Teaching dialogue can be rough! I like to ease the pain by adding a little fun through comics!
Day 1 Teach the rules of Dialogue, using quotes, and proper punctuation. I like this free resource from Young Teacher Love Day 2 Review when to begin a new paragraph. This can be tough for kids... I had a hard time explaining it all until I stumbled upon PATS Start a new paragraph when there is a change in Place Action Time Speaker I take some time pointing out real examples from real books during our read aloud, I project a page to display and then do a slow read. Kids have a lot of fun explaining why the author started a new paragraph! Day 3 Introduce the assignment with examples. On this day, I show the students a simple Peanuts comic. I explain how the story is told through the pictures as well as the dialogue. Together, we talk about inferences we can make about what happened before the comic, what might have happened in between each picture, and what each character must be thinking. From there, I show them an example written by me. At this point, I also have to explain perspective and point of view. I point out which character I am telling the story from or explain why I decided to tell it from third person point of view. I read the story out loud, each student has a copy of the comic as well as my writing. We go through and discuss descriptions of action I used, when I changed paragraphs and why, and how I incorporated the dialogue from my story into my comic. Day 3 or 4 (depending on class and time.) I then pass out comics to each student and let them get busy!
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I want my students to love reading. Cultivating a love for reading while also improving reading levels requires a delicate balance between skill practice and well... fun.
My first round of Book Club is done with my small guided reading groups. Each group is given a choice of books at their level, and we meet daily (with my higher groups every other day,) practicing various skills and engaging in book talks. Through these groups, I set the stage for more independent work and student led discussions. Throughout the series, we gather information to create a Dodecahedron Final Project Throughout the years, I have created several novel study packets that end with a Dodecahedron as the final project. The kids love these, and the final project is so great for display!
I have really been struggling with what to do about keeping track of student reading this year. I have never been a fan of Reading Logs and the feedback I received from parents in my first years of teaching made me drop them completely. The Reading Logs (and at one point nightly reflections) were making my kids hate to read. I still wanted to keep kids accountable for their reading, so I had students and parents sign a sheet stating they did in fact complete their nightly reading... And I am sure most of them did! Reading Logs just don’t work. Aside from keeping track of daily minutes, they are not effective as a tool to create life-long learners who love to read. This year I am going to try something new. I am going to have my students fill out a Reading Goals sheet. We are going to start with a mini lesson on different types of Reading Skills. We will brainstorm areas a 4th grader might need to work on and we will talk about strategies that might help a person obtain that goal. The key to this goal setting activity is that the document will be a constant work in progress. We will check in, update goals, add to strategies as we learn new ones, and change goals to better suit us as we grow... I am hoping to instill the importance of self reflection. We will see where it goes! You can download my sheet for free below or in my Teacher's Pay Teacher's store! Happy Teaching! https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/My-Reading-Goals-3360196 |
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"The best teachers are those who show you where to look, but don't tell you what to see." - Alexandra K. Trenfor |