Pumpkins, Prepositions, and Poetry!

We are in the middle of studying prepositions and we kicked off our preposition studies with some Pumpkin Preposition Poetry. We started with the Preposition Song seen below that I still remember from my sixth grade English teacher sung to the tune of Yankee Doodle Dandy.  

Teaching the Prepositions

Teaching prepositions through song is very catchy and such an easy way for students to recall the different prepositions! I still catch myself singing this to determine if a word is in fact a preposition. :) 

Anchor Chart

I also made this anchor chart based on the to help students 

visualize different prepositions. At the time, we had caterpillars in the classroom and we actually placed one on an apple to help students get an "idea" of how they could use prepositions. :)

Digging for Prepositions!

Let's dig through the text! To have the students get in some real world practice, they worked in partners to find 3-5 prepositional phrases from the book that they were reading! They took turns going up to the chart seen below to record their prepositional phrase. This was not an easy task, but they came through and it was also fun to see what everyone was reading! (5th graders at the time:))

Pumpkin Preposition Poems

Finally, the students took a crack at writing the prepositions in a poem about pumpkins. A great sentence starter we used was, "A Pumpkin Grows" which students then chose a preposition from the song and wrote a phrase that made sense to them. They came up with some great poetry! Click on the picture below to get more detailed templates that you can use with your students! 

Below is the finished product. The students typed their poems on the computers and inserted a picture of their rough drafts along with inserting a picture of a real pumpkin. They looked great on our door!

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Comparing and Contrasting Novels FREEBIE!

Since I have only been teaching 5th grade for a few years, I was not quite sure which novel I had wanted to use for our next Novel Study. So my friend Stephanie (Teaching in Room 6) recommended and lent me her ENTIRE set of novels for Gregor the Overlander, by Suzanne Collins. My class (and myself) were SO thankful! I had actually never read this book before, was not sure what to expect, but my class and I were hooked IMMEDIATELY just by looking at the cover.  This book really captured their interest.  What 5th grader wouldn't be intrigued by people in a foreign land riding bats?

Throughout the novel study, every time I told students to get their books out, I was often received with cheers and smiles. As we read the novel, students curiosities rose. WHERE did the author get the inspiration for writing this book? As we researched, we found out that the author, Suzanne Collins, inspiration for writing Gregor was from Alice and Wonderland.  This led to the PERFECT opportunity for teaching comparing and contrasting. I printed out a passage that gave the overall gist of Alice and Wonderland HERE. The following compare and contrast materials (that can be used when comparing ANY 2 novels) can be downloaded for FREE at the end of this post! :)
First, we reviewed the good old VENN diagram with the following visual. I had the students glue this into their Writing Notebooks.

Next, we focused on the elements of compare and contrast, most importantly signal words. I had the students glue this into their Writing Notebooks too!

Students used the following guiding questions to help themselves compare and contrast the two novels.

Below is a final picture of one of my student's work... 

Next week, students will be working on their rough drafts using the Venn. 

Check back to see how that goes. 

Click on the picture above to download these materials!

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TRAINING UPPER GRADE STUDENTS to CHOOSE the RIGHT BOOKS!

Getting students to read books at their appropriate level is CHALLENGING in the upper grades! Sometimes, I am frustrated as a teacher that students are reading books that look like they are too EASY.  Knowing and familiarizing myself and students with lexile levels has helped me as a teacher realize that some books that may LOOK easy are actually 5th grade books (and vice versa…books that look HARD because they are thick or longer, may actually not be at their grade level!) The first thing I did to show students and parents what the LEXILE scale looks like was post it in my classroom library where the students check out books. (Click on the pic below to print out this chart!)

Next, since my library did NOT have books labeled with Lexile levels, I made the LEXILE LOG seen below so students could actually look up the current book they were reading to see if it fell in the range of where they should be reading for 5th grade.  This was VERY eye opening for students.  I had a student kind of CONFESS and ask me if he could choose another book since his book was more of a 3rd grade level. (SUCCESS!!!)

Another teacher at my school has their ENTIRE library organized by Lexile Level! I knew it would be a LONG PROCESS and something I needed to tackle, so my next step was to get the books labeled. I made the labels below for FICTION and NON-FICTION so I can have the books somewhat labeled by GENRE too.  Click on the picture below to print out the labels. 

(They print on 5160 standard address labels!)

I definitely think it will be easier getting students to choose the right books when they are actually labeled! Using sites such as LEXILE MEASURES or SCHOLASTIC BOOK WIZARD are helping label each book.  I am having early finishers sitting with the IPAD in the library looking up books and writing the lexile level in the inside cover….(of which I added the labels later) which is making the whole process go MUCH faster! Here is what my WHO WAS Collection is starting to look like!

How do you get your students to read books at their appropriate level?

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