experts in the field. They also can spark great discussions with students about credibility--how do we know that these people are good sources? I can't wait to share some of the videos from Jefferson Labs with my students.




Raw footage and time lapse
This year I experimented more with showing raw footage to students. We all loved the Cornell Nest Cams during the spring. Students also enjoyed seeing time lapse footage during our Earth cycles unit--watching the day/night cycle and the cycle of the seasons in time lapse is lots of fun. To help students understand the way that ferry boats work, I showed a time lapse of a Vancouver ferry.



What does a time lapse video show? How is it different from a video shown in normal time? Why might someone create a video in time lapse? These are all great questions to consider with students, and these questions are why I value YouTube more and more. (With safety mode always enabled and videos always previewed, of course!) With teaching about firsthand accounts becoming more and more important, it's important to share and talk about firsthand accounts with students.

As I have watched videos this summer, I've been creating some playlists to go along with my units for the school year. This playlist goes along with various texts in my text structure units. (Links to the various units are included at the bottom of the post)



Notes and Updates
Whew! I finally redid the entire Character Traits and Emotions unit. This was one of my last units that was still a single Word document. The revised unit has individual files, a character traits PowerPoint, stories, activities, and lesson plans.

I'm still getting lots of requests for spelling lists. Our homemade lists and activities are in a folder on Google Drive. Send me an email from your Google account (elkissn@gmail.com) and I'll add you to the permissions list. And please do let me know if you use the program! We could have our students share activities or something.

I have found the Lexiles for most of the texts in my Text Structure units, but I haven't yet updated the units to reflect this yet. Let me know if you are interested in this information before the school year begins.

Here are the links to the various text collections:

-Cause and Effect Texts
-Chronological Order Texts
-Description Texts
-Compare and Contrast Texts
-Problem and Solution Texts
-Introduction to Text Structure

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Creating Vocabulary PowerPoints

In some circles, PowerPoints are rather--well, old-fashioned. With ever-expanding technology choices, who uses slideshows anymore? I felt a twinge of embarrassment as people at a recent meeting exchanged glances when I admitted to making vocabulary PowerPoint presentations. I think that people have the perception that teachers make PowerPoints and then just read them aloud to students.

But then I decided that there is nothing at all embarrassing about it! PowerPoint is the perfect tool to use to help kids learn new vocabulary words. With just a few simple slides I can project definitions, examples, and engage kids in using these words. It is not a lecture at all as kids are actively engaged on every slide. Even better, we can go back to the presentation again and again to review the words and think about them in new ways.

Here is how I go about making presentations to go along with texts. If you are getting started with this, try making just a few your first year, going along with high-quality texts that you know you will be reading and rereading several times. Each year you can add a few more.

1. Select your words
Hm, this is easier said than done, isn't it? I like to use words from the Academic Word List, and I choose about 3-5 per text. You can also write to me and I'll send you an Excel spreadsheet that has the AWL words, Common Core words, and other important words, all filtered according to important characteristics, roots, and so forth. This list is a little easier to use because the words are in alphabetical order.

2. Definition slides

I make about 4-5 slides per word. On the first slide, I introduce the word with a kid-friendly definition. I make this definition based on dictionary results and how the word is used in the text. In the case of characteristic, I used the words "feature" and "trait", words that students have already learned.

I add a pretty visual to go along with the definition--sometimes a picture that goes along with the word, sometimes a picture that goes along with a future activity. I have a huge library of photos that I've taken on my rambles around Pennsylvania, and kids are always interested in hearing about my photos. When I can't find the photo I want from my own library, I visit Wikimedia Commons.

3. Link pictures with words

I have learned so much about integrating visual and verbal strategies from the work of Gary Woolley.  For these slideshows, I like to give kids an instant connection between photo and word. This is especially important for academic words, as they often have abstract meanings. If I can give kids something concrete to think about as they apply the word meaning, I can help them to remember the word for the future.

