My New Favourite Teacher Resources

My new favourite teacher resource is Independent Reading Management Kit: Literary Elements by Scholastic for grades 4-8. There are tons of great ideas for those of you looking for something different project wise for your students to do after a novel. All projects are arranged by literary elements and each element has a choice board for selections of projects. It's great for differentiated instruction (providing choice for your students). The one thing I do not care for from the book is the marking scheme. I would personally prefer rubrics which I will end up making myself but what I would do is make a rubric for each element rather than each task and have a general section that talks about the creativity, neatness of the project. What I think I'm going to do for our novel study (literature circles) is provide the students with a choice board made up of the projects in the book and focus on three of the themes that I want to focus on and have them pic one from each of the themes to complete.

Graphic Organizers

Two books that I love for graphic organizers are Graphic Organizers for Reading and Graphic Organizers for Writing both by Incentive Publications that have 60 different organizers in each book. They are very easy to use and can be used in a variety of areas.

We All Fall Down post #2

So last week I started We All Fall Down with my students. We have only finished chapter 5 and I have them hooked. They are loving the book and asking me to read constantly! The students have been great in regards to getting information from the media about the topic of 9/11. They are asking great questions, providing tons of information and having good conversations with each other and their parents. They are ENGAGED! A teacher's dream. Thank you once again Mr. Walters!!! My love for the book continues to grow.