Tuesday, May 2, 2017

#Litdiscussion

Back at it this week, and it's been a rough start.  Really rough.


Exhibit A
This is after being at school for just a few hours.

Well, even though my desk looks like the scene of a misdemeanor, some really great things have been going on in class.  Regardless of a post camp hang-over, the kids are excited about our last novel of the year: Esperanza Rising.  This book connects so well to the rest of the novels we have read this year, as well as to our 5th-6th grade perseverance program.  Anyway, I designed an activity a few weeks back, and tried it with a few lit circles.  The kids really loved it, so I am going to use it with our whole class novel.  I'm super pumped.

So, what I did was take regular discussion questions ranging from setting to citing text evidence (and everything in between), and made them a little bit more fun to get us through the last few weeks of the year.  I created a hashtag activity!  My 6th graders are super into "hashtagging" everything, so they really like it.  Here are some pics:


I put them on binder rings.
I like the ones on colored paper because
I have the tasks separated by concepts/tasks. 
(setting, theme, plot, etc.)


This is my favorite part!  
It's a chart to keep track of what cards I've assigned
or that the kids have chosen to make sure we have 
covered them all.


I also printed out the response sheets, 
although you really don't need them,
because I like that the kids have some accountability
at this point in the year.

The cards cover setting, character, conflict, theme, plot, citing text evidence, literary elements, and critical thinking/opinions.  Tomorrow I am assigning 1 from each category, and I'm excited to see how this pushes the kids to a new, critical thinking level. 

I put the cards up on my TPT store - I hope other teachers find them as enjoyable as I have!


So, even though my desk exploded, good things are still happening, even late in the year!

Peace out~

~L 


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