A word of caution here. As you call on students to share their answers (and these lessons are usually informal, friendly conversations), make sure that they are using the word in their response. Consider this conversation:

Teacher: What are some characteristics of the butterfly?
Student: Eyespots!
Teacher: That's right! An eyespot is a characteristic of the butterfly.

Who practiced the word? That's right--the teacher. It is so easy to fall into this pattern. It takes some practice and time to get to this kind of conversation:

Teacher: What are some characteristics of the butterfly?
Student 1: Eyespots!
Teacher: Can you put that into a sentence using the word characteristics?
Student 1: Eyespots are characteristics of the butterfly.
Student 2: Some characteristics of the butterfly are wings and antennas.

Often this will take prompting and framing. However, it's so worth the effort to get kids using the words! Having kids put their responses on whiteboards is also helpful. I try to have as many kids say the word as possible, whether it is by sharing with a partner or getting up and doing a word "meet and greet".

4. Apply the words to students' lives

This works better with some words than others. The point here is to help students use the word in a way that applies to their own lives or experiences. Many students will need help with framing sentences for their responses--"My physical characteristics include..."

A new photo isn't necessary here, but my kids love fun visuals and I like to give them lots to look at. The key is to keep the pace quick and upbeat so that this will be something that you come back to.

5. Think about how the word might be used in the text

The text that goes along with this presentation is about the red-tailed hawk. Notice that the word predator is also in the slide. This word has a much more concrete meaning, and some kids in the class already know it. Instead of giving up valuable real estate to this word, I integrated it into this slide. Connecting the word characteristic with predator helps students to get ready for how both words are used in the text.

When we return to this presentation after reading the text, I encourage students to use their "soft eyes" to scan for the word characteristic in the text. We read the sentence aloud together. Then we talk about how their early sentences compare to their new knowledge.

And that's it! I like to do this with about 5 words per text. We use the presentation before and after reading. It is so gratifying to hear how their examples and sentences quickly improve in quality the second time around. Like all instructional techniques, PowerPoint does have the potential for misuse--if I just read aloud the definitions, kids would quickly be bored. But a slide presentation with lots of conversation and interaction can be a powerful way to help kids connect visual and verbal information.

This year, I'm going to add a vocabulary notebook for students to use to keep track of words that they are learning and reading about. I'm not sure what I want this to look like--are there any formats that have worked well for you?

This presentation is included in Reading Intervention for Academic Vocabulary and Fluency.

Kinds of Text: Poetry, Drama, and Prose

In my early reading years I did not have a good attitude toward the word prose, mostly because Anne of Green Gables described boring days as "prosey". I wasn't really sure of what prose was back then, but if Anne didn't like it, then I didn't like it either.

As an older reader I realized that prose is not necessarily dull (although the word "prosey" can be found in a number of old books from the 1800s). It's good that I have come to like prose, as it is included in the fourth grade Common Core standards. Students will need to be able to explain "major differences between poems, drama, and prose."

So what are these major differences? It's easy to think about how these different kinds of text are built in different ways. Here is a chart that I made to show this to students:

As you can see, structure is the key to differentiating among these kinds of text. Fiction and nonfiction can apply to any of these texts.

Wow, this will be a tough thing to teach at the beginning of the year. (Or rather--it will be easy to show students the chart and explain it; what will be difficult will be making sure that students can easily access and apply the information.) I'm planning to adapt some of the activities that I already use, like sorting mini-texts, and I've created some new things to help students look more carefully at comparing texts.

iPads in the Classroom: Planning for Next Year!

This summer, "leaving my kids to their own devices" has taken on an entirely new meaning for my own children. They are very happy to be left to their devices--that is, their tablets! Summer reading is now just as much about finding new and interesting apps and e-books as it is about lugging home a huge bag of books from the library. I love to watch my own kids try things out and experiment with new technology and new books so that I can plan for the upcoming school year.

