An Exploration of Genre

Hey everyone!

Happy Sunday...otherwise known as my last free-of-school-Sunday!! I head back to work tomorrow. I am both excited and terrified...probably also a little depressed. My summer was (as yours was) way too short!

Today, I've been going over my first 15 days of school I mentioned in an earlier post that my district got a new reading program. It offers a "First 30 Days" similar to "The First 20" of Fountas and Pinell. My principal feels that 20 days (much less 30) is far too many days to spend on classroom cohesion and prepping for the reading block for the year so we get a condensed NINE days. That means, roughly three mini lessons a day. I have no problems fitting this in because there is no small group reading during this time while we test the students to see what level they're reading at after the summer. Still, though, it's a LOT of information to try and squeeze into 20 minute blocks. Not to mention I am a Daily 5-er and I like to start my stamina building DAY 1, so I have to fit that in too!

In any case, to help get a leg up on the year, I also try to squeeze in a genre review during these first couple of weeks also. Since I use an interactive notebook for each of my subjects, Genre is the first thing to go into Reading.

Because this isn't actually a full blown unit, I needed to make something that got me the biggest bang for my buck. Fifth graders are expected to have a good understanding of genre already and I like to bring in some more sophisticated subgenres like memoir and the individual fictions instead of just going with the generic Fiction (realistic) vs. Nonfiction (informational).

First things first....the Genre Overview. For this I used a t-chart to do a broad comparison of fiction and nonfiction. I left room for notes as well as a listing of subgenres. I know not everyone makes as comprehensive list as I do, so I made two versions to suit.

Now we get into the specifics! I created a Fiction Overview and a Nonfiction overview to detail out each chosen subgenre...

I would use the one with with ALL my subgenres listed. This is the more generic version for those people who maybe wouldn't cover quite as much as I will. I did create similar versions of each that are not showing in the pictures above.

I then created two versions of Venn diagrams for each of the comparison subgerenes. I like to compare:

1) Realistic and Historical

2) Mystery and Adventure

3) Fantasy and Traditional Literature

Here are two examples...

You see that the first has a cut and paste (similar to the drag and drop option on our state tests!) and the second has an open-ended written response question based on a situation prompt.

I also created a page for Science Fiction where the student reads a summary and decides whether that IS or IS NOT SciFi and explains why.

For nonfiction, I made one organizer for all of it since most of the subgenres have many things in common. 

I'm excited to use these because I know that they are far more in depth than a lot of genre overviews out there. Using them as a quick reference guide will be perfect for my students when labeling book genres in their 40 Book Challenge log. If they have any questions, they can simply refer to these for help! 

If you like them, join my blog below and I'll send it to you for free for the next week! If you get to this post too late, fear not, there are in my TPT store HERE.

Brianna 

Reading Graffiti

How many of you have read The Book Whisperer or Reading in the Wild?

I have read both and one of the things that I incorporated into my room last year OTHER than The 40 Book Challenge was to create a reading graffiti wall. If you don't know what this is, it's an area of the room where students can write their favorite quotes from the books they are reading. Here is one I found on the internet...

 

Last year, mine wasn't very successful. I had maybe six or seven quotes on it, and two of them were mine from our read alouds. Probably fortunately for you, I don't have a picture of it to show you, so you can't feel THAT bad for me. 

Needless to say, I still love the idea, and rather than throwing it out with all the trash I've been accumulating, I decided to try something a little different.

A really good friend of mine made me some of these last year...

With a piece of plywood and a jigsaw, really what CAN'T you do? #amiright

They are painted with whiteboard paint (that you can purchase from your local home improvement store...I'm pretty sure it's made by Rustoleum).  Last year I used a few of them on a bulletin board I created in the hallway outside my room, but they ended up being mostly decorations. 

SOOOOO....Why not combine the best of both worlds??

I started putting them up just to see how it looked and I liked it so much, I decided to do the whole door that way. 

Here is the whole door covered...

Then I thought to myself that it looked kind of plain so, see that marker hanging on the door? That's what I was originally using on the black paper. Now, I don't need it since the bubbles are dry erase, but that doesn't mean I can't use it in the meantime!!

I decided to spice it up a little bit!

I'm still not done yet. I think I'm going to back and add a little border or something. We'll see how it goes. Anyway, my intention is that hopefully the kids will WANT their quotes up there now, since there is limited space. The brilliance of dry erase is that if more kids have quotes, we can simply rewrite them a little bit smaller and make more room. Either way, this year it won't look so sad :(

How do you keep your kids invested in their reading?

Brianna

Classroom Reveal 2015!!

I know that this post is late considering that almost everyone is back in school by now, but so be it.

