Workstation Wednesday: Non-Fiction News Workstation

Last spring, I purchased a few products from Journey of a Substitute Teacher to create an on-going literacy workstation with nonfiction text. 

Here are the four that I am using for this station (although you could easily start by making it with just one of her products!)

Click on the picture above to go directly to her store & her nonfiction packs!

Her nonfiction packs have a lot in them! I sorted through them and placed all items about the same animal/dinosaur/insect, etc. together. Then, I made a folder for each item with two plastic sleeves in it. The actual reading passage is just copied once and stays in the plastic sleeves, along with pictures, and graphic organizer type things. Then, the pieces that students actually need to write on and turn in are copied onto paper and put into the pockets. Students can choose a folder for this station, complete the activities inside, then turn in the one sheet of paper. I call this station NON-FICTION NEWS.

This is what a call a FOREVER workstation. After I took the time to make it once, all I have to do is add copies (hopefully only once a year!) into the pockets. The informational/reading parts always stay in the folder. To be safe, I put 30 copies of the student writing part in and then I encourage students to ONLY choose that folder once throughout the year. My students would usually visit this workstation once a week. It's kind of an honor system on whether they have done that folder before or not. Hopefully, all of the topics will be interesting enough to them that they will be anxious to try all of them! 

Please see the pictures below for a more detailed picture of what I have described!!!

 

Workstation Wednesday: Animal Kingdom (Nonfiction Passage Comprehension)

 

 

 

This is one of my students' very favorite workstations and it's mine too! You know why? Mostly because I took the time to set it up ONCE and it's ready to go for the WHOLE YEAR, I never have to do a THING to change anything out. It's ready every single day, every single week, after just a little work at the beginning of the year. I call this a "YEAR AROUND WORKSTATION."

 

 

 

First of all, this set of non-fiction passages was purchased from Kayla Parker at Meet Miss Parker. Let me just tell you that it was WELL-WORTH my $14. Did I mention, YEAR LONG WORKSTATION!?

Here it is in her TpT Store:
Nonfiction Reading Comprehension Passages Animals A-Z (Common Core)

I honestly can't say enough about this great product. My kids love it and I love it. It doesn't get much better than that!
 

How did I accomplish a year long workstation? There are 26 animal passages (Animal names starting with the letters A-Z). I used 26 of these plastic three prong folders that I knew would last a long time. Luckily, I had enough of the folders that the kids had brought in at the beginning of the year as a "donation" to the classroom. I wrote the name of each animal on the outside of each folder.

 

Then, I printed the whole set of passages ONCE in color. (Just once...and it'll last FOREVER!) I put one plastic sleeve in each folder in the three prongs with a piece of blank cardstock just to keep it sturdy. (Or you could print the passages on cardstock.) I put one animal passage the sleeve in each folder.

 

Then, I copied an abundance (30 for me) of the comprehension questions for each animal with the KWL chart that she includes on the back of each set of questions. This stack of papers should last me the whole year, as long as each child only chooses each animal once. I'm sure some kids will want to do some of the animals more than once, and they'll get away with it somehow, but that's why I make sure there are extras in there. Since there are 30 copies, I literally should not have to refill or even TOUCH these folders until NEXT YEAR! Woohoo!!!

Now, I copy the questions on paper so that they can turn them into me. If you have your stations set up in a different type of way and you don't NEED them to have that turned into you, you could actually just copy the questions once and have them in a second plastic sleeve where students could use a dry erase marker to complete the station. That would be an even better win-win center because you wouldn't have to make any copies! Unfortunately, I still feel the need to have my students turn it in to me to show accountability. If I had an assistant in the room at all times that could check the work they do, then it'd work out even better!

I keep all 26 folders (with an originals folder in the back) in a crate. The cover of Kayla's product is so eye catching, so I use that right on the front of the crate!

So, once I got them all pretty and organized in my crate (in alphabetical order, of course), how do my kids use them? (Yes, they are allowed to touch them! LOL)  I will say they didn't stay in alphabetical order for very long!

Each student that is assigned this station on their personal work plan is to choose one animal each week (that they haven't done before). They start by filling out the K and W of the KWL chart. Then, they read the passage carefully. I encourage my students to read passages like this three times. Then, they answer the comprehension questions on the other side of the KWL by looking back into the text to find evidence for the answers. If they choose, they can use a dry erase marker to underline parts of the passage as needed, since it's in a plastic sleeve. After completing the questions, they go back and fill in the L of the KWL chart. Their completed comprehension questions/KWL paper is then put in their yellow workstation folder that will all be turned in to me at the end of the week.

 

Like I said at the beginning, this is one of my favorite stations. I think it's easy to see why I love it so much and why my students do too! My reasons for loving it are,  top and foremost, the quality of Kayla Parker's work on the non-fiction passages. It amazes me. Very high quality. (No, she does not even know I'm writing this post! Haha)

Also, like I keep saying, it's a year-long workstation. I took the time to put it together at the beginning of the year, and I haven't had to touch it again. Now, next year it will be even less work for me, I'll just make copies of the questions and stuff each folder. It's not just busy work, it's quality work and covers a large spectrum of standards.

 

The kids love it because it's about animals and there are a great mixture of animals included. As you can see in the example pictured, there are some unusual animals and animals that are "new" to students. But, there are also animals that are more common and excite the students just as much, for example, the lion is a big favorite. 

 

Even without purchasing this exact product, you could easily create a similar year long workstation crate with other nonfiction passages that you already have, then placing the comprehension question copies in the folders. In fact, I'm already trying to think of another year-long comprehension station that I can create! I have tons of comprehension passage books that I could possibly make copies of for next year and do another crate with a creative name! I'm also waiting for Kayla to create another set of passages!

Check out Abbie's Workstation Wednesday blog post today!

 

 

Fifty States..Please Review!

I've been wanting to try creating nonfiction passages for awhile. I have a list of different topics that I'd like to create for my classroom in my notebook that I keep for school ideas. I've decided to try a unit of nonfiction passages of all fifty states. I think my students would enjoy learning about this in our small groups when we are working on comprehension skills. They are really into learning about animals and I'm trying to get them interested and learning about some other things. Another idea I have is famous/historical people, maybe? I am just trying to think of things that I know my students need to learn about, and I know there have to be others out there that could possibly benefit from this too.

Well, I've never done this with one of my projects before, but I'm going to ask your opinion. What do you think? Useful? Too easy? Too difficult? I'm planning to try out the passages that I've completed so far with my students when I return from Spring Break. I hope I can then add to this post with some more feedback and pictures. But for now, I'm going to add the pictures of my work so far for your review!!

The first page is the actual passage and facts.  The second is the first option for the teacher for comprehension questions with the RAPP model (I use this in my classroom, hoping for a blog post about this soon!). The third picture is for the second option for the teacher to use (without the RAPP model, in case you use something different and don't want to confuse them with the RAPP.)