Over the spring I have had the chance to try out an app called Activity Spot. This app allows me to author my own texts, questions, and activities, and then publish them to the iPad. It's ready for wider testing right now. If you download the app from the iTunes store, you'll have access to just a few texts that I have written. In a few months, teachers will be able to author their own texts. (You can read more about Activity Spot at the Frolyc website, or download it here.)

My youngest son has been fascinated by the entire process. He has read each piece and given me lots of constructive criticism. ("Leopard seals was your best yet!" he told me...wow, that is high praise from an 8-year-old.)

Watching him interact with the device has helped me to do some thinking about what I want for my classroom next year. It's fascinating to watch him take the learning to different places--spread out on the couch, in the yard, in the car--and do activities at all times of day.

Accountable independent reading
Right now I only have one iPad. But my students still loved using it during independent reading. For my struggling readers, the questions at the end of the texts in Activity Spot helped them to see how they had understood the texts. Instead of being frustrating or boring, the questions were somehow motivating. The kids proudly brought me their scores or showed me how they had improved from before.

I can't wait to have more iPads to use during independent reading times. They'll be the perfect tool for the "reading vacation" that kids like to take between books. (A reading vacation is something that I let readers do when they have just finished a book or a series and they are not quite ready to commit to something new...a day or two of reading picture books or using the iPad can be very refreshing!)

Building background knowledge
Filling in the background knowledge gaps can be a daunting task for teachers. But the right content can help students to learn new concepts quickly. The iPad is the perfect tool to help students learn about scientific or historical concepts. A quick YouTube playlist can help students to learn about topics of interest. (For example, many of my students had never heard of tide pools. While it's not a topic that we cover, several kids were interested, so I made up a playlist to use next year.) Down times like bus time and indoor recess can become great learning opportunities.

How are you planning to use iPads or tablets in your classroom next year?

Other news
-Spelling is now on Google Drive! Email me at elkissn@yahoo.com with your Gmail address and I'll add you to the list to view the folder. You can read more about the spelling program we made here. If you have used the Master Word List, please comment or write to let me know!
-Several people have written have written to ask about the Reading Intervention that I made last summer. It is available in four parts: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4. It includes texts, PowerPoints, and activities to build academic vocabulary and text structure awareness.
-If you're looking for an easy introduction to text structure, you might like Introduction to Text Structure. It includes texts on the chinstrap penguin and the peregrine falcon, showing how text structures can be used to communicate different information about the same topics.

-I'd love to hear what you think about Activity Spot!

Focus on Grammar: Grammar Games

We had a great morning talking about grammar and the Common Core! Looking for the language standards by strand and then lining them up in grade level order helped everyone to really read the standards carefully and think about how they progress through the grade levels.

Here is a playlist with some of the videos that we watched, as well as some others that work well for instruction:





Computer games can be another way to help students review and practice key grammar topics. However, there are so many games out there that sometime it is hard to find the ones that are really useful for elementary students. Here are some games that I have found (and tested) that work well for various concepts.

Punctuation Games
Learn about basic punctuation with Comma Chameleon.

In Alien Punctuation from BBC, students help aliens by correcting sentences to add correct capitalization and punctuation.

The game Complex Sentence Camp helps students to learn how to punctuate complex sentences.

Along the Sentence Trail, students decide on the kind of sentence and add correct end punctuation.

Parts of Speech
This simple Noun Explorer game helps students to learn about nouns.

The Adjective Adventure game helps students to identify adjectives.

With the game Verbs in Space, students look for verbs. Multiple tenses are used.

Other Resources
When we worked with sentence combining, I mentioned that Bruce Saddler had a book that includes more detail about sentence combining. The title is Teacher's Guide to Effective Sentence Writing. If you get it, drop a line and let me know what you think!

Additional resources about sentence composing can be found at the Sentence Composing page hosted by Don and Jenny Killgallon.