Today is going to be a lot of pictures and just a few words here and there...I apologize in advance if anything is blurry because my phone literally has a 5 megapixel camera. I'm pretty sure a Kodak Disposable from the 90s takes better pictures than this phone!! Also, the lighting in my room is weird for some of the photos because I like to have the lights off most of the day. About halfway through taking pictures, however, I realized that YOU GUYS might not be able to see it all so I flipped them on. I didn't go back and take repeat shots though #aintnobodygotimeforthat!!

Here we go....

The view as you walk in the room. I will say upfront that most of my walls are bare right now. I like to have things open so that when class is in session, we can make anchor charts together and put them up around the room, organized by content area.

Reading Nook #1: At the front of my room I have a rug with some cubes that I got for 60% at Michael's last summer #heckyeah

Reading Nook #2: As you can see, this is by my teacher closets. You would think this would be a problem but I never go in those during reading because I am usually in small group or conferencing so it actually works out okay. Those pillows do not stay on the carpet though. You can't tell but my desk is to the left of this area. The kids would be traipsing all over them to get to me during the day and I just CANNOT HAVE THAT!! I store them in a different bin which you'll see in the next photo. The kids are surprisingly good at putting them away if they are trained right from the start #thankyoudaily5

Reading Nook #3: This is my tiniest reading area and my FICTION ONLY library (I forgot to take a picture of my NONFICTION ONLY library # merp). Notice how under the desk on the right is the basket I was talking about in the previous picture. It stores all my pillows from the big carpet AND my collection of MINI PILLOW PETS (given to me by my T.A. Jennifer). The M.P.P.s are used on the tiny carpet only.

This is my personal space at the back of the room. All of my binders are labeled and organized using milk crates (more of these in a moment!). I have my Teacher Toolbox and just out of view on the right are my student mailboxes. Behind my desk I have my Homework Club and my Class Bingo, which is designed for whole class discipline goals. I can't remember if this was an original idea or if I read it somewhere years ago, so if it was your idea, lemme know and you'll get credit, I swear! 

ALSO OF NOTE: don't you love my chalkboard apple??? It was given to me by one of the most challenging students I have EVER had for Christmas last year. I HEART it :)

Homework Zone and While You Were Out. Pretty self-explanatory. This is where they drop off HW in the morning and pick-up WYWO if they were absent. At the end of the day I collect all the foldables, interactive notes, worksheets, etc. on their desk and stick it in a folder with their number on it. When they come back, it's all in there just waiting to be put in their notebooks!

MATTH Rotations Board (T2 not pictured)

Small Group Area with Word Study board in the background. On the left side of that board I usually write different topics for the kids to write about. It normally consists of a list they can make, a What if..." open ended question stem and a "Would You Rather..."

My Writing Process and Six Traits Board (I just love to make thing POP up off the boards!)

Organization is my #favorite! That little yellow sign says "Stealing from Ms. Burch is WRONG!" Care to take a guess what I had an issue with last year??? My favorite thing in this area is definitely my color coded crayon drawers. I give each of my kids a box of crayons each year...but then they take it home for one reason or another and it never comes back. Well, that doesn't help when I do foldables and interactive notes on the daily, now does it?! So, sometimes I'll say, "Choose three colors of your choice," or "Take out a red and a blue." Either way, this allows kids to get ONLY what they need. 

This is part of my Writing and Word Work activity area for Daily 3 + Me. The binders of the left say "Mad Libs" (I store all the mad libs the kids have already written here for inspiration- after I check them for vulgarity of course) and "#NotRight" (This binder is where my kids have the opportunity to write about real things that have happened to them or someone they know that aren't right for one reason or another. It's truly amazing how open they are about it sometimes.) In the green bin are my Class Journals and on the far right are my new Reading Response Letter Journals. In the middle are mostly resources for Writer's Workshop like peer editing checklists, drafting paper, and final copy paper. In the front are my magnetic letters with white boards and behind are my Bananagrams with cork pads for sound muffling.

This is the table at the front of my room. It stores items I use daily including whiteboard, lined paper, staplers, tape, and all the bins that keep my daily math stations materials. You might remember from the MATTH Rotations board the M (math facts), A (at your seat), and H (hands on). I love to you use mild crates to make additional storage! Have you tried this?? To the right is my Power Up area. I have mentioned before that we have a mandatory remediation block each morning. While I am with a small group working on a skill, the rest of my students are rotating stations, one per day. Each one of these bins holds a different activity in the manila folder and when they are done, they stick it in the purple pocket folder behind it. You see that the last bin is already full...that's got my brand spankin' new Comp. Files in them!!

Okay...that's all she wrote on the classroom reveal for 2015. Let me leave you with one last picture...a picture we're all familiar with...

Yep...you too jam pack that cabinet, don't lie!

What did you think??!!

Brianna